Blind To Change

Blacks Find Success Doesn`t Bring Acceptance

May 17, 1992|By Charles M. Madigan. This article is based on reports from Tribune staff in Chicago, Washington, New York and Los Angeles.

For the last five years, Joseph R. Feagin has been interviewing 210 middle-class African-Americans as part of the research he is conducting for a book about race in modern America.

If the assumption at work over the past few decades has been that, as blacks moved into the middle class their problems with racism would improve, Feagin`s book is likely to prove quite a disappointment.

``They report all kinds of discrimination in employment and housing, on the street, in restaurants,`` says Feagin, a professor at the University of Florida at Gainesville.

``These are doctors, lawyers, teachers . . . If they have trouble borrowing money for a business or trouble borrowing money to buy a home or find an apartment or a house, you can imagine what it is like for the working- class blacks.``

One elderly psychologist was particularly angry about the racial problems that confronted him almost constantly. Feagin asked him to rate his anger on a scale of 1 to 10.

``He yelled `10,` `` Feagin said. ``He talked about the destructive potential of the repressed rage in his soul. In many of the interviews-they don`t put it as bluntly as he put it-there is a great deal of anger.``

If Feagin`s interviews are at all representative, then the problem of race in America runs deeper than economics and the assumption that financial equity would translate somehow into racial equality.

They mean something is still missing from the formula that will not be addressed by money from Washington, the development of a whole new era of government social programs or even another round of legislation aimed at forcing the issue of equality.

All of those efforts are focused on attacking the physical manifestations of inequality in society-poor housing, no jobs, rampant crime, drug abuse, the collapse of family structure and the failure of education, to name only a few. But none is aimed at another significant factor, public attitudes toward race, particularly the attitudes crafted over the last two or three decades, which have seen the confusing reality of both significant gains and obvious declines for blacks in America.

This year`s most popular anecdote about race involves white people who talk about how 30 years ago they never felt threatened by blacks, but now if they see black teenage youths walking toward them, they cross the street as soon as possible to avoid them.

It is probably the white analogy for that sense of fear that overcame blacks 30 years ago, particularly blacks in some urban or rural areas of the South, when they saw a group of white teenage youths walking toward them.

The perception comes from the fact that the media pays a lot of attention to black crime problems these days, particularly the crimes committed by juvenile gangs, which in their violence have become the embodiment of the word ``senseless.``

Thirty years ago, the media paid a lot of attention to civil rights marches and attacks on blacks by white crowds, and that may have prompted the construction among black people of the sterotypical vicious Southern white.

In both cases, the stereotypes were built on the basis of behavior that was murderous. It also was real, and the fear it created among blacks then and among whites now is legitimate.

But the problem with stereotypes is that they tend to be projected across all members of the race involved.

Just as it would be wildly inaccurate and unfair to conclude that all Southern whites were so racist and violent they would kill black children by blowing up a church, the contemporary stereotype of the black male must be recognized for what it is: a projection based on some experience, but not at all reflective of reality.

What happens is that all black teenagers become threatening because of the focus on the outrageous and antisocial behavior of some black teenagers. But that knowledge won`t ease your concern one bit because the stereotype of the dangerous black male is so strong.

This causes some unusual problems.

Ollie Gavin is a believer in law enforcement. He has been a Chicago police officer for 18 years and currently is a tactical officer out of Monroe District 12.

Because he is black, he notices, people view him differently when he is not working. Subtle types of behavior will present themselves. Women will hold their purses tighter when he is present, or they will cast a suspicious look over their shoulders in his direction.

``Even for me as a policeman, off the job, I feel people are afraid of me because I`m black, not realizing I would be the first person who would come to their aid,`` Gavin said.

Sometimes stereotyping is so subtle that it isn`t easy to recognize.

Immediately after the riots in Los Angeles, the media began focusing on the fact that many Korean-Americans had businesses in black and Hispanic areas of Los Angeles, and that this reality so angered rioters that they burned many Korean-American shops.