What Nobody Wants to Say about Race: Author and Civil Rights Commissioner Abigail Thernstrom talks to Charlotte Hays - TWQ Interview - Interview

Women's Quarterly, Autumn, 2001 by Charlotte Hays

ABIGAIL THERNSTROM has dared to suggest that race relations in the United States are remarkably good and that racial preferences are harmful.

That is why Thernstrom, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, is the most intriguing appointment to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in a long, long time.

Thernstrom is co-author with her husband Stephan, Winthrop Professor of History at Harvard, of America in Black and White: One Nation Indivisible, a groundbreaking 1997 study of race. Acknowledging that serious problems remain, the Thernstroms nevertheless argue that race relations have been transformed since the 1940s when Gunnar Myrdal wrote An American Dilemma, the classic, and bleak, look at race relations in the US.

Although no stranger to controversy, Thernstrom had to be just a little surprised by the reception she received after the House Republican Leadership appointed her to the Commission on Civil Rights.

The appointment came in January--just as the commission was launching hearings in Tallahassee, Florida, into allegations that African-American voters were disenfranchised in the 2000 presidential election. Thernstrom, author of an acclaimed 1987 book titled Whose Votes Count? Affirmative Action and Minority Voting Rights, might seem a welcome addition to the panel.

Commission Chairman Mary Frances Berry appeared to be anything but happy to see Thernstrom, however. Described in Salon as a "vitriolic brawler," Berry, a veteran civil rights figure, cut off the newly-sworn-in Thernstrom in mid-sentence as Thernstrom was introducing herself.

The Orlando Sentinel observed that Berry seemed "eager to assert her authority whenever Thernstrom had the floor."

When the commission's report, which claimed African-American voters had suffered "disfranchisement" in Florida, became public--before Thernstrom had a chance to see it--Thernstrom challenged its conclusions and methods. In an interview with TWQ, Thernstrom was candid about her struggles with Berry and the commission staff.

As she spoke on the telephone from her residence in Lexington, Massachusetts, to TWQ editor Charlotte Hays, Harvard's Winthrop Professor of History could be heard vacuuming in the background. Lucky lady!

TWQ: Diane McWhorter, author of Carry Me Home, Birmingham, Alabama, recently had a piece about Birmingham in the New York Times Magazine. It was about the trial of the last defendant in the 1963 bombing of the Birmingham church that killed four little girls. McWhorter seemed to be saying that, despite the outward civility, little had changed in Birmingham since the bombing. What do you make of this effort to deny real progress in racial matters?

THERNSTROM: The picture has changed radically, and it is time to acknowledge that fact. McWhorter is clearly becoming one of the darlings of the moment in the mainstream media, and I have liked some of her writings in the past. But she is profoundly wrong on this question. It is time for the New York Times and the chattering classes in general to wake up and celebrate how far we have come. Their message to whites seems to be: It's 10:00 a.m., and it's time for your daily five minutes of guilt. The mainstream media celebrate the voices of pessimists.

The Washington Post recently did some polling on racial attitudes and analyzed the results. In reporting on the poll, the Post essentially said, whites are in a state of deep denial; they don't see the radical racial inequality around them. In fact, the actual poll suggests even mote confidence in the level of opportunity in American society on the part of blacks than whites. Sixtyone percent of blacks, but only 46 percent of whites, said they believed their children would enjoy a higher standard of living than they did.

TWQ: In America in Black and White, you and your husband quote the journalist Brent Staples. When Staples was in the process of being hired by the New York Times, he said his editor wanted to know if he was "a faux Chevy Chase [Maryland] Negro or an authentic nigger," who had grown up "poor in the ghetto, besieged by crime and violence." There is a tendency for white intellectuals to insist that blacks be hostile.

THERNSTROM: That's true, but becoming less so, which is a sign of progress. I see a dawning recognition of the diversity within the group that we call "the black community," which is not a "community," given the diversity of black experience today. There is an increasing recognition of social class differences and of differences in political values among blacks, although the divisions are not yet reflected in election results.

TWQ: In your book, you point out that there was such improvement in test scores among black children between 1980 and 1988 that, had this rate of improvement continued, African-Americans and whites would now have the same test scores. What happened?

THERNSTROM: Nobody knows what happened to stop the progress, which doesn't, in fact, matter. We don't need to know the root causes of a problem in order to try and attack it. In the case of education, we know what good schools look like. But how to put them in place across the country? That's the tough question. The entire public education system is stacked against real change.