Charley, if you could hear it now: racism

CHARLEY, IF YOU COULD HEAR IT NOW: RACISM

From Ruby Bridges to Barack Obama


The recent shootout between the NAACP and Tea Party adherents reminds us once again that the issue of racism is "alive and well" in America. Tea Party advocates were offended that the NAACP accused them of racism, but it should be noted that it was at a Washington rally in March against health care reform where shouts of "nigger" were heard from Tea Party activists as some black lawmakers were entering the Capitol building.

While the NAACP-Tea Party shootout is the latest racism episode, it is certainly not an isolated event. How many times have we heard Rush Limbaugh use his radio talk show to deliver high decibel racial remarks? The latest came on the death of New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner whom he described as a "cracker (who) made a lot of African-American millionaires". And not long before that he charged President Obama with trying to wreck the American economy as his revenge for over two centuries of racial oppression.

As disturbing as the return of racism to the headlines may be to many, it does not have the same violence as 50 years ago when Nobel Prize winning author John Steinbeck, accompanied by his French poodle Charley, made a three month journey around the country to refresh his memory of the America he had been writing about but an America with which he said he had lost touch.

His 1960 journey of personal rediscovery led to his best selling book TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY in which he made many observations about many things. They ranged from the great advances in mobile homes, to a tree hugging experience with west coast redwoods, to witnessing a very ugly demonstration in New Orleans where whites were protesting the integration of an elementary school. Flashback fifty years to that visit.


While traveling in Texas Steinbeck read about and saw on television reports of violent demonstrations against racial integration of an elementary school in New Orleans. He particularly noticed stories about a group of white "middle-aged women who by some curious definition of the word 'mother' gathered every day to scream invectives at children." A small group of them were so expert they were known as "Cheerleaders." He said the stories seemed so improbable that he had to see for himself.

His drive into New Orleans, the last major stop of his travels, came at the beginning of a revolutionary change in the country's race relations, heralded in the person of Rosa Parks who refused to sit in the back of a bus, and the black sit-ins at white lunch counters. Things were more intense when it came to desegregation of public school systems in the south. An early hint of the intensity of feelings on that issue came in l957, just three years after the Supreme Court ruling against school segregation, when President Eisenhower sent troops into Little Rock, Arkansas, to integrate Central High School.

Knowing he was entering a very hostile situation in New Orleans, Steinbeck took the precaution of disguising himself as a British merchant seaman, complete with accent, and parking his camper with its New York license plate a good distance from the street demonstration. He did not have to wait to get to the school before experiencing the bitterness surrounding the issue.

Beginning with the parking lot where he left his camper, the depth of the bigotry was evident with the lot attendant. When he came up to Steinbeck's truck he looked at Charley and said, "Man, oh man, I thought you had a nigger in there. I see that big old black face and I think it's a big old black nigger." Next came the cab driver taking him to the school asking, "Where you from?" Assuming his seaman's role, Steinbeck replied, "Liverpool," which made things okay with the driver. A bit later came the following exchange:

Driver: Why I like niggers. And them Goddamn New York Jews come in and stir the niggers up. They just stay in New York and their wouldn't be no trouble.
Ought to take them out.

Steinbeck: You mean lynch them?

Driver: I don't mean nothing else, mister.

(Just four years later in l964 three young civil rights workers, including two Jewish students from New York were murdered in Mississippi. Seven men were eventually sent to jail and 40 years later the case was reopened and another trial was held in 2005 when an eighth person, a white minister, was convicted of manslaughter.)

When Steinbeck arrived at the William Frantz Elementary School he saw a crowd assembled behind police barricades. At the front were the Cheerleaders. The targets were Ruby Bridges, a six-year old black girl who was integrating the school, and the U.S. Marshals escorting her to enforce the integration. (At this point it wasn't really integration since all of the white kids were taken out of the school by their parents.)

"Perhaps that is what made me sick with weary nausea. Here was no principle
good or bad, no direction. These blowzy women with their little hats and their
(newspaper) clippings hungered for attention. They were not mothers, not even
women. They were crazy actors playing to a crazy audience."

Over the next few days he talked with several people with diverse views on the issue. One was an old white southerner sympathetic to the black problem but deeply concerned about the future and how hard it would be for those on both sides of the issue to change their views. Next was an old black hitchhiker who was very wary of discussing the issue with a white stranger. Then came a white racist who hitched a ride but was told to get out when the discussion became too heated; he kept shouting "nigger lover" as Steinbeck drove off. And finally a young black student hitchhiker who was tired of the slow progress being made toward racial equality. "The gains are a drop of water and time is passing. I want it faster, I want action--action now."

The "now" began four years later with passage of the Civil Rights Act of l964, followed a year later with the Voting Rights Act of l965. But in the mid-l960s we also had the beginning of urban riots in northern and western cities such as Philadelphia, Cleveland, Detroit, and Los Angeles. The two civil rights acts revolutionized the life and political clout of southern blacks, but did virtually nothing to deal with the de facto segregation and problems of poverty and job and housing discrimination faced by blacks outside the south.. The urban riots culminated in the spring of l968 with numerous outbreaks, primarily in northern cities, following the assassination of Martin Luther King. Thus, what seemed to be clearly defined problems of state and local de jure segregation and discrimination in the south in the early 60s expanded to become bread and butter issues outside the south. This led to Lyndon Johnson's Great Society program focused on ending job and housing discrimination plus other ground breaking legislation in education and health care, and an umbrella anti-poverty program that dealt with problems such as pre-school education, a lack of social services, and legal representation for the poor.

Now fast forward 50 years for a look at New Orleans and the broader picture of racial progress in the country. The fault line of his conversations and observations was school desegregation. Today the fault line is Hurricane Katrina.

On August 29, 2005, a devastating hurricane hit New Orleans and a long stretch of the Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama coastline, causing widespread destruction and the dislocation of hundreds of thousands of residents and businesses. In New Orleans itself, tens of thousands of people evacuated the city before the storm and fled inland to safety, while many thousands more remained behind and had to be rescued from rooftops and seek shelter in refugee centers. And thousands more relocated to other Louisiana cities and other states and never returned.

Today Steinbeck would find that the hurricane resurrected the racial issue in New Orleans which had gone from one-third to two-third black and had elected three black mayors over the 50 years since he had been there. In the immediate aftermath of the hurricane there were charges coming out of the black community that federal help was slow in coming because the bulk of the victims were poor and black. There is also a belief that race was a big factor both in the rescue efforts and subsequent rebuilding of the neighborhoods. Some blacks also believe that just after Katrina had passed and the sun was shining, there was an explosion and the levee was blown up to allow water to rush in and level part of the 9th ward where neighborhood destruction and the loss of black population were the greatest.

Thus, white bitterness about school desegregation in l960, has been replaced by bitterness within a shrunken black population about what they see as whites using Hurricane Katrina as a way to permanently drive blacks from the city and restore white control. Since Katrina there are more white members on the city council and school board and a white mayor was elected in 2009 to replace a black mayor who had served the two terms permitted. But the changes have occurred within a context radically altered by a half century of civil rights laws accompanied by changes in the political and social culture of the city and the region as whites seeking election must now take into account the views and seek the support of their black voters.

Nationally, the combined effect of the 50 years of progress in race relations culminated in 2008 with the election of the first black President, Barack Obama. It would be comforting to think that Obama's election signified the end of race as a major issue in the country, but, alas, such does not seem to be the case. Race has now become a renewed, often whispered but sometimes spoken aloud issue in our body politic, as shown by various depictions of President Obama on posters, the June Tea Party rally with its racial epithets, and the frequent occasions when Rush Limbaugh comes up with his racial interpretations on current events. (If one is puzzled by the far reach of Limbaugh's views, perhaps it is because he fears he will be outflanked on the right by the outer fringe pronouncements of Glenn Beck.)

In any case, this new bigotry stems in large part from the re-emergence among some segments of the population of older attitudes about blacks and their "appropriate place" in the national life. To many, the first black President should be a one-term President--because he is black. So, Charley, while the high decibel virulence and violence of the racial issue has toned down, the issue of racism itself has gained a new lease on life.