In Black America; Author and Talk Show Host Juan Williams, Part 1

How is it? On the Longhorn Radio Network, the University of Texas at Austin, this is in Black America. One of the things that we know about small businesses, especially small

minority businesses, is that they are the first to give opportunities to minority workers. And so in many ways, when you talk about reaching out, giving something back, small business, what we're talking about is making sure that you are opening the doors to minority employees and a minority contractors so that you can do business within that community and in essence pull each other along. There are often times as a reluctance, as often times an exuberance about doing business with the majority community and being aligned with the majority community. And somehow again, it acts to divide us because it acts so that people are find themselves saying, I want to be the one the token who is in relation to the majority economic giant over there. As opposed to people saying, you know what, if we come together, we can help each other to grow in strength. And maybe we won't be the giant in terms of our lives, but you never know what's going to happen in your children's lives and inheritance and down the road. One Williams, author, political analyst, national

correspondent, and host of NPR News, talk of the nation. This past March, National Public Radio News brought the changing face of America, town hall, style, meeting to Austin, Texas. The series explores the cultural, social, and political changes affecting Americans from all facets of life. I'm health care concerns to technology, demographic shifts to party riffs. The 18 month long traveling roadshow will move to a new location each month, examining issues that has been brought to the fore by this year's presidential race. The Austin segment focused on how the city has undergone a boom resulting from high tech workers moving in and how immigrant entrepreneurs from outside Texas and the US help make Austin become a modern technical traveler. I'm John L. Hanson, Jr. and welcome to another edition of in Black America. On this week's program, talk of the nation holds one Williams in Black America. I would hope that Houston Tillerson could be an example for other colleges around the country in terms of partnerships with the high tech

community. As we look at high tech having an impact here in Austin, we would see that some relationships to partnership would emerge. This could be an incubator in part for efforts being made by the high tech community to join hands with the minority community. I don't want to just rest it there. I don't want it to simply be outreach by the high tech, mostly white high tech executives to a minority population. What I would hope is that we would be creating future entrepreneurs in the high tech industry through places like Houston Tillerson that they could come here gain education and knowledge and know how so that when we look at the high tech industry 10, 15, 20 years down the road, you don't see an all white level of entrepreneurs, maybe not all white but it would be all white and largely immigrant I might add. But instead you would see Latinos, we have an example here on the stage, you would see African Americans, you would see women involved in the highest level of capital

formation and benefit from the emerging high tech economic sector. Why Williams is the best-selling author of Eyes on the Prize and Thurgood Marshall American Revolutionary. For more than two decades, he has been a political analyst and national correspondent for the Washington Post newspaper. He has won an Emmy for television documentary writing. Also, he has written for some of this nation's most prestigious magazines. Williams is the regga palace on Fox News Sunday and host of the syndicated television program America's Black Forum. This past March, he was in Austin, Texas as host of NPR News, talk of the nation's national town meeting, the changing face of America hosted by NPR member station KUT Radio. In Black America, spoke with Mr. Williams after his two-hour live broadcast. You know, I don't even remember when because I was so long ago, I know that I as a child wanted to be a writer because I was reading the back of all those tabloids in New York City. My mom used

to bring home the tabloids and I would just eat them up and eventually wanted to be one of the people who was putting the words in the paper instead of just reading the paper. Of course, you didn't know if anybody Black could get that kind of job. So it was my ambition from the time I was a little boy and you know it's a real blessing to me that today as I sit here talking with you John, it's come true. You remember that first job? Oh yeah. Now it depends what you mean by job because you know, you may mean pay. In the first time, I didn't get paid. I mean, I was just doing stuff to be doing it to get the bylines, to get the clips, you know, get the experience and glad thrilled when I saw my name in the paper over a story. You know, I mean, my heart was just bursting. The first time I was getting paid for professional journalism was in Philadelphia. Right after my freshman year college, I was working at a paper now long gone. It was an afternoon paper called the Philadelphia Bulletin. And boy, do I remember, I remember, I took my girlfriend out with that first paycheck. I went to dinner. And when did you come to the Washington Post? Right after college. That's a little bit deceptive to answer it in that way because obviously I've been

working in the Philadelphia paper for four years. I'd even had an internship in Providence, wrote out the Providence Journal. So I had lots of experience. And then I got an internship at the Washington Post. I actually wanted to stay in Philadelphia. They wouldn't keep me. They said I was too young. Got this three month internship in Washington, went down there and just work day and night. And was one of the two people they kept out of about 20 interns that summer. And that's when I thought, boy, I'm so lucky. I remember they had a clock on the wall. You know, it was one of those digital classes that gives you the date and the time. I was thinking, hey, I'm another day. I'm still here hanging in in that first job at the Post. I was a night police reporter. I'd go in at around seven o'clock at night and get off at three. Of course, I went in extra so I could make an impression on folks and keep the job. But that was my job to go down a night police station and be there in case anybody got mud murdered in Washington, DC. And what year was that? 1976, summer 76. And what was it like covering Washington that crime be? That was a fascinating job because Washington is a big city with lots of crime. And we don't have any kind of mob presence in

Washington. So it doesn't organize things. There's no crime boss. Everybody's in it for themselves. And so you get, you know, small time guys come in and they try to stay got some new turf. You get kind of crazy people because we are across roads. It's not a town that is well formed in a sense that there are lots of people who've lived there a long time to the contrary. People come from all of the nation to come to Washington. And so you get everything from demonstrations to a fourth of July celebration with massive fireworks to foreign officials coming in and you have all their police and threats of, you know, threats against their lives. I remember one time I've covered an assassination of a guy who was from Orlando, Latalia. He was from one of the Latin American countries and he was killed while in Washington on a visit. And maybe most interesting of all and the story that actually helped me get my job was covering a what they call the barricade situation where two guys had gone in and tried to rip off a house of ill repute and got caught in the building. The police had to come. You had lots of people come outside without their clothes on

and everybody was interested in that story because you know, sex cells and newspapers and every place else. So it was to cover the cops in Washington actually was a great entry job. And lessons learned working at the small paper that put you in good, good stay and once you moved up to the big time, so to say. Oh yeah, well, you know, Washington post not a small paper, but lessons learned in terms of, you know, even when I was in college, I remember I once wrote a piece about my college president and he didn't like it. And the next time I saw him, he was red face and mad at me and he said, that was an ad hominem attack. That stopped me because I didn't know what ad hominem meant. So I was like, oh, okay, you know, I knew he was mad. So it pushed me back to the dictionary and the figure out that he meant it was a personal attack on him. And you know, from writing in Philadelphia, from writing even back in high school, you come to understand the power of words and the power when you're communicating to a mass audience. And especially because I'm black, oftentimes the way that black

people react to my writing, for example, when I was in Washington covering Marion Barry, man, I would get lots of black from people who would say, why are you as a black journalist working for this big white newspaper, hitting hard on this black politician? You're just being used as a token by this white newspaper to attack this black man. And so it had to be at some point sort of a moral crisis for me. And it was at some point you have to say, well, what am I doing? And do I feel good about what I'm doing? And am I, in fact, operating in traditions that I'm going to be proud of once this is over? And for me, ultimately came down in the barricades to a judgment of feeling that every politician should be accountable to his community. And his community in specific, the poor black people who kept re-electing him as loud as if my journalism changed much there. But I think we're being ill served by Barry. So for me, you know, look, I mean, those people threatened my life, my family's life. I understood the deal. And I was very much in the moment. I was very aware what was going on. But, you know, there are lots of those moments for journalists, I think, where you have to come to terms with what you're

doing and because you understand the power of the written word, the spoken word, the visual image in this society. I got to tell you, we were just discussing the fact that Austin was the second stop on our National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation Series, changing face of America. And the reason that it's the second stop is because the economy and in specific, the high tech economy and the tremendous impact that the high tech economy is having on American communities and on the nation as a whole is part of the story that has to be told about what America is going through at this turn of the century moment. It's part of the story of truly understanding America, if you want to be politically empowered in America, if you want to make a difference in America. So I want the show Talk of the Nation as we go around the country to empower people to understand what their communities are going through by understanding in a sense what's happening here in Austin. Because I think Austin is a laboratory in terms of the impact that high tech business is

having right here. The first stop I might add on our tour was in Prince George's County, Maryland. And there we looked at terrific demographic change that was taking place as a community, Prince George's County right outside of Washington, D.C. that had gone from being 80 percent white in 1972 to today in the year 2000 being 60 percent black. And contrary to the stereotypes that would normally to attend to a community going from mostly white to mostly black, here is a community that went from lower levels of educational attainment and low levels of income to higher levels of educational attainment among its population and even higher levels of income. It went from a rural community that was based with agricultural economics to one that is now a suburban community, largely a bedroom community for many of the federal workers, the bureaucrats who work for the federal government in Washington, D.C. That transition, that tremendous demographic change is again part of the story of a changing America at the turn of the

century. And if people want to understand America, if people want to get on board in terms of that change so that they can direct it so that they can benefit from it so that they can structure it so that people don't get left behind, it's important that they know that story. It's important that their media diet include a talk of a nation that tells them what's going on in America at this moment so they can become actors, so they can become history makers, so they can become agents of change in American society. And that's what we're trying to do at talk of a nation. And that's why as I was starting to say we came here. Yesterday, over at the studios of KUT and Austin City limits, we had two one-hour shows. The first show focused on this tremendous impact high tech is having right here in the city of Austin. And you have to understand that that impact changes the character of the town. It creates issues such as the difference and the growing difference between people who have lower levels income and people who have higher levels of

income because those delinears have different interests and in specific different concerns. I remember reading a quote from one of the economists over at the University of Texas who said that those delinears, the millionaires, they don't really need the cops, they don't need the schools, they don't need the swimming pools. And in essence, that means that they can have many of those services provided for themselves privately. And as they grow, they don't necessarily grow with an interest in the local community. So we were talking about how they are shifting, shifting the focus, the political power, shifting even the school structure here in Austin as a result of the tremendous impact that high tech is having. In the second hour, we talked about the impact of immigration here in Austin. You know, they say 77 people move to Austin every day, 77 people. And a large number of those people come from inside the United States, but it's also true that a great number come from overseas. And as they come from overseas, what we see is a disproportionate number coming from India and from China. And what that means is they have a

great impact in terms of how you conceive and perceive of racial discussions, minority relations here in Austin. So we had also J. R. Gonzales from the Chamber of Commerce on the panel. And we had John Butler from the University of Texas in African-American talking about the different kind of relations that are now in place because you no longer have the simple black white conversation taking place about race that once was here in Austin. Now, suddenly, you have a conversation that is black, white, Hispanic, Asian, even East Indian. And that many of these people who come as part of the brain power, the intellectual power that is the raw material of the high tech industry as they come here, they oftentimes don't feel connected to the minority community here in Austin. And they don't have a sense of the history, the history that goes with the minority relations story here in Austin. They don't know anything about human sweat and that struggle to get into the University of Texas. They may not be in touch with the Hopwood decision. They

don't know anything about the efforts here on the East side to try to improve schools even as you see things going on on the West side with the changing community being supported by the high tech industry. A lot of those issues are lost on newcomers who may only come here for a few years, stay a short time, benefit in terms of their economic, send the money back home, and may go back home. It's again, part of the changing face of America, but so evident here in this changing laboratory that we call Austin. You know, though I want you to have a sense, since all of you live here in Austin, I want you to have a sense of how you are a part of this bigger picture of a changing America. You know, if you go back and you look at the start of the last century now, I hesitate there because I'm still get confused whether or not we're in the next century or the last century, but if you go back and look at the early part of the 1900s, maybe I'll say it that way, what you'll see is the only other time in American history that rivals today in terms of the level of immigration taking place in the

country. You go back to the early part of the 1900s, the people who were coming to America were coming from Europe. They were coming from Germany, from Italy, from Ireland, and they were coming and they were living all along the Eastern Seaboard and those big cities, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and they had the dream in their minds that their children could gain an education that somehow the streets were paved with gold, and maybe they would tell their children to go west, go west in search of opportunity. And I think that you here in Texas know about people coming in search of opportunity even from the 1800s, but what has happened is that as those people came, they were willing to become part of the great American melting pot, willing to, in a sense, assimilate in search of American identity, willing to put themselves in position so that, in essence, they were putting the past behind them. Today, today, at the year 2000, we have an extraordinarily high rate of immigration, but the

immigration is coming from different sources. Today, the immigrants come overwhelmingly from Asia. In this part of the country, you know, they come from Mexico, from Central America, from Latin America, from the Caribbean, from Africa. These are people of color who are coming into America and changing America because they have a wholly different attitude about being immigrants. They're not interested in being melted down in the so-called melting pot. Instead, they come here hoping to retain their ethnic, their racial, their cultural identity. They come here and they become what we now refer to as the hyphenated Americans. And not only they become hyphenated Americans, in many cases, they seek to maintain the use of their language from their homeland. And so we have lots of arguments, cultural wars going on in America over whether or not English should be the official language of this country. But it's not only the

use of English. We also have people coming here who insist that really they don't even want to be Americans. There is an extraordinarily number these days of people who don't even seek to become naturalized citizens. They seek to come here and simply work here to be part of a global economy that exists under NAFTA and GAT. They come here because we have top-flight educational institutions or they see economic opportunity in terms of the high-tech industry that exist here. And they simply want to be here for that opportunity. They don't necessarily see themselves as American citizens and they certainly don't see themselves as fitting into the pattern of American history. And they don't share in the notion of American struggles over race relations that preceded them and their arrival in this country. That changing reality is now referred to by the demographers as the American salad bowl. The whole notion of the melting pot has gone out of the door. In its place, there's the salad bowl where you have the lettuce, the tomato, the carrots, all retaining their own

cultural racial and ethnic identities. But nonetheless mixing together to make this nutritious and economically beneficial salad. And so that is the new analogy for the demographers. And it's one that you are seeing come to life here in Austin because you are a salad bowl community. But what they don't talk about in that salad bowl is the economic divide. The economic divide that says that some people who are coming into this country are coming in at a different level. They come in at a different educational level. Whereas the immigrants that came at the start of the 1900s came without education. The immigrants that come today incredibly often come with high levels of education. I'm not even talking about college degrees. I'm talking about PhDs. I'm talking about people who come to this country come to this country with a sense that their education puts them at the upper class. That they come in at the upper classes of the society. And that's where they want to stay. And that's where their

children will begin life in this country from in the upper classes. Now when you have people come at that level, they really are not coming to this country again to participate in the life of the country. In fact, we now have a different kind of status in Washington in terms of visas. It used to be that people were allowed into this country as part of family reunification. The idea being that if someone's mother uncle brother was in the United States, well, they could bring more meant family members over to join and reconstitute the family. Now we have these new visas, these H1V visas that really put people here because they supposedly are fitting into jobs that the American workforce cannot fill. Jobs that the American workforce cannot fill. And there is concern. And some of this concern was voiced yesterday on the panel we held here in Austin for talk of the nation that those people are coming in and taking opportunities that might otherwise be filled by young people growing up being educated here in the United States, being educated in the schools here in

Austin. But suddenly those jobs are designated as jobs that cannot be done by American grown intelligence, American grown children, American grown workers. What that means is you have a new group of people coming in again, impacting the class structure in your community, impacting the class structure in our nation. A class structure that has already been stretched during the course of the 1980s and 1990s to the point where we have a growing percentage of rich in the society. And when I mean rich, I mean super rich even millionaires. And where we have a growing percentage of super poor people living below poverty and a very much shrinking middle class. And so we see that the immigrants who are coming in are not coming in as part of the poor or the working class, but coming in as part of the middle class to upper middle class and even the rich. This again is part of the changing face of America that impacts your communities and impacts the conversation about race and about the future of your

children, about how we can see America shifting into gear in the future. Now part of this conversation also has to do with the ability of minorities in this country to form coalitions. Coalitions such as you heard referred to when I was being introduced today, coalitions among Latinos, among blacks, among Asians, and even among Native Americans. What we're talking about is people coming together in numbers to form some political power that can make a difference in the future of an Austin, can make a difference in terms of the future of an America. But so far what we see is too often that these coalitions don't get formed that people look a scanced at each other, worry that they're not getting a full share of the pie, worry that in fact somebody else may be getting a little more than them. And so the growing numbers of minorities, people talk about the future of the United States in terms of a growing minority population. But what happens when that growing minority population, witness here Austin, a

growing minority population, fails to take advantage of its numbers or you see a delusion of its numbers as people spread out and don't occupy the political center that would allow them to have increased votes and increased power beat on a city council, be it in terms of a mayoral election or be it in terms of the selection of a school superintendent. Do we as African-American expect more of our elected officials than we would from their white counterparts? Oh no, I think you know, it's very interesting in Washington, I would get flack when I was covering the White House. Oh, then they'd say, well, don't talk to him. He's this liberal black guy, you know, and I like kind of words. So I had to work against that kind of negative inside word there. And it didn't matter when I wrote critically about Reagan so much for the Washington Post audience because they would, oh yeah, Reagan reads from cue cards. He falls asleep, the cabinet meetings and all this. But when I was writing, when they saw a black writer writing

critically about Barry, especially for the black community, this hit them with a different kind of impact. It was as if they expected me to give him some more slack. Absolutely. So it wasn't that he was being held to a different standard than a white politician. It was at the whole dynamic where you saw two black people in conflict in a way because I'm saying, hey, you're not doing right. Other black people said, wait a minute, this isn't what we had in mind. When we wanted to get black people in positions of mayor and positions of big job on a newspaper, we expected people would be working in collaboration. And it just didn't work out that way. And so I think it disappointed people on some level, even on an emotional level. A lot of young journalists want to work for the L.A. Times, Washington Post, the New York Times. But what is necessary for one, once they reach that pinnacle of say success, the pinnacle of professional pride, to be able to to deal in that type of environment, to be able to handle themselves on a day-to-day

basis and meet your standards in which those newspaper insist. Well, I might say to you, John, you know what, I've been at National Public Radio three weeks. And I have never seen such a line of people calling me up asking about jobs. Because apparently a lot of people want to work for National Public Radio as well as the Washington Post and the New York Times, the answer your question is discipline, I think. And it's one that, you know, for me, initially, there was hunger to get the job. I didn't want to go back to Brooklyn. My family didn't have any money. I didn't, I looked at all the guys who I'd gone to college with. They were going off to be lawyers and doctors and stockbrokers. I knew that wasn't where my spirit was. Not where my heart was. Not what I wanted to invest my life. And I wanted to be a journalist. But it was hard to get that job, hard to get that chance. And I think kids out there day know how hard it is. But once you get the chance, in a sense, you have to create opportunities for yourself. And that means being willing to do more work than the next person. It means oftentimes being willing to do work

that other people demand to be paid for. You do it either for no pay or for cheaper. It means that you are willing to go the extra mile in terms of the work, even though you may say, hey, that guy doesn't have to do the same thing. And he gets a break on the higher hand. I'm just, you know, I'm just going to be straight with you. It's not that way for black people. I'm just, I mean, I'm know some people out there listening and say, hey, why did he say that? But I say it with love. That you have to work harder and you have to be better. You're going to be held in oftentimes to a different standard. And I hope that you do get a break along the line. I know I've gotten breaks. But I say more generally, if you're not better, you're not going to get the break. You're not going to put yourself in a position to accept. I'm glad you brought the point about national public greater. You're the new host of talk of the nation. Why did you want that position? You know, this to me is what's happening in terms of how to reach audiences. You think about what talk radio is in America today. It is the biggest thing going. That is how people are touched in terms of information. People don't pick up the newspaper with the same intensity that they did when

I was a kid. I mean, my children don't even pick up the newspaper to read about baseball or football or hoops or anything. What they do, they turn on the radio. Juan Williams, author and host of NPR News, talk of the nation. We will continue our conversation on next week's program. If you have questions, comments or suggestions asked to future in Black America programs, write us. Also, let us know what radio station you heard us over. The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or of the University of Texas at Austin. Until we have the opportunity again for technical producer Cliff Hargrove, I'm John L. Hanson, Jr. Thank you for joining us today and please join us again next week. Cassette copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in Black America cassettes, Communication Building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas 78712. That's in Black America cassettes, Communication Building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas 78712. From the University of Texas at

Austin, this is the Longhorn Radio Network. I'm John L. Hanson, Jr. Join us this week on in Black America. You have the mic behind, talk of the nation. You're our national public radio, so therefore I can trust you and therefore you'll take my call, you listen to me, you hear me out. MPR news, talk of the nation holds wine, Williams this week on in Black America.