A Negro votes

Los Angeles is full of white people who are devoted to the principles of civil rights of the equality of men regardless of such irrelevancies as race. Many of them are intelligent active and idealistic almost without exception. They would reject the idea of supporting a candidate for office soley because he is a negro. Many would argue that there is no philosophical difference between supporting a negro as a judge and supporting a racist white. But negroes many of whom are equally intelligent active and idealistic often seem to disagree with me at the moment are an official of the Los Angeles branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and use paper publisher and attorney and a man active in political circles. They're all the same man and his name is Lauren Miller. What would you support a candidate for public office. So we because he happens to be a Negro. Yes Jean I would support a man for public office solely

because he happened to be a Negro. That is of course a person who is reasonably qualified for the office that he happened to seek. Regardless of who his opponent might be and regardless of who his opponent might be that is. I suppose that you could reduce this to the obscenity and probably trap me into saying that there would be circumstances under which I would make a contrary judgement. But taking one candidate with another I'm willing to say regardless of who his opponent might be if it was racial discrimination working in reverse. There's a phrase for it I think it goes around it they don't call it racial discrimination in reverse they say Jim Crow ism in reverse. I don't think it's that because I think the easy formulation leaves out of account many factors that must be

weighed by a person who is making a choice between office seekers. The facts are Jean that there are four congressman four negro congressmen at the present time. Here's one from Philadelphia. There's one from New York. There's one from Chicago. There's one from Detroit. Now all of those men come from districts which are heavily populated by Negroes. There is districts in which negroes are in the actual majority. There are goodness knows how many. State legislators and how many city council run down the list of the men you'd find in every case that those men are elected only from districts in which negroes exert predominant political power. From that you can see that a negro isn't going to be elected to office in the ordinary

case unless Negroes do vote for him. I wish it were otherwise of course. I wish that a man could be judged solely on his merit and ability. But that isn't true in the United States today under the circumstances and the negroes have as the phrase goes I suppose to fight fire with fire. I've heard it suggested that in a large city like Los Angeles or Detroit or New York one of the others you mentioned that the Negro population itself is too diverse and interests too varied of for any one man to be able to say that he represents it as a negro district anyway. What do you think about this do you think that one man can represent a negro district as such regardless of the diversity of opinion regardless of the diversity of outlook regardless the diversity in social status or economic status. There's one central fact about every

negro in the United States and that is that he is a negro. The discrimination that are inherent in our social pattern will fall on all Negroes alike. And in that sense of course a negro congressman or an equal legislator can represent all of the negroes he represents all of their problems that revolve around their race and their color. Now he may not of course represent them in some other capacities but for that matter neither will the white representative represent them in every particular capacity that they may assume in our society. Well if the if in a practical sense the election of a big row congressman or a Negro city councilman in Los Angeles is limited to

what are presently negro districts at this time. Will there be a tendency by the very act of supporting negroes as negroes by saying that there should be a Negro city councilman or there should be a Negro Congressman. Will there be a tendency to identify this position. Even if you win as the negro position so that any well-qualified Negro who has political ambitions will find himself necessarily channeled into this position and be unable to go for want to limit the opportunities of negroes in other districts want to have some tendency to enforce the discriminatory pattern although I don't think that it will limit the opportunities or enforce a discriminatory pattern. The limitations in the enforcement the discriminatory pattern are already there. And of course one of the facts with which we have to reckon is the existence of residential segregation in our large cities. Los Angeles is no different than other cities in that particular

respect. So that while it's true you will have an occasional negro living in a so-called integrated community still the overwhelming majority of them will live in the so-called Negro districts something which I deplore a great deal but something which actually exists. Now let's take this this this negro who lives over in another district let's presume that he has some political ambitions. Well let's presume that a white person who lives a block or two away from him in Warsaw has political ambitions. Well the white person will join the koala as the Lions the Rotarians whatever current service club there is in the community will become well-known for that fact and you won't join those clubs Jean because he won't be admitted. So he'll be called off from that contact with the public. Let's presume both of them are lawyers. The white lawyer will pick up practice among his friends and neighbors. The negro lawyer will take himself to

some other part of the town his practice will be confined largely to Negroes so he won't get known to his friends neighbors in that respect. Multiply those things. Our white candidate joins the Elks the Masons the Shriners all in his own community. The negro candidate or would be candidate joins Inigo Elks negro Masons negro Shriners so that by the time supposing they started out equally that they present themselves for selection. For public office it will appear that the white person is far more electable as the politicians like to use it. They're electable because he knows the voters electable because he is he has contacts in all of the community organizations and the very practical politicians will select him because it appears to them that he is the man who has the best chance of success. This you see. Happens so that in

effect in effect although everybody in the neighborhood would deny it. The truth is that the white person the white candidate would be a white candidate has arrived at a position in which he can secure public office because of the advantages of his race in the Negro has been cheated out of that if that's the phrase because of his race. So you see these very broad minded whites in that community will say I wouldn't vote for this man just because he's white or I wouldn't vote against candidate X just because he's a negro are actually being put in that position because candidates are not born they're made and they're made by the process which I've described. Well in a case where you have a a fairly well-qualified negro running for an office against let's say a fairly well qualified white a political position

whether it's a congressman or a city councilman or whatever it is is a a part of a political hole it's part of a party structure. And consequently within a party within the Democratic Party for instance if there is a close race in one district a lot of help will often come from another district. In a case like the high while like the recent campaign for Congress between James Roosevelt who is white and Christmas Will Wright who is a negro. How could those negroes who supported Wright for the reasons that you said get the help that they needed from the from the white people who live in other neighborhoods who might come in to help who don't understand the problem who don't want to come in to help him just because he is a negro because they see it as a philosophical problem.

Where is the communication failure here how can you explain this to the white liberals who want to help the civil rights program. And that's a very difficult job Jeanne I've never found any way to explain it to the white liberals and I am afraid that the chances of such explanation except to a relatively few people are not very good. I think of course that in the long view that the presence of negroes in public office is important is as important to white people in the ultimate realization of the democratic ideal as it is to negroes. But on the other hand I don't believe that they're ready to assume that position and to be satisfied with the explanation because they always go back to what you said in the beginning they will always

say you're asking me to support a man on the basis of race. This they will say is wrong I don't support waits on the basis of race I should not support the Negro on the basis of race. What they drop out of the equation I think is this that American life is discriminatory toward unequal. If you don't have to do anything if you want to discriminate against Negroes except go along with what's being done. And that if you are to refrain from discrimination you have to swim against the tide You have to take a stance as against it. And perhaps if you could see enough of them talk to enough of them on that score why some of them might be convinced. But the avenues of public communication are as you observed early pretty pretty well obscured. He goes live you see really in a sort of cultural

Syberia. In the United States they don't talk to each other they don't talk to you they talk to each other I mean to say but they don't talk to whites very much except very officially the man to man talk is a pretty difficult thing for a white person who wants to talk you know and he goes and for a negro who wants to talk to and wants to know why. Well I have a quotation here Lauren from a letter that was written to a magazine relative to the selection of Negroes for public office specifically relative to the possibility of electing a negro congressman from Los Angeles. And this is a quotation of one of many objections which this particular writer had to the whole idea and I'll quote it now. It creates a door labeled Colored through which certain opinion must

pass in order to be heard. And then when it is heard to be clearly identified and thereby depreciated it will make a safety valve through which pressures can be relieved and be kept from becoming constructive forces in the community. Do you think this makes any sense it does a sound like an argument for no Negro congressman at all. Oh I think it isn't an argument for no Negro congressman at all I'm sure that the person who wrote that letter is pretty well convinced that wherever he lives if they quote a qualified negro unquote were presented there that the writer of this letter would support that man. I think that what he's left out is what I said a while ago. But in the ordinary circumstances he just won't get that opportunity. The way candidates are selected in tailored in our democratic process.

Now of course if we were. Proposing to create residential segregation in order to further elections. We would be in a different situation. We are proposing to create residential segregation the residential segregation is already there. The history of Los Angeles will show for example that city council has been very careful to carve up the negro areas putting a little part in this district a little part of that district in a little park in another district for the purpose whether conscious or subconscious of preventing the election of a negro councilman to city council something of the same thing as happened in congressional districts. You can't control it quite so easily in the case of assembly districts where pretty small a political subdivision sellout of the

necessity is the thing we have assembly districts which are largely Negro and from which the negroes come. Well then we come back to the question of whether the selection of a negro city councilman in such a case wouldn't tend to intensify this pattern to make official in a certain sense the pattern of segregation by creating the negro councilman from the Negro district. Whether this wouldn't have the effect on the rest of the community of sort of legitimizing the pattern that exists and give them and excuse for their discrimination on the grounds that the representation is there. I think there is some merit in that suggestion I think however that there are other things that far outweigh it. You see negroes

in America have been the governed. And as a general proposition except the instances in reconstruction never the gov. Now this fixes a pattern in the public mind fixes a pattern in the mind of whites. It fixes a pattern in the mind of an equal. Negroes want to be the government not the gov. Actually I think that the election of negroes by Negroes acting on a racial basis will in the long run tend to undermine it and to destroy this segregated pattern because the American people will ultimately get used to the fact that there is no difference between a councilman who happens to be a Negro in a councilman who happens to be the way a person may be that some of these people who live in these other districts and who wouldn't under any circumstances that the moment work for a

negro just because he's a negro will in time come to see that a man ought to be judged by his particular merits and abilities than if they had a chance. To vote for any girl in a mixed district Soquel there might be far more ready to do it. I'm sure that any white person who goes before any good judge Jean is never quite the same after that his concept of a judge is of course a white person who goes before a negro judge he gets the same brand of justice that he gets if he goes before when he goes before a white judge. And if it does something to him it does something to his thinking I'm sure would do a lot of things to the thinking of a lot of people if they were counseling legal counseling in the City Council in Los Angeles. What about the party structure Lauren. I think that while as individuals they may disagree on which party it is I think that the most

politically active negroes believe that one or the other party is generally speaking the best party from the point of view of Negro rights and the future of the negro. And what happens when your party is running the white man and the other party is running the Negro is the. It is the racial aspect of the thing more important than the partisan aspect. In the case of a congressman for instance in the case for example of supporting Chris Bliss right Congressman Roosevelt was a fairly strong pro civil rights voice in a party which in which every pro civil rights voice counts. And yet many Negro supported because it was right. The Republicans only because he was a Negro. Well I am one of those who did that I suppose that I am a fairly good Democrat I go around always saying that the urban Democratic Party of the North is a party to which negroes ought to belong.

But on the other hand when I was confronted with a man with a good civil rights record like Jimmy Roosevelt I supported Crispus right. Again I exercised the judgment that I indicated at the beginning that. Where each of the man was qualified that I ought to support a negro. I am sure that if Wright had got to Congress he would have had an equally as good a civil rights record as Jimmy Roosevelt. He's stuck with the civil rights thing you know he couldn't get out of that. And I believe that he would probably make a fairly good congressman. Maybe he wouldn't vote. As well on some issues as Roosevelt would vote from my point of view. But it seemed to me that the symbolism of Negro representation in Congress was more important than those other issues. Every in every political campaign you know you

make some kind of a judgment. No man is perfect when you decide which one you think would be the best from all points of view. That's a judgment I made an escape you would feel them a B. The fact that the representative would be a Negro would be more important than the question of whether he would be a Democrat or Republican. Yes yes yes I would think so. Oh I can't over stress gene the importance of the symbolism of Negro participation in government as a long term factor in a full implementation of democracy. And I think it's so very important because it was something that it is something that is so has been so difficult for Negroes to achieve.

You have particularly in the case of the Congress where the districts are so large you have a negro congressman from New York you know one Chicago and one from Detroit and so on. Is there any real force in the presence of these three or four negroes in Congress and don't they tend to be kind of. Our pygmy rose to prove we're Democrats. Do they really accomplish healing as Negroes. Is the symbolism so important lost in the 400 something members of the house I would disapprove if you would like when you wrote a card. I suppose it doesn't prove all that I sometimes think it would prove. But on the other hand if a Negro in Congress tends even against his will to become representative of all of the negroes of the country there was a time when it was only one legal Congressman you remember first the priest from Chicago and then Dawson or rather Mitchell and then Dawson It was only the one of them and it was more of the country road to this man said If

you want to do this and so and thus and so about. The civil rights and in a sense the other congressman sort of turned toward him for an interpretation of what negroes wanted and I suppose the four of them together share that. It's a position at the present moment of course obviously Congressman isn't too important a creature under our scheme of things. But you see I would carry this thing forward some time you know I would like to have a negro senator and one negroes member of that very exclusive club I think would really work wonders certainly be much more important than that for a congressman. Or you take in a small city council that says we have your last and only 15 members. One legal council and becomes a pretty important person up there. Well here you have a Negro in Congress or two negroes or four negroes and

the other congressman because of the mail he gets and so on tend to go to him to look to him as as a representative of the Negro people. And suppose he doesn't. I suppose that this one particular guy happens to be a big jerk. Doesn't this hurt the cause of negroes all over the country if he misrepresents the position of the feeling of negroes in talking to other congressmen. Where Al has been a lot of criticism is one congressman you know I'm going to go. Yes I can think of a great deal of kind of criticism of that congressman to win and I think that this is a risk you run. However again I think that negro thinking as it revolves around the racial issues which affect all the American Negroes and remember that the most important fact about and he do in his life is that he is a negro. He may be a lawyer but he'll always be a Negro life maybe a businessman he will always be a Negro businessman he may be a doctor but he will always be a Negro doctor. You will observe that the word Negro

always comes first. Sell that on these issues these first issues. He must of necessity express something at least of the ideals and aims and aspirations of an equal if you take the man we talk about Adam Clayton Powell many Negroes get very mad at him Platon Powell on occasion but he always introduces this writer to the federal aid to education bill to deny the edge of federal aid to segregated schools this we think is very important. Maybe we can a found somebody else to do it undoubtedly we could have. But Powell fights a good fight for us in that particular respect. I've heard it said that it is impossible to understand being a Negro in America without being a Negro in America. And it seems to me that the idea behind this thought that there is so much difference between being a negro and not being

a negro that an understanding of the problems involved can never be reached. It seems to me to be awfully hopeless. I'd like to try to help to find a way in which more conversation can go on between Negroes and white people who would like to work together. And I'd like to ask you have any suggestions things that might be done that aren't the ways that we can get together and talk more. If you ask me a very very difficult question I I have been accused of having a bug about it. The bug I have about it is the existence of residential segregation. Where because of its existence the average white person never gets to know a negro except on the job or in some official some of official capacity. The same thing goes for the Negro to take in the heart of our black belt here in Los

Angeles. A kid goes to school and gets to school. Nobody there but negro pupils. Things being what they are probably being a good teacher. You could get more political power more and more Negro principals. So then he goes home he goes to a Negro church he plays with needles. So this makes communication very very difficult. Now it's not quite so difficult of course for the middle class negro or the lawyer or the doctor. People this kind of age participate in their professional organizations the very nature of their work lets them talk with them. See and discuss issues with more white persons but even there you can't carry the thing too far. I I don't know how many white persons or negroes in this town belong to mixed social clubs for example you know the kind of thing where you just go and play bridge and drink Coca-Cola or whatever you drink. And then here

again discussion is apt to be too much on an official plane and too little on the kind of neighborliness. Well that ultimately leads to knowledge of by one of the other course I am maybe I'm over doing as it's set and things are much better now than they used to be an equal participation for example in Republican clubs and Democratic clubs often leads to too free discussion. But again residential segregation occurred that if you have a Democratic club in the heart of the Central Avenue district negro club you see Jeanne here this problem always rises to hound This is very much Lauren. You have been listening to Laura Miller the discussion of why Negroes don't always vote and what may seem to some whites to be a logical matter.