Gateway to Ideas; 15; Can Attitudes Be Legislated?

[Voice over] Gateway to ideas [Music] Gateway ideas. A new series of conversations in which ideas are discussed in relation to reading. Today's program can attitudes be legislated? Is moderated by the well known author Leo Rustin.[Leo Rustin] our subject is can attitudes be legislated our guests are Dr Howard Zinn associate professor in the department of government at Boston University and author of the southern mystique and Dr Ernest Van Den Haag sociologist and a psychoanalyst author of passion and social constraint and co author of the fabric of society. I don't suppose that any subject sounds as

innocent as this one and i don't suppose that any word is quite as innocent as the word attitudes. But it's my guess that we know very very little about how attitudes are formed. What goes into their change and how they can be changed? So I for one will find this discussion extremely interesting. Lets start with that direct question to you Dr. Zinn. Do you think that attitudes can be legislation? [Dr Howard Zinn] Well let me speak of a specific attitude and that is [clears throat] the attitude of American's have towards the negro and I think I would argue that this attitude and specifically the attitude of prejudice towards people of color cannot be changed by legislation alone. I think that attitudes have changed by the environmental situation. People change their attitudes when they see different things about them and when they live in

different ways and I think that laws helped to change the way people behave and when you change people's behavior. You begin to change the way they think their attitudes. [Leo Rustin] You mean they changed their attitude after they have acted in a complex? [Dr Howard Zinn] Exactly. [Leo Rustin] what about you Dr. Van Den Haag? Do you think that attitudes can be legislate or change through legislation. [Dr Ernest Van Den Haag] Well i'd like to start by dividing attitudes into partial and general ones I do not think general attitudes can be changed. [Leo Rustin] At all? [Dr Ernest Van Den Haag] by legislation. I've lived for more than ten years in Mussolini's Italy. And at that time Mussolini and the Holy Italian [intelligible] made a very strong effort to change the Italian attitude [intelligible] kinds of things generally [intelligible] life i would say. They wanted Italian's to be become heroics self sacrificing non indulgent and in fact- [Leo Rustin] aggressive. [Dr Ernest Van Den Haag] aggressive pretty much [Leo Rustin] [clears throat] [Dr Ernest Van Den Haag] of germans and so on. Although Italy

he plastered appropriate models of the laws of everything that didn't have any effect whatsoever and I think that the people who think that the soviet government has succeeded in changing Russian attitudes very much in the respect. Also I want I believe that total attitude is unlikely to be changed by governmental act action including law now if we speak of partial attitudes and I think those are the ones that Dr. Zinn had in mind attitudes that are a particular group. there I would not fully agree vicinity if I understood him correctly. I would say this. That if a majority holds an attitude which a majority does not hold then the law can probably influence the minority to some extent. That is the law cannot impose but so to speak lead and it can cause those who might not follow to follow

to a greater extent and they might not have otherwise, but I want if you forgive me to just go one step further. This requires that the law be supported on the whole by the majority of the people in the place indigenousness is to be applied otherwise we would have the experience that we had seen in proabision united states which was an attempt to legislate on a particular attitude specific [intelligible] alcohol and not su supported by majority but oppose by a strong enough minority to nullify the effect of the law and i think it might go a lesson about this regard to nigros. [Leo Rustin] May I ask a question? You said that in Mussolini's Italy the efforts of the government to change the attitudes of the Italians really. He was trying to change their character structure which is much harder. [Dr Ernest Van Den Haag] One is sometime difficult to do without the other. [Leo Rustin] You were saying that the

government propaganda had no effect whatsoever but how does one know that that is in the absence of that propaganda what would have happened. Did the propaganda have a very small effect or a negligible effect certainly some people must have been encouraged to act or think a little differently from the way in which they would have had the propaganda not so long? [Dr Ernest Van Den Haag] Well if so i never met those people in my ten years in Italy. That is that I just uh don't uh think if a attitude is fundamental. Rooted in as you say in the character and traditions of people uh uh then I think governmental action cannot change it now. Now as doctors even said that if the total environment changes in a variety of ways other than law. Then the law itself maybe one of those forces at contribute to a change but the law alone can not do it. [Leo Rustin] Yes, but Dr Zinn you would say that the fact that the

federal government and the supreme court have taken the position that happened in the last two or three years visa vee the rights of negroes in the south has and must have some effect upon the attitudes of southerners to negros. Would you spell that out? [Dr Howard Zinn] This is not just a theoretical statement I uh lived for seven years Atlanta, Georgia. Just moved out of Georgia recently I lived there at that particular time. When laws are changing. When supreme court decisions were coming off the bench virtually everyone week and I could watch the changes in Atlanta among white southerners towards the negro. [Leo Rustin] And how so? Can you specify that? [Dr Howard Zinn] Well I could see it in the children. Who began to go to school with negro children even though a very very small number of negro kids in Atlanta began attending school in 1961

but even with that. By the end of a year. By the end of an academic year uh white children who been distant through the year came over to a negro girl was graduating and signed in her autograph book the most remarkable the most touching demonstrations of the fact that the attitude to change across the year [Leo Rustin] and you think the change was the result of having merely exposed to negro children for long time? [Dr Howard Zinn] I think contacts is the crucial thing. [Leo Rustin] but lets segregate the contract [laugher] segregate in a special meaningn ow from the actual legislation without that contact if the law were passed saying that is wrong uh to would feel this way or that way? Do you think that would be very effective [Dr Howard Zinn] in in its second itself no. [Leo Rustin] You don't think the majesty of the law. alone it has a certain value in reinforcing those who already believe the position and perhaps influencing those who say are borderline? the believers in one thing or another. [Dr Howard Zinn] On certain influence yes. On borderline believers

yes i think for instance Ralph mcgill took advantage of the fact that the supreme court made a decision in nineteen fifty four to begin making the point in a [intelligible] dared to make it before that now this is the law of the land and I think he had an effect on your people. [Dr Ernest Van Den Haag] Yes and I wonder if I wonder if I may eh eh the two things I I would that I do say. I do think the law had an effect. But I'm not convinced that its effects that you think it had. It probably lead to polarization that is those who were as you say on the borderline no longer could stay neutral they had to decide one way or the other. Those who were one way became more one way. Those that were the other way became more the other way but I don't think that it lead though who were say I'm [intelligible] whatever that may be to become [intelligible] [Leo Rustin] Those who

[Dr Ernest Van Den Haag] were anti segregation became if anything more radical anti segregation in my experience now. Let me [intelligible] point make about going content generally uh this is a very unconvincing point. I think content is required for either liking or disliking of person. That it can lead to disliking certainly is one off from the fact married couples uh usually are supposed to have some sort of intimate contact with each other. uh may be said to liked each other before they got married and little contact presumably and after they're married ten years they divorce and it turns out they hated each other all long and the more they came to know each other the more contact they had. [Leo Rustin] Yes, but. [Dr Ernest Van Den Haag] The more they hated each other. Now let me in social terms. is a very known fact that anti semitism does not and has not diminished social contact disputes sees the germans

had uh quite and ample contact with this jews there was no segregation of jews and so on [intelligible] what we all know was. Now all kinds of circumstances i don't wish to say the content was cause. [Dr Howard Zinn] The law changed in Germany. The legal situation changed . [Dr Ernest Van Den Haag] Well let me.... Alright. Let me give you another incidence some hundreds of years ago about a hundred thousand elderly woman more than a hundred thousand who had burned. in Germany being accused by their friends and neighbors who had intimate contact with them all their lives more intimate than you had these days in villages and so on of being witches and of having been seen again doing all kinds of fantastic things all of which if it demonstrates anything demonstrates that content is not helpful the mind filters content if you have a friendly attitude reinforce it content if you have an unfriendly attitude just as well reinforces it. [Dr Howard Zinn] Well, Dr. Van Den Haag let me

explain this point about contact you mentioned a married couple you mention the fact that sometimes contact breeds antagonism rather than friendship. What happens of contact that you get to know somebody and you when you get to know somebody a little the good points and bad points of their bad points are sufficiently strong enough that your attitude towards that may change but the point about contact in an interracial setting is this the whatever you get to know about the negro if you were white and you begin to have intimate equal contact with him you know about him as a human being you begin to understand that whatever faults and whatever good qualities he has he has as a human being you begin to divorce color from those qualities. [Dr Ernest Van Den Haag] this is the crucial thing [Dr Ernest Van Den Haag] Do you apply that to Jews in Germany? [Dr Howard Zinn] Well i'm not sure that you described the situation in Germany correctly i'm not sure about the amount of contact. [Dr Howard Zinn]. You're not sure about the quality

non jewish German's there was much less anti semitism through out Germany that the time they went to school with non jewish Germans until Hitler [intelligible] in the south. There uh I would think on the whole or the conditions for to make interracial [intelligible] were considerably more favorable. Than now in this house with regards got two whites than negros. [Dr Howard Zinn] Did Hitler change the legal situation in Germany? [Dr Ernest Van Den Haag]. He did ultimately. [Dr Howard Zinn] Did that did that law and the enforcement of that law have an affect German's [Dr Ernest Van Den Haag] He did it only the budget [Dr Ernest Van Den Haag] I think he did it only because he felt and quite correctly that this would make him popular [Leo Rustin] and it would also give him a legal cloak for what he was doing. Certainly in Germany the fact that it was a law was more important then Italy if the law was passed. [Dr Ernest Van Den Haag] In Italy the law wouldn't [intelligible] because the Italy attitude towards to the Jews was a friendly one. But the German attitude to begin with was unfriendly before the law put the [intelligible] [Leo Rustin] but I'm sure

that the law gave a cache or sanctioned otherwise that had and that type. I suspect to the problem about legalizing or rather legislating attitudes it doesn't necessarily uh so a law will change an attitude but the law can give whatever attitudes exist stronger moral support for argument if you want in the case of Ralph Mcgill says we now have the law of the land it's no longer a matter of personal preference. And it must arm many other people in communities in the south with a feeling that there is a larger entity to which they now must convince themselves that anything if anything they maybe i'm less vocal than they once were about her attitude which now become cast. [Dr Ernest Van Den Haag] Mr. McGill's argument seems like a very curious one. Because we would have expected him to say before. The law of the land now is that we or should be segregated. [Leo Rustin] It was not the law of the land. [Dr Ernest Van Den Haag] Of his land. Of

[Dr Howard Zinn] No his land was America and America had the fourteenth amendment. [Dr Ernest Van Den Haag] Under [intelligible] versus ferguson [intelligible] as the fourteenth amendment interpreted After Brown verses Board of Education. It was the law of the land and it's curious Mr. McGill [Multiple people talking all at once intelligible] [Dr Howard Zinn] Dr. Van Den Haag let me make a distinction between Mussolini's Italy in which you lived in the south in which I live and that is I think that the function of law and changing people's attitudes has a good deal to do with whatever fundamental feelings people have initially and whatever basic feelings we have as human beings about other people what I mean is I believe that it is uh there's a certain residual feeling in the white southerner of decency and wha- when you change the law and when you change the law to permit whites and negroes to go to the same places in the same schools and so on

you appeal to that fundamental grain of decency in the white southerns and you respond to it. [Leo Rustin] Dr. Zinn when you say the southerner I must ask you to break that category down because I sometimes find it hard to locate the residues of decencyin people who bomb little children exactly and shoot them in the back and beat up kids mercilessly surely they're residue minimal if [Dr Howard Zinn] Their residue is very small I agree but remember. [Dr Ernest Van Den Haag] I do not think Mr [intelligible] serious of accusing southerns as a whole. If you - [Dr Howard Zinn] Oh no no no [Dr Ernest Van Den Haag] sounded that way and I want to give you a change. [Leo Rustin] No no I want the doctor in to break down the category called the southern and I'm quite sure that that most southerners are not swan and not mad men and not [intelligible] as these other people clearly are. [Dr Howard Zinn] you mentioned my book The Southern Mystique and the reason I wrote it was that I felt that most northerners had a very peculiar conception of what the

white southern was like and most of them saw him in terms of the headlines of shootings and beatings of ku klux klan and what I discovered living in the south was that most white southerners are not extreme types there you might say passive segregationists. I believe in segregation in a passive way they won't commit violence to uphold it and this means therefore that they are not at the ex- tremes, they are not polarized, they stand somewhere in the middle ready to change. And when you change the law, then you give them an opportunity to move across that line which for them, for most white southerners, is not an insuperable barrier. [speaker]: Well I was ready to grieve is what you said before but now happily I can disagree again [laughter] and I certainly do think that referring to what you mention before Dr. Zinn, I certainly do agree that if there is a general attitude that the law merely so to speak brings out, then the law can be

helpful. But, uh, you mention 2 things, uh, first, you said that the law now permits, uh, desegregation, it does and if that's all the law will do, I should be very much in favor of it, unfortunate- ly the law does something more, it also compels congregation. We have now instituted a compulsory togetherness in the south and what- [speaker]: Do you mean in the schools? [speaker]: Yes. [speaker]: I see, I object to that. [speaker]: I do. And, uh, what, uh, uh, I worry about is that as advil head of the beneficial effects that certainly the Supreme Court although it was not explicit on that thought it would have- [speaker]: Well let me give you 2 bits of evidence on that. [speaker]: May I? May I, uh, [speaker]: Yes. [speaker]: One, the point also you see I do think that it is of course merely a matter of common decency not to murder people and not to mu-, uh, to bomb churches. I would not think it is a matter of decency to favor or not favor conquls- compulsory congregation. I think you can be a perfectly decent person on either side- [speaker]: You

don't think that's a matter of common decency to allow anyone into a public school regardless of their color? [speaker]: No, you see you have for instance public schools, uh, only girls are allowed and others where only boys are allowed and still others where this or that group is allowed and and as long as there is a choice- [speaker]: I think that must be made clear. [speaker]: I think Dr. Zinn and how it means, keep the choices open but don't force people to go somewhere where they don't really want to- [inaudible speaking] [speaker]: But let's not spend too much time on that because I wanna get back to back to the larger question of the attitudes. Uh, I'm struck by the fact that within the last 20 years in America, more and more southerners have looked into their own hearts and have written books about the moral dilemma of the decent southerner who as a child is exposed to a kind of, uh, prejudice or attitude with which he can't entirely cope and I'm thinking not only of the work of, uh, someone like William Faulkner, whose attitude on this confuses many northerners because what he's really

contending with this is so complicated, uh, or of Lillian Smith's work but I'm thinking about a lovely book like To Kill A Mockingbird in which you get these extraordinarily rich strains of attitude and partly because it's told from the child's point of view. Now let me ask you, in the south, how does a book like To Kill A Mockingbird get received? Were you there when it came out or when the movie came out? What's theof what was reaction to it? [speaker]: Well, uh, one one of wonder and I think the movies are a marvelous thing because the white southerner can sit in the movie house, in the darkness and alone and, uh in a position where nobody else can observe his feelings. [speaker]: Mm. [speaker]: And the expressions of reaction I heard from white southerners was such a favorable one, such a warm one, towards this, uh, picture and towards the book that I f- this reinforced the feeling I had, uh that all the white southerner needs is for new climate to be created around him. [speaker]: He needs reinforcements.

[speaker]: Exactly. [speaker]: His better self. [speaker]: Yes. [speaker]: May I point out Dr. Zinn that I read this book, I I'm sorry I didn't see the movie, and, uh, I I think the book was quite nice in its in its way. But, let me point out the point of the book, was that decency is required whatever the social order and that a man should not be unjustly condemned simply because he is black skinned and that it is a proper and decent thing to do for a white man to defend him if he is unjustly accused. This is not the same as saying that there should be desegregation or anything like that. This is saying that whatever regulations are, they should be decency and I think it would be hard to be against that. [speaker]: This is a very powerful position incidentally, precisely because it chooses to ignore the question of, uh, segregation but does force the question back on the Anglo Saxon conception of fair play and the rights of the person and the rights of an accused man and the duty of the lawyer.

That it is his duty whatever he may feel, you see. Incidentally, uh, not too long ago the late professor Edmund Con wrote a book with a title that seems to fit in. He wrote a book called The Moral Decision: Right and Wrong in the Light of American Law. Dr. Van and you and I were talking about that, would you mind repeating your comments on that? [speaker]: No I will not repeat it Dr. Rustin for the simple reason that I find it a little hard to support it, not recalling the book as well as I should to do so. I didn't think to highly of the book to express myself more moderately than I did, uh, off the record. Particularly in comparison to Con's first book, The Sense of Injustice, which I saw it was very good. This seemed to me an elaboration and a perversion to some extent and of, uh, ?inaudible? sort of thing that led nowhere but I would be at little ?inaudible? now to put exactly because I don't recall the book I 18 the impression I had. [speaker]: There's a little difficulty in

a discussion between Dr. Van Den Haag and me on this question, and that is I find suddenly that he really doesn't want to change people's attitudes on the race question in so far as, uh, the equal access of negroes to public schools and perhaps other public facilities. So, uh, here we we start- [speaker]: That's an interesting question. [speaker]: With a- [inaudible speaking] [speaker]: question because if you put it as a question the answer to it is no. You don't- [speaker]: No, no. No, no. You do. You do want- [speaking over each other] [speaker]: But not that way. [speaker]: Not by the means that you think would be. That is not by compulsion. [speaker]: What what means do you suggest? [speaker]: Well you see, let me put it this way. In my opinion, the attitude of the south, the whole question of segregation was in the process of being changed and would be necessarily changed through an environmental change other than compulsory law namely through industrialization. [speaker]: That's a very slow process. [speaker]: Yes. And I don't think- [speaker]: That can be a very slow process. [speaker]: No, it's not that I'm willing. I recognize that it cannot be done otherwise. [speaker]: But it's being done.

[speaker]: No, it is not going to be effective. It is not. It is not working. [speaker]: Well you have to live in the south and see it operating around you. [speaker]: I have been in the south quite a number of times. [speaker]: But you see whites and negroes who see the changes in them. [speaker]: I- [speaker]: Just a few weeks ago, 200 young white southern college students gathered in assembly hall to form a new civil rights organization in the south. There are young, white southerners. A new phenomenon. [speaker]: Would this have been possible 5 years ago, do you think? [speaker]: No. It wouldn't have happened. [speaker]: I think I could I could point out to you that it has had happened in the past and has been ineffective. I think what will be effective- [speaker]: Because law wasn't enforced in the south, that's why it was ineffective. [speaker]: No, I think you will not find a law in fact what it will lead to is that other laws I would like to see enforced, laws against murder for instance, will not be enforced. As it was out of this. As it where the local populations will get back on the imposition uh, of federal power by not doing what they decently might have done in the

past. I think the situation is likely to get worse. Let me put it let me just explain my my previous point. I am in favor as you were of making in relations of people to each other, personal, individual judgments, uh, associating results I want to and not don't want to. I am in favor of trying to avoid stereotypes and prejudices, so the only question that divides us here is whether you fear the present legislation imposed by the Supreme Sourt is useful along those lines over there is detrimental. Now you say correctly I think that is ?inaudible? by means of which I hope to achieve the result we most desire is a lengthy one. It is. I do not think there are any shortcuts. And- to you I think that the law is not a shortcut, but me, ?inaudible? what you and I both desire. [speaker]: Well, we haven't seen it thus far because we've seen remarkable changes in a short period of time in the south and in just 7

years in Atlanta, I saw a social transformation in the city, the beginnings of one and, uh, even Mississippi is changing. Now, uh, little negro kids going to school in Biloxi, Mississippi with white kids, this would've been delayed for 50 years if we had followed your advice if the Supreme Court made its decision, if the law had not been granted some for- [speaker]: I don't think it matters, but on the other hand you might have noticed that before these laws first passed for in contrast to say the pre-war period, there were no lynchings. That was not due to any legislative change, it was simply to the social and environmental change that I speak of. Now it is true that- [speaker]: Extremists- coming out now, is that your point? The lynchers, is this your point? [speaker]: No, they they had dis- appeared without law contrary to what one might have expected from, uh, your theory. What I'm trying to indicate is that a number- [speaker]: No, you're mistaking my theory. [speaker]: But, a

number of changes along the line that your speaking of have occurred without law, so my idea that these changes would have and would occur and possibly more rapidly and more comprehensively and ?inaudible? undesirable ?inaudible? out law is not wholly supported. [speaker]: But do you seem to be willing to compel negro children in the south to go to segregated schools? [speaker]: No. [speaker]: See you talk about- [speaker]: I don't want compulsion. [speaker]: Then you you want to- [speaker]: He doesn't want to compel it either way- [speaker]: I see. [speaker]: That the compulsion has first, indirect results and secondly, long range results which get lost sight of. Our time alas is coming to an end. The best, a little story I know about the whole, uh, the subtlety of many of the points that have been mentioned here on this discussion about attitudes is a story which took place at the headquarters of General Eisenhower during the war just before the invasion. Uh, he came to his office and he heard a Colonel, an American Colonel, saying to another American, oh that stupid

English so and so. And Eisenhower went into his office and called his secretaries and said, send in Colonel so and so. And the man came in and he said you are going back to Washington within the next 24 hours and I want to know why. I heard you say that Colonel so and so is a stupid English so and so. When I happen to agree with you that he is stupid and I happen to agree that he's a so and so but when you use the word English, it meant that you were not fit to be an ?inaudible? in our command. We've been talking about attitudes, segregation, legislation, and the complexity of events which may or may not change people's feelings. This is Leo Rustin, thank you for listening and we hope you'll with us again. [speaker]: You've been listening to Gateway to Ideas. A new series of conversations in which ideas are discussed in relation to reading. Today's program, Can Attitudes Be Legislated? has presented Dr. Edward Van Den Haag, sociologist and psychoanalyst,

and Dr. Howard Zinn, associate professor of government at Boston University. The moderator was Leo Rustin, author and special advisor to the editors of Look Magazine. A list of the books mentioned in the discussion has been prepared. You can obtain a copy from your local library or by writing to Gateway to Ideas, post office box 6-4-1 Time Square Station, New York. Please enclose a stamp self addressed envelope. Gateway to Ideas has produced for national educational radio under a grant from the National Home Library Foundation. The programs are prepared by the National Book Committee and the American Library Association in cooperation with the National Association of Educational Broadcasters. Technical production by Riverside Radio, WRVR in New York City. This is the National Educational Radio Network