4.0
Race How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel about the American Obsession
by Studs Terkel
In recent years, race has emerged as the leading issue in American politics. The clock has been turned back on the progress of the 1960s, and once again hostility, resentment, and racial conflict threaten to divide the nation. How do ordinary Americans see these changes? How do attitudes towards race affect their daily lives, their relations to their fellow Americans, their images of themselves? Despite hundreds of articles, op-ed pieces, and TV round-tables about race relations, only Studs Terkel has been able to get his compatriots to talk with full honesty and candor about the way they feel.
In previous books such as Working and Hard Times, Americans have told Terkel the truth--even when they've lied to themselves. On this, the most delicate and difficult of all issues, he brings out the full complexity of the thoughts and emotions of both blacks and whites, uncovering a fascinating narrative of changing opinions. Preachers and street punks, college students and Klansmen, interracial couples, the nephew of the founder of apartheid, and Emmett Till's mother are among the voices in Race. In all, nearly a hundred Americans talk openly about attitudes that few are willing to admit in public: feelings about affirmative action and changing neighborhoods, about dashed hopes and secret prejudices. Here too are the hopeful, courageous, and at times remarkable people who refuse to give in to anger and hatred, who see a better future in spite of all current difficulties.
All of Terkel's previous books have been about America's past. Indeed, they have created a mosaic of our history from Hoover to Reagan. In this book, he tackles the present and shows us today's America in all of its ambiguity.
As he has done so often in the past, Terkel has listened to the secrets we try to keep from ourselves and discovered the true voice of America: complicated, puzzled, uncertain. Here is a picture of the country at a crucial time in its history, in a book of exceptional relevance for this election year.
In previous books such as Working and Hard Times, Americans have told Terkel the truth--even when they've lied to themselves. On this, the most delicate and difficult of all issues, he brings out the full complexity of the thoughts and emotions of both blacks and whites, uncovering a fascinating narrative of changing opinions. Preachers and street punks, college students and Klansmen, interracial couples, the nephew of the founder of apartheid, and Emmett Till's mother are among the voices in Race. In all, nearly a hundred Americans talk openly about attitudes that few are willing to admit in public: feelings about affirmative action and changing neighborhoods, about dashed hopes and secret prejudices. Here too are the hopeful, courageous, and at times remarkable people who refuse to give in to anger and hatred, who see a better future in spite of all current difficulties.
All of Terkel's previous books have been about America's past. Indeed, they have created a mosaic of our history from Hoover to Reagan. In this book, he tackles the present and shows us today's America in all of its ambiguity.
As he has done so often in the past, Terkel has listened to the secrets we try to keep from ourselves and discovered the true voice of America: complicated, puzzled, uncertain. Here is a picture of the country at a crucial time in its history, in a book of exceptional relevance for this election year.
HistorySocial ScienceDiscrimination & Race Relations
RELEASED1992
PUBLISHERNew Press
LENGTH403
LANGUAGEEN
Studs Terkel was born Louis Terkel in New York on May 16, 1912. The family moved to Chicago in 1922 and opened a rooming house. From 1926 to 1936 they ran another rooming house, the Wells-Grand Hotel at Wells Street and Grand Avenue. Terkel credited his knowledge of the world to the tenants who gathered in the lobby of the hotel and the people who congregated in nearby Bughouse Square a meeting place for workers, labor organizers, dissidents, the unemployed, and religious fanatics of many persuasions. Terkel attended University of Chicago and received a law degree in 1934. After a brief stint with the civil service in Washington D.C., he returned to Chicago and worked with the WPA Writers Project in the radio division. After a year in the Air Force, he returned to writing radio shows and ads. In 1944, he landed his own show on WENR. This was called the Wax Museum show that allowed him to express his own personality and play recordings he liked from folk music, opera, jazz, or blues. A year later he had his own television show called Stud's Place and started asking people the kind of questions that marked his later work as an interviewer. In 1952 Terkel began working for WFMT, first with the "Studs Terkel Almanac" and the "Studs Terkel Show," primarily to play music. The interviewing came along by accident. This later became the award-winning, "The Studs Terkel Program." His first book, Giants of Jazz, was published in 1956. Ten years later his first book of oral history interviews, Division Street: America, came out. It was followed by a succession of oral history books on the 1930s Depression, World War Two, race relations, working, the American dream, and aging. His last oral history book, Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith, was published in 2001. Late into his life Terkel continued to interview people, work on his books, and make public appearances. He was the first Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at the Chicago Historical Society. His last book, P.S.: Further Thoughts from a Lifetime of Listening was released in November 2008. --From Studsterkel.org
4.0
Race How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel about the American Obsession
by Studs Terkel
In recent years, race has emerged as the leading issue in American politics. The clock has been turned back on the progress of the 1960s, and once again hostility, resentment, and racial conflict threaten to divide the nation. How do ordinary Americans see these changes? How do attitudes towards race affect their daily lives, their relations to their fellow Americans, their images of themselves? Despite hundreds of articles, op-ed pieces, and TV round-tables about race relations, only Studs Terkel has been able to get his compatriots to talk with full honesty and candor about the way they feel.
In previous books such as Working and Hard Times, Americans have told Terkel the truth--even when they've lied to themselves. On this, the most delicate and difficult of all issues, he brings out the full complexity of the thoughts and emotions of both blacks and whites, uncovering a fascinating narrative of changing opinions. Preachers and street punks, college students and Klansmen, interracial couples, the nephew of the founder of apartheid, and Emmett Till's mother are among the voices in Race. In all, nearly a hundred Americans talk openly about attitudes that few are willing to admit in public: feelings about affirmative action and changing neighborhoods, about dashed hopes and secret prejudices. Here too are the hopeful, courageous, and at times remarkable people who refuse to give in to anger and hatred, who see a better future in spite of all current difficulties.
All of Terkel's previous books have been about America's past. Indeed, they have created a mosaic of our history from Hoover to Reagan. In this book, he tackles the present and shows us today's America in all of its ambiguity.
As he has done so often in the past, Terkel has listened to the secrets we try to keep from ourselves and discovered the true voice of America: complicated, puzzled, uncertain. Here is a picture of the country at a crucial time in its history, in a book of exceptional relevance for this election year.
In previous books such as Working and Hard Times, Americans have told Terkel the truth--even when they've lied to themselves. On this, the most delicate and difficult of all issues, he brings out the full complexity of the thoughts and emotions of both blacks and whites, uncovering a fascinating narrative of changing opinions. Preachers and street punks, college students and Klansmen, interracial couples, the nephew of the founder of apartheid, and Emmett Till's mother are among the voices in Race. In all, nearly a hundred Americans talk openly about attitudes that few are willing to admit in public: feelings about affirmative action and changing neighborhoods, about dashed hopes and secret prejudices. Here too are the hopeful, courageous, and at times remarkable people who refuse to give in to anger and hatred, who see a better future in spite of all current difficulties.
All of Terkel's previous books have been about America's past. Indeed, they have created a mosaic of our history from Hoover to Reagan. In this book, he tackles the present and shows us today's America in all of its ambiguity.
As he has done so often in the past, Terkel has listened to the secrets we try to keep from ourselves and discovered the true voice of America: complicated, puzzled, uncertain. Here is a picture of the country at a crucial time in its history, in a book of exceptional relevance for this election year.
HistorySocial ScienceDiscrimination & Race Relations
RELEASED1992
PUBLISHERNew Press
LENGTH403
LANGUAGEEN
Studs Terkel was born Louis Terkel in New York on May 16, 1912. The family moved to Chicago in 1922 and opened a rooming house. From 1926 to 1936 they ran another rooming house, the Wells-Grand Hotel at Wells Street and Grand Avenue. Terkel credited his knowledge of the world to the tenants who gathered in the lobby of the hotel and the people who congregated in nearby Bughouse Square a meeting place for workers, labor organizers, dissidents, the unemployed, and religious fanatics of many persuasions. Terkel attended University of Chicago and received a law degree in 1934. After a brief stint with the civil service in Washington D.C., he returned to Chicago and worked with the WPA Writers Project in the radio division. After a year in the Air Force, he returned to writing radio shows and ads. In 1944, he landed his own show on WENR. This was called the Wax Museum show that allowed him to express his own personality and play recordings he liked from folk music, opera, jazz, or blues. A year later he had his own television show called Stud's Place and started asking people the kind of questions that marked his later work as an interviewer. In 1952 Terkel began working for WFMT, first with the "Studs Terkel Almanac" and the "Studs Terkel Show," primarily to play music. The interviewing came along by accident. This later became the award-winning, "The Studs Terkel Program." His first book, Giants of Jazz, was published in 1956. Ten years later his first book of oral history interviews, Division Street: America, came out. It was followed by a succession of oral history books on the 1930s Depression, World War Two, race relations, working, the American dream, and aging. His last oral history book, Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith, was published in 2001. Late into his life Terkel continued to interview people, work on his books, and make public appearances. He was the first Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at the Chicago Historical Society. His last book, P.S.: Further Thoughts from a Lifetime of Listening was released in November 2008. --From Studsterkel.org
