200 Years; Racial Equality in the U.S. - Where are we?

from communication center the university of texas at austin this is two hundred years in the year nineteen seventy six the american republic celebrates its two hundredth anniversary as a part of the us bicentennial program at the university of texas at austin two hundred years explores the past present and future dynamics of history's longest living democratic society this as rex we're for two hundred years this week we'll be talking about the continuing effort to achieve racial equality in the united states what those are mehlman sides professor of educational psychology at the university of texas at austin norman brown associate professor of history at the university and john butler ut austin assistant professor of sociology during nineteen seventy six the year of our bicentennial celebration and a presidential election year there will be so much rhetoric about successes and failures of efforts to achieve

racial equality in the united states it's important to look and say where we stand now what are the current issues and race relations what you think they are there they are what they're always been the whole notion of equality in relationship to economic success i think that given the image of the american idea in terms of a remote he should share in the pot then the quality operation was alone economics terms of economics is the most important issue right now in terms of our issue oceans mom and id you pursue i think very frankly are race relations coming in third hundred years the united states is going to be a really connected with our larger metropolitan areas with the migration of blacks out of the south and within the south from rural areas into the metropolitan areas and race relations problems involving job

opportunities for blocks quality education and now what you see i view it as a kind of crisis in terms of confidence in our institutions and those individuals who we are institutions i think that two blocks and watch more competent in what we'll hold our democratic way of why the rebels in all this time i just don't think we have more confidence and one on leadership now we're more aware of course that probably only a landmark in the country in terms of race relations which has been called a second period of reconstruction actually occurred in nineteen fifty four was a moment still alive question you have the ideology which has emerged says nineteen sixty four you have to look at the

relationship between the nonviolent movement of another moment the king and the black power movement which was more than self defense type of movement parts of oklahoma and others now in terms of the basic successes i guess you could argue that it would be the civil rights bill per se as solomon moore are sort of a sort of an accomplishment of the non violent movement in addition to say than this can be considered if you are a some type of success but also the question remains to what extent in the white power movement some influence or help the passage of the civil rights bill something in relationship to where we are since nineteen sixty four we've come a long way on paper are not necessarily in the actual actions over individuals and groups of individuals i think the country has gone through huge near the

pacification of blacks rather than liberation of life looking back to the condition of black southerners at the end of the second world war an episode of a very substantial progress had been made in the last thirty years the jim crow laws providing for the physical separation of the races and largely dismantled the voting rights act of nineteen sixty five allow the registration of millions of southern blacks for the first time really since reconstruction you have had the election of blacks to offices municipal level or county level the state level and the federal level i think there are there's more job opportunities for some blacks now than was true at that time but i do think that what you call rex a second reconstruction probably reached its high noon about nineteen sixty five with the passage of the voting rights bill and with the famous march from selma to montgomery alabama led by the reverend martin luther king i would have to say

now that i think we're marking time in civil rights that the progress has slowed rather dramatically in that because of the migration of blacks into the inner cities there is a real danger that some against gays it had been made last thirty years will be lost on thinking critically about desegregation of education that with whites going to the suburbs leaving a black behind in the inner cities that some of the school systems which have been the segregated are going to be re segregated and over in your future i have often said that to remove my iron chains to get the gold and chains and say our business improvement is no improvement in fact when i think of success i think about basic freedoms the basic rights guaranteed all americans when i think what we're talking

about i think now the supreme court decision to quote get equal rights to relax back in the nineteenth century didn't take one year to reverse that decision now we didn't i didn't hit the board and i think that that kind of thing and worry whether the prince a beast was over there were attempting to repeat history and reverse all of that again so in the minds of individual has there been change if not then were his achievements the kind of thing you're talking about i think are kind of work superficially almost had to be but i'm not so sure the heart of them in that we have achieved success of course one of the crime news items over the past years has been buzzing and too often is probably clouds are really issues and now mitigation situation when you perceive others meaning the real issues in an

education offline when does the syrian so the louvre is not the buses us so therefore we say busing we must save busing for racial integration because we know that historically and at the present the school was has been one of the common vehicles american education like some point six to seven percent of all school children in boston where expression in the rule book lessing presents itself as a sort of him famed in the whole russia situation in ruins housing economics education it has all of this together now on the other hand we have to back up and say what is the whole idea behind us and what is the whole idea behind racial integration where'd that idea has been in there just are for blacks have not

received a quote good education and american society that somehow obliged to that not provided the necessary education equipment for black americans and maria says won't have to really send out in question this basic ideology lewiston life goes who who provided the blind lemon leaders of the nineteen sixties and then life skills and running on the number of leaders in the early nineteen thirties nineteen forties and eccentric soul a sensuous even is the first thing was that well you really cannot get a job because you don't have an education there was where you really dont youre looking at job forging voter to riceville and now it's of course you really get a job because the school that you're going win the innocent it is certainly in there for not very good not to an extended <unk> and this is true but this was on religion and explain how wise of the mood from that screws and so we'll announce

that not many other english of busing and visited the positive as a whole we have is two groups of people growing up without ever having any kind of contact with each other we noticed though studies suggest a famous american so to study we showed them to the extent they want to live with them for the proximity of each other in one convenient to understand each other and those pre judgments about different groups tend to disappear something one positive thing about busing is that it would bring america together in terms of physical proximity and taken away from the south african mo a lot of society and the resort to busing is a consequence of the absence of integrated housing in american metropolitan areas if we had residential immigration we

could preserve the neighborhood's skills and not have to resort to bustling with it because of so called white flight to the suburbs which is as i suggested leaving the area schools increasingly or that the courts have flown mandated in some instances of busing in order to bring black and white schoolchildren into that proximity which was the other courts and civil rights activists to be desirable but the fact remains if we if we could achieve residential integration we would have to resort abbas accept long and in a very local area within the neighborhood we can talk about the superior runners on the problem i think we talk about education we scream quality education that's not what i'm talking about i'm talking about a spinal cornbread education i don't see that we are educating people if we don't educate people to live up to the principles ideals of jeffersonian democracy if we did that even if we didn't live in close

proximity would have some understanding of each other and how the democratic process supposed to work but we get tied down to begin the disciplines i'm going to beat matt strictly in a vacuum even history and of that can selectively target certain things about the social science and in fact and this is not good news is training i can then that deal with things and that coupled with soldiers do and come up big and we're going to be an indignant society riven with students who don't have the slightest idea about people who are different we live in a society where we're supposed to tolerate accommodate differences we don't accommodate any kind of difference not not just racial differences we don't accommodate therapy job blindness are having a very uncomfortable education would take care of that so what i talk about education in the city to talk about educating the whole child i'm thinking education is getting of the horn troops

and not the narrow disciplines is it blossomed into me is irrelevant my concern is that we can and we educate that child can we do jobs education will picturesque village of education will politicians permit us to do the job of education all they continue to use education but when nbc news abc or cbs came on air to talk about busing mission to the south of always credit is rene stupid summer but in an alternate saving happened this drone community people concerned about their community service danger aspect of a job was it shows how the national press and of course mr kurtz it's located in a poor country as talented situation that only the same type of attitude from a life sentence rather than sang the people here have always had a strong sense of community center and this is where for sellers was so that course

question that i go into in which conflict when you think that it's a very healthy that we do have differing opinions within the right group i always noted that individuals seem to feel that articles but others all the a tribe or something like that they're about where's your leader but i do think we differ on the on the bus and usually we get to do what i think we need to look at why i'm not so sure that if i were a parent who happened recently my child to have it on the white school with a lot of hostility and i had to sleep or you for or against busing i might say i'm against busing what might not for the same reason why else might be against but i'm thinking about my child not it this bustling percent and i think of her office jonathan akkad the press will distort this kind of things in the blacks but what was that either one would work the blacks are

talking about is really the quality of opportunity we want that but not we will sacrifice the outback children's lives for this kind of thing so i'm not so sure that there's a basic conflict just how do you look at and we're going to have a child in that situation so we'll someone i think up until the mid sixties is john you indicated the civil rights question united states was regarded as a southern question and all the battles were fought in the first reconstruction in the second war fought in the south than white southerners were the bad guys and northern and western winds could ignore gloss over their prejudice and then put it all on the shoulders of white southerners and why that one of the factors to explain why the second reconstruction slowed was that as blacks move down the south into the north and in the west the day for the first time a majority of blacks live outside the former love and confederate states would solely front came roman orman westerners they drew back and so

it's not a southern it's no longer a southern problem for national financial betting that the blacks coming back to the south some of the stuff that they have they've tried detroit and in new york and chicago and then decided to come back to mississippi and alabama who were typically should quote working in the self and more you know the fake out i am concerned though that that has southern blacks move into the metropolitan areas in the south where houston atlanta dallas i think sixty percent of them when they're now that some of these games will be lost and the idea of a of a new south of of a sane amicable race relations that might be a model for the northwest may be lost an airman parker well and i'm seeing a trim goldberg and i feel very good about i'm pretty happy about it it seems that tom

whites are coming back or so or their motives are good bad or indifferent they seemed to be covering that that they do in a transition period now i think if they continue the way that you're talking about that would be then i think it's quite have the courage to come back and see this country we got them a cassette out of it we could make it but it hasn't come up above the black or white on this day we can revitalize our urban centers and then there's the real possibility of operations because esso is either easier dangerous to try to project too far into the future but you say what could happen and what needs to happen and the cell phone the urban areas can we anticipate happening over the next fifteen years or even a hundred years and the area of race relations or we go and director gus like wear proudly and right now are in their annual bobo mum was lots of relationships

which raise me as black americans american river i think in relationship to the overall condition in the future i think it can be for an eerie frightening from a number of perspectives and we don't want to talk about them that is adam levin no i'm off lottery drawing off on a perilous in terms of what's happening in the united states do the other countries in paris so we talk about a slew of historic analysis to project future nothing that we don't agree that there is one issue conflict marks a certain intervals around the basic criminalization of blackness we have some scholarship only for literary innovators who and thirty and an outward image of him in the nats are not the point isn't american society we also know that we have

the ongoing conflict between the programs such as welfare of the window at a whites only a fair word but for them because those people if there was one time and blessed with a village group can control with the us for years now i think that if you look at some of the parallels that happening in america and what was going on and that's in germany before takes me a number give them to be getting their weekend of protests on parallel it's the intellectuals college community the research mission alone in essen germany i'm jewish and jewish individuals and more efficient to relative term as and then some type of the humanization know that the four x number of jews when commissioners and russians are saying that jews were biologically inferior no the jones the psychology girlhood filled with this type of audio and winnow the philosophers such as nietzsche

writing relationship to this one frightening parallelism we have the same type of intellectual and the ideology in the united states and it's a worry all intentions aside and research research we met in roseville is so they do relationship to the next hundred years would have to concern ourselves with the possibility of the american dream over the possibility of genocide i think there are those also talk about other thing that we must consider it in the movement of men can and movement of people who i think that the racial conflict with it raises the joint appointment actually brain in relationship to the economic security their genocidal remain a possibility i'm talking about of course and projection indian nation years so what i'm doing is trying to use history as vader draw parallels

between those countries who have experience of those people experienced the final solution was going on in america i think that we can draw those parallels to some extent we're not saying that there is a correlation reason there is a relationship minnesota's causal relationship i share share your concern is that if the population movement trends continue we have to foresee that in the end of the century that most american blacks will be living in inner cities and without jobs without jobs plan with the wide surrounding them in the suburbs and you would have then a a de facto apartheid system that a drug or old germany her prose of africa where where blacks are our room iris ever gave on reservation and and i share your concern that that's one that isn't the possibility of an apartheid system

in the united states unless they are resolute action on the part of all ages to the government to support the american people two to solve some of these tremendous problems of while blacks who are living in families that kenyans have used today remove that column and when i think in terms of solving the problems i think that i'm thinking along the same lines you are within edition to that i'm thinking that in terms of the fancy exotic educational program that we come about to bring court backs up to standard or any of these superficial bandaid kinds of things i think in terms of people relationships the courage of people walk want whatever to hack into act to have relationships to me of what they want to and to do the kind of thing they would do and protect each other as long as everything at the court in black and white were not gonna make it

and we will self destruct i think that we are on the air you need to become what we say in writing are in the constitution or not to exist at all until that is frightening but that's the way it is because of the moving finger holes right but today we've found out that perhaps putting ourselves on the back for race relations and racial equality over the past twenty years may not be a ba real thing to we have some frightening possibility isn't of the future unless we shape up then travis of catastrophic potential was before they merge our panelists have included melvin sykes professor of educational psychology university of texas at austin norman brown associate professor of history at university and john butler ut austin assistant professor of sociology this as rex we're for two hundred years two hundred years as part of the united states

bicentennial program at the university of texas austin is a continuing series of weekly conversations about the past present and future dynamics of history's longest living democratic society two hundred years is produced by katie this is