1994-01-30: On the Bias: Black and White Perspectives on African-American History

Vol. II, No. XXXII

Transcription:

James Farmer, MWC
Edgar Toppin, VSU
INTRODUCTION
Music
Greeting
On the Bias
WITH GOOD REASON
Volume II, Number 5
This is With Good Reason. I'm Laura Womack. Today we are talking
about prejudice and African American history.
Music
Background
James Farmer is one of the big six of the sixties civil rights
movement. He led the freedom rides across the south. Blacks sat in
the front white-only section and white activists rode in the rear
black section. The interstate bus rides forced the U.S. government
to enforce a Supreme Court ruling outlawing segregation. James
Farmer joins us today, along with Dr. Edgar Toppin. Dr. Toppin
wrote a textbook called The Black American in U.S. History. In it,
he gives a non-dogmatic account of African-American history.
INTERVIEW
Womack
Dr. Toppin, in your book, The Black American in U.S. History, you
started with a story of Captain Thomas Phillips, who anchored his
slave ship in the Hannibal off the coast of West Africa in 1694 and
he was wined and dined by the nation's king, a black man, and in
cooperation with this king, he purchased about 700 slaves and set
sail for the American colonies. I was interested why you started
your book with that particular story?
Toppin
That was an interesting story to me in that it told about the
slavery experience. It helped to disabuse one of the notions that
does float around the minds of many persons. That is that somehow
Europeans were going into Africa, invading Africa, engaging in
warfare against Africans. Yes, some Africans were seized that way,
but the great bulk of them were simply sold as part of the normal
trafficking, trading in human beings that had been going on all
along. European kingdoms had slaves who were prisoners of war, just
as all over the world they left slaves who were prisoners of war
and they simply sold their service. They had been doing this for
centuries before the Europeans came along. They had been selling
them to Arab caravans as part of a long series of trade for gold
and diamonds, peppers, many other goods and so they were used to
selling a few slaves as part of this. What happened with the New
World trade was that the slaves became the main focus of the trade
and they got trapped into a routine where if they did not buy
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slaves then the Europeans would sell guns to their enemies, other
African kingdoms, who would attack them and take their people and
in order to get slaves they had to engage in wars to get slaves to
defend their people. So it became a vicious cycle that led to ruin
in Africa.
Womack
So do you think that the absence of some of the imagery of the
Africans participating and being complicit in the slave trade, do
you think that there's some sort of political motivation in that?
In not including images of black Africans selling other black
Africans to white Americans for slavery?
Farmer
People participated in the slave trade in spite of their color.
They participated to make money or to get other goods for trading
elsewhere. The color wasn't the basic thing, the fundamental thing.
They had goods to sell, they had people to sell and they sold them.
Blacks sold, whites sold, but that primarily it was blacks who were
sold.
Womack
Whites who've traditionally controlled the curriculum in schools
and have not included African Americans in the history, in the
telling of the history of this nation, and yet in the history of
teaching African American history, sometimes the full role of
African Americans isn't necessarily told. If perhaps it might look
bad.
Toppin
What happens is that sometimes historians write unaware of their
prejudices and their preconceptions and their own perceptions and
images and therefore they don't see things that are there. I think
it's a problem of not telling history really in its full dimension.
You' re saying African American history as if that's something
separate and apart and distinct from the total history. It's not.
It is a part of the total history of the nation. The total history
of the nation, of the world cannot be understood without including
that element. The rise of capitalism was integral with the
development and the exploitation of these native peoples, of the
black gold that was the African labor that was brought over to the
New World. That's all wrapped together. You have to read books like
Eric Williams' Capitalism and Slavery in order to understand those
kinds of things. That's all part of it. But, the African American
aspects of that history have not been brought in nearly as much as
some of the other aspects have been brought in, it's been grossly
neglected.
Farmer
Let me intervene here a minute if I may interrupt. Back about 1966
when Black Power, in quotes, came into vogue, along with that came
a demand for black studies, black history, etcetera. They were
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studying events through the eyes of Europeans. Some students, black
students, complained that they studied music and came out knowing
nothing about jazz. In fact, if they had mentioned jazz at all in
their studies, they were told that George Gershwin discovered jazz.
And so this sparked a demand for the studying of the contributions
of African Americans to history of America and the history of the
world. We won that battle in part. University after university
initiated ethnic studies or black studies and classes were set up,
teachers were brought in and this threw off sparks. Hispanics began
demanding Hispanic studies. Threw off sparks elsewhere too. Women
began demanding the study of women's contributions. I think it
enlarged the boundaries of the mind of this nation.
Womack
So don't-now these courses exist and we have full departments
devoted to them, don't you think the situation is better now? Do
you think that-
Farmer
I think there has been an improvement.
Womack
But some people would say that on college campuses it's very
difficult to even have an open discussion about African-American
history or current events within the African-American sub- community
Farmer
Why?
Womack
. still as a part of a community. Because of the feeling,
because of the bad feeling I think, and there is still bad feeling
between whites and blacks in this country. There is a feeling that
on college campuses you can't openly discuss African American
history within the context of larger you know the total history
with any sort of objectivity because you have to be sensitive to
hurt feelings.
Farmer
What you are aiming at here is a most interesting phenomenon. In
the sixties we were fighting for a kind of integration. King
described it in his dream, you know, where blacks and whites could
associate together, and children hold hands and people be judged by
the content of character and not the color of skin. Well, since
then there has been an increased balkanization of our society. An
increased polarization on the basis of race. Recently there was an
interview with some black students on ...
Toppin
"Sixty Minutes"
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Farmer
... a university campus in North Carolina I think.
Toppin
It was Duke University.
Farmer
Duke University. And they insisted that they wanted separation!
They wanted things to be separate but equal.
Womack
That's right!
Farmer
Those were familiar words.
Womack
Yes!
Farmer
From way back in the sixties and before they said we don't want to
eat with whites. We don't want to sit with them. We want to be by
ourselves and do our own thing. Well now, I would interpret that
and I'd like to hear Dr. Toppin's-his comments. I would interpret
that as a kind of swing of the pendulum. In the sixties and before
that, we were asking a sort of self-abnegation of blacks. We were
saying, "Forget your color. Think of yourself as a human being and
if you can get a little money and a little education, you will
become white. And just integrate and merge with society. You'll be
a part of the melting pot." Well, that didn't really work and at
the same time (cough) there was Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam
saying, "No, no, no. We can't integrate. We've got to separate and
do our own thing because the white man hates us so let us
separate." That voice-the voice of separation-soon became the
louder and also the more raucous voice from 1966 on through the
early seventies with Black Power, etcetera. There was another swing
of the pendulum from integration to Black Nationalism or
separation. Now, I think we're running into a kind of synthesis of
the two.
Womack
The phenomenon you're talking about at this point seems to be sort
of divisive between ethnic minorities and whites.
Toppin
May I cut in on this?
Farmer and Womack
Please do.
Toppin
There are several things. First, the idea that you've mentioned
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about Black Nationalism and separatism and so forth, this is
something that's been around a very long time. This isn't brand
new.
Farmer
That's right.
Toppin
There were blacks who were proposing early in the Eighteenth
Century that we should leave this country and go back to Africa
because we'd never be treated fairly here.
Farmer
(Yeah?}
Toppin
There are many blacks down to the present who still think this, and
perhaps with some justification. W.E.B. DuBois early in the
twentieth century, in the early nineteen hundreds raised the
question, "Am I black? Am I an American? Can I be both?"
Farmer
1903
Toppin
Right. Can I make a contribution as a black man? Can I give to the
nation out of my black blood without having doors slammed in my
face because I am black?
Farmer
Yeah.
Toppin
And this is the problem that blacks have always had to address.
Womack
What's the answer today?
Toppin
The same problem prevails today. The same problem prevails. Do you
have to submerge your black identity and melt into a larger
totality or can you remain black? But what I also want to separate
out from all of this, because you're talking about perceptions and
feelings of young people today, and perhaps many oldsters, is this
whole matter of African American history which has nothing at all
to do with such feelings. I have no trouble teaching it to all
kinds of groups, black groups, white groups, integrated groups. I
have no trouble teaching it because you approach-it's how you
approach it. Whether you approach it as an intellectual discipline
in which all of us have something to learn and which I as the
teacher am open and willing to learn things from my students or if
you approach it in either an antagonistic or authoritarian manner
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which some people do and which it jars people and throws them off
and just leads to all sorts of antagonisms.
Parmer
Bravo! Bravo!
Womack
Maybe the two of you could help me out here because you're both
teaching African-American history in very different environments.
Mr. Farmer, you're teaching at Mary Washington.
Parmer
Yeah
Womack
And from the descriptions I've read of your classrooms, there are
a bunch of very young, white kids in your class who are just agog
at what you're saying to them and are completely amazed at your
telling them that there were separate facilities for whites and
blacks.
Parmer
Yeah
Womack
And so these people have no ability to relate to what you' re
talking about and Dr. Toppin, you're teaching at Virginia State
University which is largely African American students.
Toppin
No,no,no. I've got to correct you there.
Womack
Okay, correct me on my misperception.
Toppin
Virginia State is a historically black institution. Most of our
students are black. But in the graduate level about half of my
graduate students are white students.
Womack
I just wanted to know if there is a difference teaching to a white
audience versus teaching to a black audience.
Parmer
Oh, of course.
Womack
Tell me.
Parmer
Great difference. There are sensitivities on both sides. But the
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sensitivities are quite different. Now if I'm talking to a white
audience, I know that the sensitivity is going to be on affirmative
action. They consider that affirmative action victimizes them. The
young whites, the young white males think they are the victims of
affirmative action.
Womack
I've heard that too. Do you disagree?
Toppin
I do, 100 percent.
Farmer
Of course I disagree, very much so. But they have their perceptions
and you've got to start with where they are and then help them move
from that point.
Womack
Okay, well help us here a little bit now, because I think there are
a lot of people who share that feeling that white males are the
victims of affirmative action.
Farmer
They think they're the victims today and that the only
discrimination is in reverse.
Toppin
The other thing they quite often say to you is that-and you hear
this said many,many times: "I didn't own slaves, My parents and
grandparents didn't own slaves. We didn't have anything to do with
that slavery down there, so why are you mad with us?
Farmer
Why penalize me?
Toppin
We didn't do anything to you.
Farmer
Yeah!
Toppin
They don't know that today, we're not talking about yesterday or
we're not talking about 1860. Today there is discrimination in the
workplace each and every day.
Farmer
Everyday.
Toppin
They've run all kinds of tests to show that two applicants, black
and white, evenly matched, go into a jobplace, the interviewers
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will take the white through all kinds of things and get them a job
and will send the black out within five minutes ...
Farmer
Right
Toppin
... without even giving him a chance.
Farmer
Another thing you don't realize, Dr. Toppin, is that they were
beneficiaries of the things that their great great grandparents did
two hundred years ago or three hundred years ago, from the life
savings the grandparents raised from the lifestyles that their
grandparents were able to give them so they benefited while the
black kids were penalized by the status in society which they held.
Now, this we have to make the young people realize. Now blacks have
a sensitivity too. The blacks have a sensitivity and think that all
of the things that afflict them are because of racism, white racism
and there is a tendency for blacks to blame everything on racism
and nothing on himself. We do that and that's a crutch and we have
to help our young people stop doing that.
BRIDGE
Womack
Let's talk a little bit now about the civil rights movement. This
isn't a new question, but do either one of you think that we
gained anything from the civil rights movement?
Toppin
Okay, what the laws do is to remove some of the outward vestiges of
discrimination. We've made progress, tremendous progress. I came
along at a time-and so did James, so we're not that far dissimilar
in age. I think we're probably about the same age.
Farmer
Oh, I'm older than you are.
Toppin
Not much, I'm sixty-five.
Farmer
Oh, I'm seventy-three, young man.
Toppin
All right, you got eight years on me, but we both came along at a
time when we knew that blacks were not supposed to be seriously in
love on the screen, or on the theatre stages. When blacks were
jokes and comical relief only. When they did movies in a way so
that they could cut out the black segment whenever it got down to
the South and they did it regularly. Or when textbooks were written
with a black segment-I mean with a Northern version and a Southern
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version. The publishers admit this. I've talked to them. They had
a Southern version, a Northern version of their textbooks. We've
come along, seen a lot of these things.
Parmer
I think what we did was to kill Jim Crow. That is U.S. -style
apartheid.
Toppin
Right.
Parmer
We got rid of that with a front-the back seat of the bus. The "For
Colored" and "For White" signs. We eliminated those things, but as
Dr. Toppin said, we did not get rid of racism. Racism is the belief
that skin color, hair texture, the physical characteristics which
we call race has something to do with human qualities such as
intelligence, character, morality. Now anthropologists have told us
for generations that that's a lie. That's what we must do in the
next generation of freedom fighters is eliminate racism.
Womack
Okay, well I really wanted to ask you about-we were talking earlier
about perceptions of African American history and incidents in the
past. And one of the things that I thought was really interesting,
Mr. Farmer, was in your book, Lay Bear the Heart, you're picture,
your portrait of Dr. King is not a very flattering one I just have
to say and ...
Parmer
I intended for it to be flattering.
Womack
Well, I think you gave him credit...
Parmer
I tried.
Womack
You tried, well we'll address that in a minute. You gave him credit
for-you definitely gave him credit for what he did, but you also
included in there a story about how he invited you and your freedom
riders to dinner and then failed to pick up the check.
Parmer
I have grown to wish that I had left that out of the book.
Womack
Does everyone ask you about that?
Parmer
A few people have asked me about it.
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Womack
I guess my question is, first of all, you did a whole lot to
demystify him. I think that we ...
Farmer
Yeah
Toppin
That's important
Womack
tend to not think of him as ...
Farmer
The audience doesn't know what you were talking about there.
Womack
Okay.
Farmer
He invited the freedom riders, 13, 14 of us, to dinner in Atlanta
and I had to pick up the tab.
Womack
That's right. Now that's not the image of this very religious,
dedicated, selfless leader ...
Farmer
Well, he figured I had a budget for it and why shouldn't I spend
that budget?
Womack
Okay, so tell us a little bit about your perception of Dr. King and
why you say "I tried to paint a positive portrait." Why would you
have to try to paint a positive.
Farmer
What I was faced with in writing the book was the myth which has
grown up about him. He's been deified so much, and I had to deal
with the Martin Luther King that I knew. The so-called big six, the
leaders of civil rights organizations, met about once a month in
New York under the Council on United Civil Rights Leadership. We
got quite well acquainted, we argued, we debated, we discussed and
compared notes. We were peers then, and that's difficult to say
today because nobody can conceptualize that. He was head of one
organization, I was head of another.
Toppin
But Laura, I think part of what the problem is also is that people
seem to think that blacks are a monolithic group, and we're not. We
disagree with each other, we don't have just one leader, and as Mr.
Farmer has well said, sometimes we do get to the point in America
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that we as a people tend to take, that as American people, tend to
take some one person and personify a whole movement or a whole
group or a whole order by that person and deify that person almost.
But King was just one among many other civil rights leaders. He got
more publicity and more attraction, he wasn't even the biggest
light in Montgomery at first...
Farmer
No.
Toppin
...in that first boycott. He emerged to the fore partly because
he could be more of a compromise candidate between other really
zealous, I mean leading stars there as well.
Womack
At one point early in your book, you were talking about a march
that was planned in the South, and this was when you were in
Chicago and you were holding sit-ins and demonstrations and
Farmer
In the early forties.
Womack
In the early forties. And you were going into cafeterias,
restaurants, skating rinks, swimming pools, and I believe that it
was Phillip Randolph who wanted to do a march or I think even a bus
ride in the South, and you at that time put together an article for
the Core publication that said that it was too dangerous at that
time, that people would be hurt and people would be killed. Looking
back now, and realizing that people were hurt and people were
killed in the sixties and the late fifties, do you think, are you
glad that you wrote that article or do you think that.
Farmer
Well, it wasn't an article, no it was a symposia which I edited,
asking a number of prominent blacks and whites whether A. Phillip
Randolph's call for the beginning of mass civil disobedience in the
South against Jim Crow in all places of public accommodation was an
appropriate thing without training, without discipline, without
preparation. No, I think that we were right on that, I was right,
and I believe that Phil was wrong. He came to agree with me. We
discussed it after the symposia came out, symposium came out and he
read it.
Womack
And it didn't happen.
Parmer
No, he called it off.
Womack
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Are you glad that he called it off?
Farmer
Yeah
Womack
Do you think that maybe it would've happened faster, we would be
further?
Farmer
It would have been a blood-letting throughout the South at that
time.
Toppin
Terrible blood-letting.
Farmer
It just would have been disaster, and those who were calling it
would have been back up at their homes, their apartments, their
offices in New York while the people would be down there in the
South facing the hurricane.
Toppin
And sometimes a premature move can set a movement back farther
rather than to move it along because the very fact that you've
tried and failed so dismally ...
Farmer
Yeah
Toppin
... will discourage a lot of people ...
Farmer
Exactly!
Toppin
... and will scare off a lot of people. No, the timing is very
important, you've got to start at the right time.
Farmer
I'm often wrong, but I was right then.
Womack
How do either one of you think that history down the line, I mean
we're already a few years behind the civil rights, but how do you
think that history will see Dr. King? Do you think that his.
Farmer
Oh, history will see Dr. King as it sees him now. He can't get any
bigger. He will not get any smaller. He'll be a permanent enormous
figure in history.
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Toppin
If anything, his stature will grow rather than diminish.
Womack
Let me ask you about some other people who, how do you think
history will deal with them? Jesse Jackson.
Farmer
Not too kindly. Not too kindly.
Toppin
I've not been very much impressed with Jesse Jackson.
Farmer
No, no, no.
Toppin
He's struck me as much more opportunist.
Farmer
Posturer.
Toppin
Posturer.
Farmer
Headline-grabber. Running to the camera.
Toppin
I always thought of people like Andrew Young as much more solid
than Jesse Jackson.
Farmer
Yeah.
Womack
What about Douglas Wilder?
Toppin
Douglas wilder is one of the most astute politicians in America
today.
Farmer
Yes
Toppin
And I don't think we've seen the last of Doug Wilder when he
finishes his term as governor.
Farmer
No, we haven't seen the last of him.
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Toppin
Doug Wilder is either going to sit in the Senate or he's going to
be the vice president of the United States one of these days. He's
a very astute politician. He's going on to other places.
Womack
How do you think history will deal with James Farmer? Either one of
you.
Farmer
History is going to ignore him largely.
Toppin
No, no, that's not true.
Womack
I don't think so either.
Toppin
As the history of the Civil Rights Movement is written James Farmer
will loom larger and larger because CORE was one of the key and
crucial organizations. It provided some of the basis for what
Martin Luther King did with his movement that stressed that you can
resist, you can defy, you can fight back, but you don't have to do
it with a hateful spirit and you don't have to do it with guns.
Farmer
James Farmer had many weaknesses. One of his greatest weaknesses as
a leader is that he did not have a sense of power, did not
appreciate power, understand it or enjoy power. I, in fact, I felt
uncomfortable with power. I could move a crowd. I could move a huge
audience and make them go out and jump off a cliff, but I was not
comfortable with that because if I could do that with oratory, I
felt somebody else could come in and move them similarly by making
a speech just as good or better and move them to do opposite
things. And that made me very uncomfortable. A Hitler could move
them.
Toppin
Demagogues always have.
Farmer
A Mussolini.
Toppin
Demogagues always have.
Farmer
Yes, demogagues have.
Toppin
But you'll never stop the demogagues by not... yourself.
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Farmer
I know,
firmly.
but I shuddered at power and thus hesitated to use it
Womack
Do you
Farmer
And gave it up voluntarily when I left CORE.
Womack
Do you think that there are any leaders for the African Americans- I
know you said before that it's not a monolithic group, and I'm
appreciative of that-Are there any people you think now who are
leaders of that caliber-the James Farmer's, the Martin Luther
King's?
Farmer
King? No.
Toppin
No, I think because of the fact that we don't have the same common
level of oppression, the segregation laws, the disenfranchisement,
the lynchings, the brutality, the brutal oppression, the general
suppression, because those no longer exist, you're not going to
find-to me I don't think you'll find a leader arising to tackle
those.
Womack
Do you
streets,
the next
think that the fight for equality has moved from the
the buses, the lunch counters into the board room? Is that
Farmer
Board rooms.
Toppin
That's one area.
Farmer
It's moved into all rooms. All kinds of rooms.
Toppin
Lot's of other areas.
Womack
Right now in Congress there are 40 representatives and senators who
make up the Black Caucus and they were a power when Bill Clinton
was trying to pass his budget this last year. What do you think of
that? That obviously says that there's been some progress made.
Toppin
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They're a block and an important block and they will continue to be
an important block. There will always be blocks and there will
continue to be other blocks in other areas. It just takes time to
wipe out some of this racism that's so deeply rooted. It takes a
lot of educating of people. It takes a lot of getting people to see
things in their past that people just don't seem to realize. And
people like Jim Farmer and myself try to go out and talk to people
and educate people. That's why we're both teaching at colleges and
trying to reach as many people as we can and we're delighted to
have a chance to be on your show and reach some people.
Womack
Well, I appreciate you saying that. I want to thank you both very
much for being on "With Good Reason." I really enjoyed having you.
Farmer
Thank You.
Toppin
Thank you very much.
Farmer
Enjoyed it.
MUSIC
WE're born believing we're greater than circumstance
Infinitely stronger then chance
As our first breath is handed
We taste the double standard
The need to wear the mask
And with society's nuturing
The psychic plastic surgery
Begins to take effect
As our souls watch astounded
our characters flounder
Duplicitous identity
Diction and contradiction
Have become the skills
Of assimilation
Razor honed to perfection
From the moment of creation
It's gone from identity crises
to survival slingshot rifle
Sin to revival
Try to get looked at
But not poked in the eyeball
OUTRO
Womack
Our guests today are Dr. Edgar Toppin, African American historian
at Virginia State University and James Farmer, Civil Rights leader
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and professor at Mary Washington College.
On our next show we'll talk about African .American poetry.
This is With Good Reason. I'm Laura Womack
Announcer
With Good Reason is a production of Virginia's public radio stations
and the Virginia Higher Education Broadcasting Consortium. This
program was produced with the assisstance of Mary Washington
College, Virginia State University and WFLS Radio. Speical thanks
to WMRA radio.
"Famous and Dandy" was written and performed by Hiphoprisy.
The views expressed in this show are not necessarily those of the
consortium or this radio station.
The project coordinator for With Good Reason is Michael McDowell.
Laura Womack is the producer. Carolyn Elliott Sundquist is the
Associate Producer. Kevin Piccini wrote the theme music.
If you would like to receive tapes or transcripts, call the State
Council of Higher Education for Virginia at area code (804) 225-
2632.
Music
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