Talking About the Untalkable

By R.Z. Sheppard

In Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution of the United States, the Founding Fathers decided to count three-fifths of a state's slaves toward its representation in Congress. Put another way, most blacks in America were, at one time, considered to be only three-fifths of a person.

This national birth defect went uncorrected until the Civil Rights Act of 1866 established "that all persons born in the United States . . . are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States." Passed during the most exhilarating days of Reconstruction, the act was greeted with officious optimism. "If there is anything by which the American people are troubled, and if there is anything with which the American statesman is perplexed and vexed, it is what to do with the negro," said one Yankee Senator. "Now, as a definition, this amendment settles it."

Not according to Studs Terkel and the dissonant multiracial chorus in his newest book, Race: How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About the American Obsession (New Press; 403 pages; $24.95). Even the liberal whites in its pages admit to deepening fears and animosity toward the growing urban black underclass. Most of the blacks who talked into Terkel's tape recorder do not think they will ever be five-fifths American. Joseph Lattimore, 50, a Chicago insurance broker, describes himself as typical. "Being black in America is like being forced to wear ill-fitting shoes," he says. "Some people can bear the uncomfort more than others. Some people can block it from their mind, some can't. When you see some acting docile and some acting militant, they have one thing in common: the shoe is uncomfortable. It always has been and always will be."

Terkel, 79, put oral history on the best-seller lists. History may be too strong a word. What Terkel does is refine and package the radio call-in show between hard covers. It is a natural step for the man who for 35 years has been the host of his own talk show on Chicago's WFMT. In his checked shirts, and suits that look like they are sent out to be cleaned and rumpled, Terkel is the city's most recognizable author. The dapper Saul Bellow would be a close second. Scott Turow's commuter camouflage renders him nearly invisible.

Can someone who transcribes other people's words truly be called a writer? In Terkel's case the question seems irrelevant. His books may not have the scope of literature or the authority of social science, but they do pack the wallop of theater -- particularly the declamatory, political theater of the 1930s as exemplified by Clifford Odets' Waiting for Lefty.

Waiting for Studs, one does not have to wait too long. He has published eight books, including Hard Times (the Depression) and "The Good War" (World War II). There was also Talking to Myself, a memoir of a life that included careers in acting, sports announcing and journalism. Terkel's earlier ambition was "to have a nice civil service job." It is hard to imagine. His disdain for bureaucracy and sympathy for the underdog would have produced an unlikely paper pusher. The crusty populism asserted itself two years ago when his publisher, Andre Schiffrin, was forced out as head of Pantheon by the parent | company, Random House. Dramatically terming the dismissal "a barbaric act," Terkel left the world of bottom-line publishing to join Schiffrin at the New Press, established earlier this year as a foundation-supported specialist in social issues. Race is the house's first book, one that will undoubtedly turn a profit for the nonprofit publisher.

Readers should also receive substantial returns on their investment. Most of Terkel's working-class and professional respondents are from the Chicago region, but their attitudes are not regional. Orchestrated by Terkel, the consensus is not out of line with what most readers, North, South, East or West, already feel in their guts: that race relations and perceptions of them are more confusing and emotionally complex than they were in the hopeful days of the civil rights movement and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs.

It is no surprise that the tensions appear greatest where the economy is weakest and the class lines closest. So white workers competing for the same jobs as black workers express their resentment about affirmative action. Equally indignant are blacks who began to enter the work force only to be ejected by the recession. Periodically Terkel calls on an expert to provide an overview to the folk commentary. Despite obvious racial progress, few are optimistic. "You have young black men coming up now who would have worked in factories," says Professor Douglas Massey of the University of Chicago. "But there are far less such places today. Aside from working at McDonald's for the rest of their lives, what can they aspire to, without an education? They're not in a position to support a family."

The same can be said for the growing class of undereducated white youth, a threatening prospect considering how cloudy and volatile are the thoughts and feelings Terkel assembles. This is understandable. Race itself is an irrational subject, which may be "the American obsession" but is not an American invention. The 3,000-year-old Rig-Veda tells of the Aryan god Indra's hatred for the black-skinned anasya. Han dynasty historians (right for the wrong reasons) believed yellow-haired, green-eyed people evolved from primates. The Babylonian Talmud attributes the blackness of Ham's descendants to Jehovah's curse.

More than an obsession, race and racism appear to be inseparable parts of a deep neurosis in the human psyche. In which case, the value of Terkel's latest book is not theatrical, sociological or historical but therapeutic -- a promising group session for a nation that loves to talk.