Talking Point; Race and Diversity

You You Good evening, and welcome to Talking Point. People are often heard to say that we should aspire to be a colorblind society.

Even if you believe such a thing is possible, it is certainly a long way off. We're confronted with a significance of race on a regular basis. In his state of the Union message this week, President Clinton urged Americans to remember that diversity is our greatest strength. He said we continue to see evidence of bigotry and intolerance, but added that we must fight against that in our country and in our hearts. The response to the presidential address came from Representative J.C. Watts of Oklahoma, a Baptist minister, and the only black Republican in Congress. He also talked about the importance of racial harmony. He said, American must be a place where all red, yellow, brown, black, and white, in some way feel a part of the American dream. Ironically, the remarks of both men were overshadowed by the announcement of the verdict in the civil trial of O.J. Simpson, a man who has become something of a symbol of racial division. It seems that Americans have been consumed with issues of race from the very beginnings of this nation.

Back in the early 1800s, the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States, and then he wrote about his impressions of the country. He saw race as the most divisive issue confronting America, whites and blacks he wrote were like two foreign communities, unable to separate entirely or to combine. He further observed the danger of conflict between white and black perpetually haunts the imagination of the Americans like a painful dream. Tonight we'll look at race relations in America where we stand and what the future may hold, and as usual we have four guests. Tracy Parsons is president of the Urban League of Champagne County. He's held that position since the summer of 94. Before that he served as executive director of the higher the future program, that's Chicago's largest private sector employment program. Diane Pinderhuse is Professor of Political Science and director of the Afro-American Studies and Research Program at the University of Illinois. She's written widely on issues of race, public policy, and electoral politics. Ernestine Jackson is director of the Community Relations Office for the City of Champagne. We'll talk about what her position involves.

Our fourth guest is Vicki Cromwell. She teaches fourth grade at Urbana's Yankee Ridge School. She's also a regional representative for the Urbana Education Association. Now, as we all talk, you should be thinking about the questions you'd like to ask. We'll give you the chance to do that a little later in the program. And thank you all very much for being here. We appreciate it. People going back to Alexis de Duckville and other since have talked about race in that same way. They have talked about black and white being two nations, Andrew Hacker wrote a book. That was the title of his book. It was published a couple of years ago. It got a lot of attention in the press. And it seems that we are offered examples of that fairly often. In fact, just recently, there was a national level controversy that suggested black people and white people don't even speak the same language. I'll start with Professor Pinder years, and everyone can give a chance to answer the question.

But I wonder if you think that de Duckville and those people who have expressed that sentiment since are right. Well, it's an interesting way to start the program. I think that we have a society that has existed for, as I say in my classes, several centuries, really, with very powerful racial dynamics integrated into it. It's difficult, I think, for people who come to the United States who have come, say within the last 10 or 15, 20, even 50 years or 100 years to understand just how powerfully race has structured the society from the beginnings of the colonial era. It divided the constitutional convention issues of the slave trade, the Civil War, the decisions at the end of the 19th century about segregation. It goes on and on.

I think we have societies with very complex levels of meaning that African Americans have a much clearer sense of our political institutions, our religious institutions incorporate that understanding, and those institutions go back to 300 years prior to the beginning of the nation. So African Americans come to inter-political participation. They come into life in the society with a much deeper understanding of American political history, American economic history. Our own ancestors have been expropriated from another continent, broad here. Our ancestors worked for many hundreds of years and didn't get paid to do it. So I think, every day, meaning of life, the kinds of issues that white Americans, recent immigrants to the society can take for granted, we have to contest on a daily basis. Let me turn to Tracy Parsons. Let me ask you just a little bit different question, but it gets at some of the same points, I think.

Not very long ago, I interviewed an author and social critic by the name of Benjamin Demott, who wrote a book called The Trouble with Friendship. And in this book, he writes, at the heart of today's thinking about race lies one relatively simple idea that the race situation in America is governed by the state of personal relations between blacks and whites. And his point is that there are a lot of people who go around saying, well, we wouldn't have racial divisions if black people and white people just simply knew each other better. If they interacted on a social and informal level, they got to know each other as people, and that race would just wouldn't be so important anymore. Now, I think he's saying that's not true at all. I mean, that really denies an awful lot about the realities of the experience of black people in the United States. But I wonder what you think about that idea. It's just this idea that somehow it's just a matter if we hung out together more, we would get to know each other and then some of the problems wouldn't be such a big problem anymore. Well, I would agree to a point that one of the issues that we face is that we really don't know each other, socially, maybe as one of the ways it makes it easier for us to get to know each other, takes maybe some of the pressure off.

And you find that there are some similarities and beliefs. One of the things about race though is that we are different. And we can't hide from that fact, and we shouldn't have to hide from that fact that we are different. That's definitely about certain things. And that's part of the diversity, and that's one of the buzzwords, of course. But that's part of what we bring to the table, is that we all have some things that are different about us. Our experiences are different. The way that we've been raised, the exposure that we've had to folks of other races. That all plays into it as well, and to simply say that if we get together socially, that'll change and we'll eliminate some of those feelings. Most of this stuff, most of our feelings are the way that we're raised, and it's in bread, in us, and how we change and alter some of those feelings is when we have the opportunity to get a chance to meet someone that's a little different than ourselves. But you can't dismiss it solely as soon if we did it socially, it would completely improve things.

I wanted to turn to the teacher, because I'm curious about you know, as you walk through the halls of the school every day, and you deal with your students and other kids who are in the school. What you're feeling is about the attitudes that they bring with them, and if you have any reason to feel positive about how they feel as opposed to maybe what you think might be going on with people. Either our generation or their parents generation and older people. Well, we have to understand that children are born without a bias. They have acquired a learn behavior. As I walk through the school and everything, I have noticed that the generation that is coming up now, the young children, have the ability to overcome the feelings of bias against a certain race. They have to be instructed.

They have to have the opportunities to view the world in different ways. Children are very visual people. And the barrier or the breakdown comes when if a child turns on a TV and they see that the ten most wanted are all black, then they are going to get a perception that black people are bad. And so, since children are very visual, within the schools, we try to make sure that they see positive people of different races in all types of positions. And that is one thing that I work on within my classroom. Our school has about over 20 different nationalities. Within my classroom, I have about five different races in my classroom. And exposing them to pictures, to books, to videos, and also talking to them about my own heritage helps enlighten their world. And then they can take that back home because I do not know what they are being taught or told at home.

But they must leave it at the doorstep before they come inside the classroom. They must learn how to work together and how to get along together. When going back to, you know, I was talking about having talked with this man, Mr. Demott, who was criticizing this, really criticizing the idea that, well, if we just got to know each other better, everything would be okay. I mean, what he says is that that denies institutional racism. I mean, it denies that there is racism in society and it is a fact and it exists. And what do you think, how do you think sort of on an institutional level on levels, say, governments or so forth? We are doing, in terms of trying to move towards equality. How are we doing in government, moving towards society? I think government is just like all aspects of the country. It's no different. In fact, if you really read the newspaper stories about what's happening in government, there's more racism within government, the federal government, state government, and city governments than many corporations. If you read what's happened within the FBI, if you read what happens within the Commerce Department prior to Ron Brown coming there.

If you read what's happening even in the educational department, as it relates to racism and where African Americans and people of other races are in the lower level positions. And no matter how many degrees or how much experience they have, they never get above a certain point we get to the glass ceiling. So I think that as you look at government, government is not an example of people getting along and doing all the right things. I think you see racism at a much higher level. I'm curious about what you think about what you see in media that has to do with race and race relations. And whether in fact you think that media somehow plays up the conflict there to a greater extent than it is. I mean, obviously media is often criticized for liking conflict and it's true.

But, you know, I wonder as a way of kind of asking how are we doing and has there been progress. It seems like that mostly what we read about is conflict. I think media has a big role to play and they've been very negative. They have assisted people to think the way they're thinking. I think if you really see the media, you see all the negative sides of African Americans, of Hispanics, of Latin Americans, you see all the negative aspects of those people. And it's rare that you see something really positive, probably the most positive thing that happened in the media was the Bill Cosby Show. Because you got to see African Americans in a whole different light. Because a lot of people don't believe that African Americans are doctors, lawyers, and all those things because we spent a lot of our time watching television and reading papers. And what we see is the negative part of minorities, very sexist parts for females.

So I think media plays a big role at keeping us divided. I think it's also true that most of the stories really are about. You don't see magazine covers saying black people and white people get along just fine. What you see is magazine covers that stress the conflict. Well, I think it's also that when the news is an area that I would talk about. I've seen some studies that found, in line with what Ernest team was saying, that the news coverage of people being arrested, of drug activities, of a variety of any kind of activities that involve violation of the law. That 70, 80, 90% of the people shown visually are African American. And one would have the impression that the only people committing crimes are black or non-white.

And that conveys in a very powerful way, subliminally, what may not be said in the script, but what's communicated on screen is very problematic. So news coverage of crime is a very serious problem. It's something that seems not to be able to be handled or approached. It's almost as if people know this, it's not as if I'm not saying anything particularly new. But it's something that seems to be consistent in the way in which news agencies handle race in terms of crime. So it's a problem. When I think it goes back to your question earlier about socially and how we tend to perceive each other and view each other. And if that perception is shaped by a media that gives a skewed view, then your perception going into meeting a person and getting a chance to know a person, it's more difficult. And that's one of the major impacts of media and coverage of people of color.

And that as Diane said, the perception that it gives you going into meeting a person and the barriers that you have before even meet that person. If you've never had that opportunity to sit down and share and really get to know, I don't mean interacting at work and playing recreationally. Basically getting a chance to meet and talk and know someone that's different, you have that barrier going into it. And it gives a chance to know that person is much more difficult when you've been shaped and viewed from that perspective. I think what happens is there are times that people want to be involved with your socially, but don't want to be involved with African Americans in the corporations or on the work level. Or let's get involved in work level, but let's not socially get together. So you never get to know each other as you are. You never get to know me as a person. You only get to know me on the out.

And I think people feel that safe. That's a safe environment. Then I can say, well, I've got to know some people socially, but I don't have to be with them at work. I don't have to be with them socially. And for some reason that makes them feel, well, now I've got to know them. And that's not true. I think that you have to work on all levels. You can't say, let's get together socially and not deal in the workplace, because the workplace really shapes all of us. And we started with discussion talking about the media perception of African Americans, but I think this goes both ways for the black community as well as the white community and the Latino and Asian community. It's not just the white community with the black community, it goes both ways. At the beginning, you mentioned being a colorblind society. I don't want people to look at me and be colorblind. I want you to know me as an African American female. I don't want you to look at me and see nothing. So I hope we don't get to the point where we say, oh, this is a colorblind society, because you won't get to know me as a person.

Or an esteemed accent African American female. Well, I guess when people use that kind of language, I guess I'm never really quite sure what it is they're talking about. Because in one sense, I think we have to acknowledge that's just not possible. Not if we're going to be literal about it. We can't never not be what we are. But I think I do know what they're talking about, what they're talking about is a society in which you can eliminate the differences that one would have to come to terms with if you're fully aware of the differences in among racial and ethnic groups. If you're fully aware of a group of people as African Americans, for example, you have to know why African Americans feel so strongly about the way the criminal justice system functions. About the kinds of day to day insults that come our way. And why we feel insulted so quickly.

People often seem to assume that African Americans are just kind of sensitive, and that's a problem. They just need to get over their sensitivities, get over it as a phrase we've heard before. Not always from whites, of course. But I think that what people who use the color line phrase are trying to do is to set the terms so they control what issues are on the table. And that the concerns of African Americans get pushed out of the way. But that we just talk about good schools. We don't talk about what does that mean? What African Americans think a good school means? What do we mean about cultural life, about food, about the values of the African American community? It's a way of trying to homogenize the society and to deny the importance that we bring to the table. It's control. You talked about what are the things that you do in your classroom. I guess I'm interested in hearing some more about what kind of...

Do you try it now, you teach fourth grade? Correct. Do you try to talk about some of these things and getting children talking about their experiences and their perceptions of themselves and one another? Is that something that you can do with children of that age? Oh, yes. Easily. I am very upfront with my students. We talk about race and different ethnic groups. As a matter of fact, as their opinion, right before school was such a day about race relations. And what advice they could give to the adult society. And many of them were able... They love the segment from Dr. Martin Luther King's speech, which says, do not judge a person by the color of their skin, by the character. And they have really internalized that concept. And from their viewpoint is to accept people. And if someone, let's say, of a lot kind of race, was saying something biased against another race,

just don't listen to that person. So they have a lot of opinions about what they think about race relations. And they are very much aware of it. And we do a lot of talking. Talking, not just trying to think about it, but I think that is one thing that has broken down. It's talking and then putting forth some action. We can sit around and think of all of the different philosophies and be very humanistic in our thinking. But if you do not put action behind the words, then it's just useless. And I think that fear and greed enters into one's opinion that can keep them from really seeing that race relations will need to have a lot of work done to it. One of the things that I wonder about, and I guess in talking about these issues over the years, I've tried to raise the question to see what kind of answers I would get, is to what extent in relations between black and white,

class issues are also operating, and that they might be as problematic as the race issue. Do you think there's something to them? You mean economic? I would characterize it as economic issues. I can talk about the class as well. I think when you talk about class, you mean economic differences between working lower middle upper classes. But the way race operated in this country for the last couple hundred years, you didn't have much opportunity for socioeconomic developmental prosperity on the part of the average African-American. That just didn't happen or if it did. That was typically threatening to the way in which the system of racial structuring worked. So you can look historically at different parts of the country, different points in time, and find black people who produced oil in Oklahoma,

or developed very effective restaurants or barbershops, or just a range of relatively prosperous individuals, but it was not possible in the system of racial hierarchy for those individuals to transmit that prosperity to their children, very successfully or for a long period of time, to expand that geographically. When you look at the statistics, I took a look at a book by Melvin Oliver and Tom Shapiro called Black Wealth. White Wealth was published last year, something like 80 for a young two-earner family. A black couple earns about 80 percent of what a white couple earns an income, but in terms of wealth, they have about 18 percent of the wealth of that same couple. When you look at education, for example, in control for education and income, the wealth of whites is usually about three to four times that of blacks. So you can talk about class, but it's not something that until very recently

has been able to be sustained within the black community in any meaningful way. Now, there's been a lot of change in the last 20 years with a sharp opening up of a gap in economic status between the wealthiest black population and the poorest black population. People could possibly be, for example, who really had enough money to buy in BC, but was constrained because it was black. Or a Michael Jordan or any number of people in acting or our sports. But that's a relatively new phenomenon. But I think it's interesting that, and she mentioned the Bill Cosby thing. He had an African-American that could have paid cash for NBC, but could not buy it because of his race. Had nothing to do with class. Had nothing to do with economics. Had to do with the fact that he was an African-American. And I mean, forgive me, I guess it's not a story that I follow terribly closely.

You can say with certainty that that... Well, at least that's what he felt. He actually said I would have been able to do it, but for the fact that... But it was something that was being discussed for close to a year. And it was something that he wanted to do. And it was in the newspaper in the news for probably about a year. And it did not come across. It did not happen. I think the other thing that's been happening in the last 20 years is we're seeing a rapid transformation of not just the American economy, but the global economy, with integration of American economic activities into corporations around the world and or other corporations from outside of the US becoming active in the United States. And that constrains the black population even more than it has in the past so that you have a few people, small portions of the population,

able to make some inroads in terms of the black population. But then you've got much larger corporations, Japanese banks, for example, that at this point make American banks look almost insignificant. And I'm not talking about black American blacks. I'm talking about some of the large banks in Chicago or New York are not the largest banks in the world any longer. So that obviously puts a lot of constraints economically on the black population. I just want to take a moment to tell people who are watching that in a couple of minutes. We will begin taking your calls. And if you do have questions or comments for the panel, the number to call is 3-3-3-3-4-9-5. If you live outside the 2-1-7 code area you may call collect, you can start right now. As soon as we get some folks lined up, we'll go ahead and take calls. One of the things I want to make sure that we talked about was what the Human Relations Commission does and what you and your job is the absolute champagne does.

As the Director of Community Relations, we cover a lot of grounds. First of all, one of our task is to take complaints of discrimination within the city of champagne. So anyone within the city of champagne that feel they've been discriminated against by any company or agency or whatever, can file that complaint with us. And we're set up exactly like that of the Illinois Department of Human Rights and EEOC, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, where we take complaints, we investigate complaints, we make formal charges, and we make settlements on that if we find a probable cause finding. We act as the liaison between the city and the community as a whole. My office monitors the city because we say if the city is telling other people what to do, we need to do it ourselves. We also monitor all our vendors. We monitor all our contractors, all of our vendors to make sure that when we buy something from someone that they are acting affirmatively, they're hiring minorities and females in significant roles.

So our office covers a lot of ground. We also work very closely with the personality department in their recruitment efforts. We monitor the city's affirmative action plan. And so there's a lot of activities that's going on in our office. As you look at the kind of complaints that you've received over time, any discernible pattern, are there more or are there less, are the nature of the complaint? What we're finding now, we're taking more complaints and most of the more the complaints are blatant racism. In the areas of race and sexual harassment, what we're finding is people are blatantly saying, we can't hire you in this position because we have white customers and they may not want to have you in this spot. They are verbalizing that. Or we're having people that are saying, well, this is a house that we want to rent, but we want to rent it to a family. So identify what a family is.

That means that they want to husband a wife and little children. And I say, well, a husband, a male with children is at a family. Or a female with children is at a family. We're having people that are blatantly not promoting people because of race or because of sex. And we are finding more probable cause findings than ever before. And it's very frustrating for us, and it's more for me because I always mention that, you know, I grew up in the 40s. So I got to see the water fountains with the signs. And then in the 50s, we integrated the lunch counters and we marched as teenagers. So what I'm seeing now is the signs down, but the same kind of behavior coming back. So I have seen a span from the 40s till now. And it isn't a pretty sight, especially with the blatant racism that happens in the area of employment in housing. Why do you think that it is true that something has changed so that now people somehow feel more free to blatantly express racism,

maybe more free than they were 10 years ago or 15 years ago or 20 years ago? Well, power is still. Power and economic control is still something that we're fighting over and fighting for. And I think as we see our communities and our places of employment and our schools and all of those things working towards bringing in different groups, you see other groups now starting to fight back for that. And I think so that's why you see the retreat on affirmative actions. And you see some of those types of things and the stopping of immigrants coming into our country. You see those types of things, because my personal feeling is that it's becoming more of an economic issue and fighting and control over maintaining what we have. And as we talk about becoming an inclusive society, that means that there's going to be instead of a board of directors of six all white men. You now have a Latino lady and an African American male and Asian person.

So we're talking about how we become a community and a society where everyone can succeed in. Well, you have others that are resisting that. And I think that's the reason that some of these things that we see are surfacing more now than ever as companies are downsizing. We're fighting over jobs as all of those things take place. We now have to deal with those things and that's partly what we're seeing now is that we've never really dealt with the issue of race. We've skirted around it. We've tried affirmative action assuming that that was going to be something that was the end all. But we didn't deal with the root causes and the mentalities and the mindsets and those things. And until you deal with that, we're still going to always have these issues. So to assume just because we have opened the door or given a person a chance, that still doesn't deal with the root cause of a lot of these problems. You know, one of the things that you said was that you thought that children don't come with bias.

They're not born with bias. They're not born. And that it's something that you end up learning or being taught. Oh, exactly. When does that happen? And how does that happen? I'm curious because I suppose there are some people that be prepared to argue that there's something in human beings that have this inclination that they like to do. They can feel better than. And that there's this natural desire to be hierarchical. Do you think that's really not the way that it is? That's not a natural thing and that it's something that you've got to learn. I think it's both. I think that it could be something in which maybe a child could feel like they want to be a bully over someone. Or they want to have power over someone. I think the main thing with race is power. It's just power control.

And it's also fear. Because if someone loses the power, then they have a big problem. I know within our school district, we have been working on relationships and working with students because that is the population. And also our clientele and everything. And when you look at a teacher who is teaching students of various backgrounds, one would have to be very knowledgeable of that background. And so in our band of school district, I have been a part of some really ground root workshops that have started. Right now there is one that is called racial justice. And which the minority involvement concerns through the union started with about four or five members. And now racial justice is required by every new incoming teacher and two of the abandoned school districts. That is just a foundation that is just one step. But when people talk about race relations, it is not anything that is going to happen overnight.

We have been working on this and urban. I have been in the district for 12 years. And we are still working. And sometimes you take a step backwards. Like you said, we have come a certain distance. But now it appears as though we are taking double steps backwards. And we have to think about what is happening and who has the power. And I think clearly that is the point I was trying to make about not dealing with the root causes of the issue. For 12 years, the school district to use Vicki's example has talked about the importance of race relations and the importance of inclusion. But never really deal with the mindset and the mentality and the education part of it to get folks to understand where their beliefs and their perceptions and their biases and all those things come from. And once you realize what they are, how do you deal with them? And that is the part that sometimes we forget, we are still going to have these biases and perceptions and beliefs about certain groups.

But how do you deal with it? How do you manage that? How do you control that so that you are not discriminating against? And that is what we have never learned how to do. We have not gone far enough in this process to do that. We have a couple of callers going to see what is on the mind if some of the folks are watching. We will start out with someone in Urbana on our line number one. I think that side. Yes. I grew up in Northern Ohio and non-segregated and very much inclusive community. The terminology of what we call people of color has changed six times when I was a child. I tried to keep up with the terminology with my children so that they would be acceptable. It was the term black was offensive when I was a child. And then we went to, we call people colored. Then we went to the word negro. Then we went to Afro-American.

And I don't know where we are now. I don't like to have to make these distinctions in conversation. But it becomes necessary. And so there are the words become repugnant then the words become weapons. And I don't know where I am now as far as vocabulary is concerned. Does that matter? Well, I think as we evolve and we learn more about our heritage and our support base and then our history. Then we've evolved. So as we've evolved as a group and as a people, we've learned about ourselves and what we are now learning how to do is express what we find as being respectful. A lot of the terms that she talked about were given to us. Not terms that now you hear African-American. This is something that we've identified as how we want to be identified as. And so that's just the evolution. So she may have the frustration, but that's part of the process. And we now talk about Latinos as opposed to Hispanics or Mexicans and things of that nature.

And that's part of the process. And that's part of what we have to go through as we go through this cultural evolution and learn about each other. And there may be another term as we go through. There will be another term. And I think it's generational. My mother passed away at 80 and she was still calling people color, but that was her era. And there's nothing we could do in the house because we kept saying, don't say that. But she was 80 years old. She was not going to change. The era that I came in, we were Negro. And then we were black. So I think it depends on the era. Every era there's something different and new. And just like Tracy said, you've grabbed on something that we can really identify with. No one gave us those names. That is part of us. Let's go on. We'll go to St. Joe, line number three. Hello?

Good evening. The quote-unquote race problem has generally been defined in terms of race relations. The race relations between blacks and whites. And for obvious reasons historically. But what I'd like the panelists as professors, teachers and community activists to comment on, is how do we read historicized America? How do we deal with contemporary politics? Given the presence of Native Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans in the U.S., also bearing in mind that these rubrics incorporate people of very different ethnic, racial and cultural backgrounds. Excellent question. What I'd like to try to begin to do with my classes is to, in talking about Native Americans, for example, I mean, one of the things that you're able to do when you bring a broader discussion to the table is to understand the different kinds of discrimination and expropriation that have occurred in the society. And some of the similarities, for example, the university has been struggling for some time with the issues of the images of Native Americans,

the question about the chief as a mascot. Lots of people who like the chief argue that it's a dignified symbol, it's respectful, but it's something that's taking from people who are no longer here. They're land, and the Elanai people's no longer live in Illinois, either driven out or the combination of acquisition of land, of disease made it difficult for Native Americans to stay in this space. And it forces us to think about how we came to be here and talk about who owned the land originally. When you talk about Latinos or Chicano's in the southwest, for example, there, we tend to talk about immigration, and of course we had to talk about how that population was here, period. The country came to them and took over their space.

That population lived, and also the American economic and legal system came and restructured their world so that they had lost a lot of property. Or we have an Asian American population which was brought into the United States. That is the Asian American population brought in the late 19th century brought into the United States to work to build railroads to work in agricultural labor in the West. And unless when you're able to put all of those groups together, you get a better sense of how the country was built. Yes. The black population enslaved, the southeast, the southern part of the country. Native Americans had the land. They had to be moved. Asian Americans came in with, or were brought in also for purposes of labor. This is an interesting history once you begin to put it together. Yes.

I think this country tends to only see racial relations on a black white issue, and they don't look at it as the whole. The whole part, because we deal with more than black white issues in my office. We deal with all issues relating to discrimination for anyone that felt they've been discriminated against. But society tends to make this thing a black white issue. Why do you think that is? It's easier to bring it down to just two groups, and the major two groups were. It's changing, where the whites and African Americans. So, you know, and it's easier to settle on one group rather than the whole. I think also we've been, because of the importance of slavery in the country's economic and political history. So that you have that long tradition of conflict, which is incorporated in a way in the political values and philosophies, incorporating the sense of conflict is incorporated.

And so it tends to mean that the person who called is Puerto Rican-American who grew up in the United States, or family is from, but is also from Newark, New Jersey. But yet we act as if the main conflict is between whites and blacks, but it's that we've been kind of struggling with each other for so long, that as if these other groups have not been there when they have been. But they've not been as central to the oldest institutions and political or philosophical conflicts within the country. I'm not saying they weren't there, but the sense of it as a part of the country's crises. Let us go on to Champagne, wine five. Yes. Yes, sir. I'd like to know that your organization investigates discrimination complaints against the school districts specifically here in Champagne. No, we do not. The one thing about my office is we do not have jurisdiction over other governmental entities.

So school districts and county governments and those areas are not covered by our office. So the Illinois Department of Human Rights and the Equal Opportunity Commission, Equal Employment Opportunity Commissions are the ones that handle that. And if someone has a complaint against those agencies, if they come in our office, we will assist them in filing the complaint. We will write it up and send it off. Okay. Would you all please bash again how we can get in touch with your agency before you end your discussion? Sure. Or if you want to mention right now, you're telephone number. Three, five, one, four, four, five, five. Okay. Thank you very much. You're welcome. And if people look under the city of Champagne, Human Relations Community Relations. Community Relations. Community Relations. That's it's listed there. It's listed in the phone book under Community Relations. But I would also add to that caller, we do have a local chapter of the NAACP as well as my office in the urban league. And I do with my fair share of discrimination cases and racism cases and things of that nature.

And right now, this is a very timely point with the school district as we deal with this issue of how you educate kids of color and just looking at this system of our educational process, which is vital to the success of our community and health of our children. And we're still trying to educate our young people and old managers that aren't just effective anymore. So this whole issue of our educational process is one that is crucial. And our caller certainly can call my office as it is a very hot topic right now. I hope that helps. Let's go again to another caller. This is someone in Urbana and it's line number six. Hello. Hello. Yes. I wanted to ask the panel to consider another dimension of this problem of race in America. And that is that the conversation so far has been focusing on white society, excluding black people or people of color. But I think there's another factor that needs to be considered in that there is a certain percentage of the black population who actually prefers to be culturally distinct from mainstream America who would prefer to live in a white,

a black community, go to a black church and join black social organizations. So I think perhaps we need to understand the complexity of this a little more. It isn't just that black people are constantly being excluded from white society, but that there are situations that black people choose to stay out. Well, I agree with that now. And I think we did touch on that earlier when we talked about the issue and how we feel about this issue and we all have different perceptions and feelings. And that's, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I don't think there's wrong with a group of whites or blacks or Latinos that choose to integrate, that choose not to integrate and stay within their own. The issue is those that want to succeed through our employment and our housing and our educational process, just because you choose to socialize and do your personal things with yourselves or with your own individual group,

that does not mean you should not be accessible or able to gain access and be involved and succeed in those other institutions. But it also hits to the importance of economics and the black community being strong economically. And that's another topic and another probably show to talk about the importance of that, but it does bring out the importance of that as well. And I think that one of the areas that we saw that maybe about 10 years ago in Prince George County, when some African-Americans said, we want to be with other African-Americans on our level. We want our children to grow with African-Americans. We want to have our own schools and we want to. So you had people that were probably buying two, three, four hundred thousand dollar houses that built houses in a community that was all African-American. And they chose to do that. And all we're talking about is choice.

If I choose to do this, then I should have been allowed to do it. If I choose to move into an online community, I should be allowed to do that. And that's all about choice. Well, it also becomes an issue. It has been an issue on a lot of college campuses as well, with students wanting to associate with other students and wanting to have a place that they can do that. And some people getting the idea that, well, maybe that's, you know, is it a good thing or is that a bad thing? That's always a good topic for a lively discussion. You know, the black table in the college cafeteria or the black house on campus. And I think what's often a problem for people who are in a majority situation to grasp is how African-Americans or people who are minority. And in this case, I'm even already less than a total of the majority of the population. How they actually do associate with the majority, most of the time, when they're in their classes, on a daily basis, when they're working on campus,

when they're in school, in the cafeteria. In other words, when they're in their ordinary day-to-day routine, they're not with primarily black people. Black students here talk about how much of the time they're in classes where they may be one or two. And when an issue that happens to come up that may bring up race, everyone in the class turns and looks at them for their views. If you go through that a day like that on a daily basis, you might begin to understand what students are doing when they come to the cafeteria at the end of the day. And they want to sit at a table with other black people. They want to relax. They want not to have to be under scrutiny. I'm sure that there have been some experiments in which white students are placed in similar situations that can handle it very well. It's a lot of stress.

Well, they're not used to. We're not used to being in the minority. Yes, exactly. That's the point. That's what you had to put yourself in that place. That's the point about how and why there are times when black people, Asian-American people want to be able to relax and be comfortable. I know that that raises issues of self-segregation and all of that sort of thing. But it's not a well, let me give you a counter example. So in South Africa, where the population is, what about, 18% white? In the process of developing the political system under the new post-apartheid government, guess what? They created a proportional representation in the legislature. In the United States, when Lonnie Guineer wanted to talk about something that was like proportional representation, we nearly had a national riot about it. But whites in the situation of being in the minority, suddenly they came up with what they reject when they're in the majority.

Down to our last, we have a couple of minutes left. I want to try to get at least one more call or more if we can. We'll go to line one, Champagne. Hello. Yes, good evening. I wanted to congratulate the panel there and also yourself. I think they've represented themselves well. I would like to, however, just in this short time, talk about the individual prejudices when that becomes collective, being institutionalized in a form of racism. And that's really what we're talking about. In other words, whether we want to be among black folks, or whether white folks want to be among other white folks, that's all right. But the choice should be there. In other words, it is an institutional norm for the issue in discussion at the present time. And I wonder if the panel could speak about that. Well, you want to have something?

I think it was sad. But I think Diane gave the example and all of us that are working every day in situations, being an all white situation or all black situation. If there's a white and all black situation, at some point you step back and said, I just need to be myself today. Or I need to step out of this and it's all right to do that. It really is. I think it's when we start doing that and using negative things to emphasize that. That's when it becomes a problem. But we all step outside of that, just to give to kind of relax. And Vicki is in the process of transforming the people of the futures. I'm just curious. Well, as far as the boys and girls getting along, is that what you're talking about and everything?

It is definitely a choice that they can make. I did not say you had to play, everyone must play together or whatever. But I think that if their choice is going to hurt someone else, then that's the problem. And if we're talking about in the workplace, if someone is going to say or do something against a person of opposite race, then that's when the choice becomes a danger. I'm afraid we're going to have to bring it to a close, I think. And we have a couple of colors. I'm afraid if I go to one, we won't be able to give them a chance to really say much of anything or the panel they have a chance to respond. So my apologies to the college we still have to take. Obviously, we have a much ground here for their program. So for right now, I want to thank you all very much for being with us. We want to thank our four guests, Tracy Parsons, President and CEO of the Urban League of Champaign County,

Diane Pinterhuse, Professor of Political Science, and also Director of the Afro-American Studies and Research Program at the University of Illinois. Bernstein, Jackson, Director of the Community Relations Office of the City of Champaign, and also Vicki Cromwell. She's with the Urban Education Association, and she's also a teacher at Yankee Ridge School. Our program will return in two weeks. That'll be February 20th. And at that time, we'll be looking at American attitudes toward death and dying. Between now and then, if you can tune in for our radio talk show, it's called Focus 580, weekday mornings at 10 on AM 580. Tomorrow morning, we'll be taking income tax questions. We'll be talking about women, children, and HIV. For now, thanks for watching, and good night. Thank you. Thank you.

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