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� TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY YEAR i"""Rl�:U

COLLEGE
LIBRARY

18 1981
Editors: Margaret Cerullo, John Demeter, Rob Elias, Marla Erlien, Elizabeth Francis,
Goodman, Ann Holder, Donna Penn, Cynthia Peters, Ken Schlosser, Hassan Vakili, Deb
and Ann Withorn. Interns: William Hoynes, Diane Lorello, and Alan Spears.

Staff: John Demeter.

Associate Editors: Peter Biskind, Carl Boggs, Frank Brodhead, Paul Buhle, Jorge C.
Margery Davies, Ellen DuBois, Barbara Ehrenreich, John Ehrenreich, Phyllis Ewen,
Georgakas, Ted German, Martin Glaberman, Jeff Goldthorpe, Linda Gordon, Jim Green,
Hirsch, Allen Hunter, Joe Interrante, Mike Kazin, Ken Lawrence, Staughton Lynd, Mark Naison.
, Jim O'Brien, Bril'm Peterson, Sheila Rowbotham, James Stark, Gail Sullivan, Annmarie TrOlel',
Martha Vicinus, Stan Weir, David Widgery, and Renner Wunderlich.

Cover: Design by Nick Thorkelson

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The Editors

Vol.20, No.5 September-October 1986 (mailed June

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AMERICA
VOL. 20, NO.5

INTRODUCTION 2
BLUEPRINT FOR TOMORROW: 7
The Fight for community
control in Black and Latino Boston
Mauricio Gaston and Marie Kennedy

The Mandela Campaign: An Overview 23


Marie Kennedy and Chris Tilly

COMMUNITY & KINSHIP,


27
HISTORY & CONTROL:
Two organizers view development
and Boston's neighborhoods
Interview with Bob Terrell and Chuck Turner

IN SEARCH OF COMMON GROUND: 41


A Review Essay
James Green

Lukas' Morality Play 61


John Demeter

WINTER IN AMERICA 63
Notes on the media and race
John Demeter

ANTI-RACISTS AND OTHER DEMONS: 72


The Press and Ideology in
Thatcher's Britain
Nancy Murray

Poem: "Pioneering" 5
Susan Eisenberg
INTRODUCTION

Late this past spring, The Boston Globe ran a front page article that declared "Despite
recent outbreaks, racial attitudes have improved say civil rights advocates." After referring
to three recent incidents in the Boston area-an affirmative action challenge to an all-white
local Democratic Party ward committee, and white resistance to minor ity participation in
two athletic events-the article concluded that the city was well on its way to a recovery from
the racial turmoil accompanying school desegregation in the 1970s, shedding its image as
the "Little Rock of the North." It is interesting to note that the first two "civil rights ad­
vocates" cited in the article were white-and one, the author J. Anthony Lukas, lives in
New York. It was not until the third source quote that a person of color was cited .
Rather than s imply highlighting a local political peculiarity, the article, by its "framing" of
public understanding of racial issues, provides a window onto current media handling of
race and politics in communities of color. It is a subject that seems to have exploded within
the national press in the aftermath of incidents this winter in Howard Beach, New York and
Forsyth County, Georgia. One of the central questions , then, is this: How are we to under­
stand today's media coverage in a historical period characterized by the popularity of Lukas'
Pulitzer Prize winning story of Boston's busing wars, Common Ground, and the much cited

2
opus of William Julius Wilson, The Declining tion and judgment of its "authorities , " recent
Significance of Race? A second critical ques­ efforts around land control emerge as vibrant
tion, hinted at by the slant of the Globe article and complex. Thus we seek the voices of those
is , how do we get beyond the "official reality" pushing those initiatives. Mauricio Gaston and
projected by the largely white media, to unders­ Marie Kennedy's "Blueprint for Tomorrow"
tand the issues within the nation's minority details the long and varied history of efforts by
communities? In the midst of the battle to set Boston's minority community to stem the
the terms of the post Reagan agenda, which we speculative tide that first neglected, and now
are witnessing now, the effort to frame events, seeks to remake, their land-without them. As
and both to define social problems and propose the authors argue, the fight to control develop­
their solutions, takes on an added importance. ment of what has become some of the nation's
It was ironic that in the midst of the coverage most sought after real estate reflects a situation
of Howard Beach and Forsyth County, "Eyes played out in more and more of the nation's ur­
on the Prize," the PBS documentary of the ban areas .
American civil rights movement aired national­ In "Community & Kinship, History & Con­
ly. It served as a vivid reminder of that move­ trol , " longtime community activists Bob Ter­
ment's farreaching challenge to, and effect on, rell and Chuck Turner reflect on their ex­
the national body politic. With the memory of periences in those struggles and frame the fight
that transformation, it should have come as no for control as one with national implications
surprise that a key component of the resurgent and possibilities . The example of San Fran­
Right's agenda was the containment of the new cisco, where "development" has actually
social movements of that era. But with the resulted in a shrinkage of the city's black
Right's onslaught has also come a collapse of population, adds an urgency to this political
liberal politics-most noticeably around the arena. Both Turner and Terrell are members of
issue of race. The coronation of J. Anthony the Greater Roxbury N.eighborhood Authority,
Lukas, most noticeable in the Globe but echoed a group merging grassroots politics with a
in liberal and Left press as well, and the 1980s technological sophistication. Initially
generalized acceptance of an equating of black some in GRNA had reservations about the
and white people's situations, has been the Mandela approach. As Terrell indicates
most recent aspect of a liberal drift from the though, ultimately activists came to recognize
civil rights mobilization of two decades ago. the benefits of opening a second front around
As James Green details in his critical reading, full control over development. This flexibility,
"In Search of 'Common Ground ' , " the book rather than a rigid split which might have been
elevates the subsuming of race under class cur­ more likely in an earlier era, suggests the
rently in vogue with liberals and economic maturation of the black community's struggle
populists alike. In that sense, it reflects a recon­ around land control.
sideration of racial policies not only in Boston, Turner is clear that, in contrast with earlier
but nationally as well. decades, the black community more broadly
Perhaps the clearest reading of that develop­ understands that development without full
ment was witnessed in the reaction of Boston's political power spells underdevelopment . He
political and media institutions to the Mandela also questions whether this consciousness can
referendum campaign of 1 986. It was a reaction be moved beyond a pessimism or despair, if
which one black critic labelled "hysterical. " progressives cannot offer not only a vision but
For as much as Howard Beach and Forsyth literal blue-prints for people to work for an
County intruded on the projection of a "color alternative. Terrell suggests how developmental
blind" society, this grassroots campaign, which approaches rooted in the African and Carib­
drew on a nationalist political legacy and bean cultures might contribute to such
sought to reincorporate the predominantly blueprints. Projected outside the media's "of­
Third World neighborhoods of Boston into a ficial reality, " however, such developments are
separate city, exposed the city's alleged racial rarely understood or fully treated in the press.
"rehabilitation" as more style than substance. Hence, they remain separated from a broader
When we put aside the media's marginaliza- audience.

3
As John Demeter argues in "Winter in economic malaise, such scapegoating of
America: Notes on the media and race, " the "enemy within" has allowed the
recasting of America's racial experience, and of convenient, yet illusory, targets. While
the obscuring of black political history to which material in the British press finds a
Terrell refers, has been an important compo­ only in the "hard edge" of American
nent of the promulgation of a " color blind both institutions' frames serve to reflect
society ." The separati o n of current Reagan/Thatcher worldview of "national
developments, from a historical continuum fidence. " It is a confidence that is based on
serves to allow the media to see them as domestic targetting of those differing from the "
"atavisms " rather than as consistent patterns "traditions" and "morality" of the state. It is
and policies . Common Ground, with its refusal interesting to note the parallels to Commo"
to note the political struggles of Boston's black Ground's attack on anti-racists, however, and
community, embraces such a construct from a the media depiction of backers of the Mandela
liberal perspective. campaign as "racially divisive. " But as articles
In Britain, it is perhaps the absence of a mass in this issue detail, the primary social construct
civil rights movement such as that depicted in directed against blacks, in particular, can be
"Eyes on the Prize," that has left the space for seen in the US in media depictions of the family
the current racist media onslaught under That­ disintegration, crime, the decertifying of poll- >"
cher. As Nancy Murray describes in "Anti­ tical leadership and the delegitimation of'
Racists and other Demons, " the British press, challenges to "official reality. " Whether th '
without a legacy that has inhibited expressions British experience is a vision of future direc
of overt racism, has now moved to portray tions in US media and politics remains an ope
"anti-racists" as "black racists . " In a time of but alarming, question.

GUATEMALA

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TICH.OLOGY: TheTarn�
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-

Pioneering
for the women of '78

She had walked into their party uninvitea


wedging a welcome mat in the doorway
for other women she hoped would
follow along soon.
The loud ones argued
to throw her out immediately. Even her supporters
found her audacity annoying. But once they saw
she mingled with everyone
drank American beer
kept conversations going during awkward silences
helped clean up and thanked the host

and was backed up by law


the controversy
calmed.

She surprised them.


She was reliable.
She always gave her best.
She was invited back.
She became a regular­
always on the fringe
expected to help out
just a little more.

When she stopped coming


they were confused. Why now? Hadn't she
challenged custom? stared down rumors? ingratiated herself
years ago? so that now her presence was only
mildly discomforting. She never explained .

After all those years


hurling back cannonballs
womanizing the barricades
firing only if she saw the whites of their eyes
it was the lonesomeness
of pioneering
that broke her resistance.

All those silences


about what mattered
most in her life
had worn her,

like the slow eating away of acid on metal:


the damage only visible over time.

Susan Eisenberg, 1987

Susan Eisenberg is a poet, playwright and, since 1978, union elec­


trician (Local 103, I.B.E. W.). She is the author of It's a Good
Thing I'm Not Macho (Whetstone Press, 1984) and the play, 5
Mother Country.
Thanks few making America great.
BLUEPRINT FOR
TOMORROW
The fight for community control
in Boston's black and Latino
neighborhoods

Mauricio Gaston and Marie Kennedy

The story of Boston's Roxbury could be the story of almost any inner city minority neigh­
borhood in the United States . Roxbury has been the center of Boston 's black community
since World War II, and increasingly the center of the city's Latino community. Located on­
ly ten minutes by rapid transit from the city's growing downtown, it has suffered from disin­
vestment, abuse and neglect, both benign and malign. The people of Roxbury have ex­
perienced enormous disruption, loss of housing and industry at the hands of the market, and
inj ustice at the hands of the state, through urban renewal and highway clearance . All the
signs of intense poverty are evident-high unemployment, low participation in the labor
force, low educational levels, a high crime rate, flourishing drug traffic , and indicators like a
high drop-out rate from school and a high rate of teen-age pregnancy. Some of Roxbury's
census tracts are among the poorest in the country, on a par with the poorest counties in
Mississippi or with Indian reservations in the West (Boston Redevelopment Authority 1 984).
In one area of the community locally known as the "Bermuda Triangle , " 70 percent of the
housing stock has been lost to abandonment and arson in less than two decades (Colon
1 984). In the context of this disinvestment, and in resistance to it, the people of Roxbury
developed an impressive and creative history of organization, struggle , and development .

Opposite: Cabot St., Boston 's South End. Ellen Shub photo. 7
Yet, the biggest threat to Roxbury today is tion of the newly enhanced value of Roxbury's
not disinvestment but the danger of gentrifica­ land seems to require the removal of the black
tion and masssive displacement. This communi­ and Latino people and businesses that currently
ty, long bled dry of its wealth, is now faced with occupy the land. To understand these facts, it is
a flood of investment which can affect it as helpful first to consider the concepts of uneven
drastically and as brutally as the last forty years development and the distinction between
of drought. This threat is eliciting from the neighborhood and community, paying par­
community new forms of struggle and organiz­ ticular attention to the role of racism in these
ing, which may become a model for other ur­ concepts.
ban communities confronting a similar situa­ Understanding uneven development begins
tion. with the fact that capital flows to those places
where conditions are more favorable for accu­
An Analytical Framework mulation. Indeed, capitalist development and
underdevelopment are two sides of the same
Two central facts stand out about the recent coin, since the investment in one area generally
history of Roxbury. First, after World War II, depends on the draining of capital from
while the Boston area was transforming, reviv­ another area (Smith and Lefaivre 1984, 47).
ing, and finally booming, Roxbury became a This process of uneven development, which has
minority community and went into a drastic been well-studied in an international context,
physical and economic decline. Second, realiza- also takes place regionally and within a metro-

Jacob Holdt, 1985, from American Pictures.

8
politan area like Boston. rent actually capitalized with a given land use at
Uneven development does not occur, as some a specific location, and the ground rent that
would have it, "naturally," or simply as a could potentially be capitalized under a [dif­
result of the actions of the "invisible hand" of ferent] use at that location" (Smith and
the market. Rather, it is the result of the com­ Lefaivre 1984, 50). When a rent gap exists, a
bined actions of specific investors, bankers, neighborhood is ripe for a major transforma­
and politicians, which can be identified and tion: gentrification and displacement.
analyzed; in essence, the result of the capitalist But the neighborhood is also a place where
production of space (Smith 1984, 67-96). It is people live, organize themselves, study, repro­
facilitated by various branches of the state, duce themselves, their culture and ideas,
which insure that conditions are favorable to sometimes work, and generally make
the accumulation process. In the case of themselves into a community.
development within the city, urban planning is The needs of people in communities and the
often the process by which accumulation is needs of capital do not always coincide, and a
facilitated and legitimated (O'Connor 1973). struggle ensues. The community struggles to
In particular, communities of color are survive, to reproduce itself, to develop, and to
prevented from developing in part by racism. gain power over events affecting it. From the
Discrimination in economic life, education, point of view of capital, a community has a
housing, political activity, culture, the media, social function, mainly to reproduce labor
all militate against the efforts of blacks and power and social relations. Black and Latino
Latinos to develop their communities. The na­ communities in particular are subject to
tional and local states intervene in this situation pressures which maintain significant parts of
in various capacities. These various levels of the these communities as cheap labor (or a second­
state can enact reforms which legitimate the ary labor market) and as a reserve army of
status quo, or, as in recent actions of the labor in more or less permanent unemploy­
federal government, take measures to reinforce ment. Indeed, discriminatory pressures shape
the structures of discrimination. almost every aspect of life in communities like
As planners, we find the distinction between Roxbury, from choice of residence, to access to
neighborhood and community useful. Rox­ education and training, to relations between
bury, for example, can be analyzed in two police and community. This makes Roxbury,
ways, both of which are important to an under­ like the dozens of other Roxburys in US cities, a
standing of its unique role in the current trans­ ghetto (see, for example, Tabb 1970, Goldsmith
formation of Boston. It is a neighborhood, 1974).
meaning it has a particular location, is made up On the one hand, it is desirable for capital
of buildings and other supporting structures, that these communities function smoothly,
and occupies a piece of land. It is also a com­ without upsetting the established order, and
munity, specifically a black and Latino com­ certainly without disrupting the basic labor
munity, which means that it has a social and market flow. On the other hand, such a stable
political as well as a physical reality. community tends to generate consciousness of
The fate of a neighborhood, viewed as a its own oppressed condition, a sense of collec­
commodity, at a particular time depends on the tive self, networks of social support, creative
flow of capital to the built environment, which ideas, solidarity, and political power which
is regulated by financial institutions, and on the contradict the needs of capital to maintain the
ground rent structure, which determines the neighborhood as a pliable "free" commodity
location of investment. As the larger economy for the market (Smith and Lefaivre, 1984, p.
and city goes through downturns in accumula­ 46). A community is a subject as well as an ob­
tion, the neighborhood goes through a devalor­ ject.
ization cycle-from new construction, to land­
lord control, to blockbusting, to redlining, to Boston Rises, Roxbury Declines
abandonment-which results in a rent gap. By
rent gap is meant the "gap between the ground A brief history of recent economic changes in

9
City Life/Vida Urbana, Boston.

Roxbury and Boston reveals the transformation ment of large enterprises required constant
and revival of the Boston metropolitan area interaction among managers, financiers, and
and the simultaneous devastation of Roxbury. such outside experts as accountants, lawyers,
Boston emerged from World War II with pro­ and advertisers. The suburbs were not well
blems that came to be typical of northern indus­ suited for this kind of infrastructure. The cen­
trial cities-but these problems surfaced in tral city, if it could be reshaped to meet the
Boston twenty years earlier than in other merging needs of industry, was the only place
"Frostbelt" cities. Between 1947 and 1975, where the regional economy could be effective­
Boston manufacturing jobs decreased from ly coordinated. Besides, permanent capital
about 1 12, 000 to about 50, 000; concomitantly, investment in the city was too important to
wholesale and retail trade jobs fell from about abandon.
150, 000 to about 9 1, 000. The loss of jobs was New investment in Boston was facilitated by
accompanied by falling municipal revenues, major highway construction and by one of the
declining city services, deteriorating building most vigorous urban renewal programs in the
stock and infrastructure, and other signs of the US between 1952 and 1979. It gave away enor­
urban crisis. mous benefits to corporations willing to locate
While Boston itself languished, its suburbs offices downtown and cleared away large areas
boomed. The old pillars of Brahmin Boston, of "blight," meaning obsolete building struc­
the financial institutions and elite universities, tures and working-class residential areas
pushed the development of high-tech research situated where other functions had become
and production, fueled by the federal govern­ more desirable to capital. After about twenty­
ment's military spending. New industrial parks five years of these actions, enough public funds
dotted Boston 's postwar circumferential had been spent to create conditions for pro­
highway, Route 128. As the suburbs boomed fitable private investment. Capital began to
and whites left the city in droves, the migration flow back to the city in the late 1970s.
of people of color to the central city, particular­ In charge of this process was the Bosto n
ly from the southern United States, increased Redevelopment Authority (BRA), given a
dramatically and the suburbs were closed to peculiar dual function recommended by the
them. Boston Chamber of Commerce: the BRA was
The return of investment to Boston itself the planning and redevelopment arm of city
came with the recognition that its future lay in government (King 1981, 22). The agency's cen­
administration and finance rather than in tralized power was symbolic of the changing
manufacturing and trade. The central manage- nature of Boston politics and marked the city's
-

to

---
entrance into a period of professionalized land parcels, "a little more than half is tax ex­
management. empt, largely publicly held, and of this, half is
While the postwar transformation revived vacant" (Boston Redevelopment Authority
the Boston region, it crippled Roxbury. As a 1984).
low-income community of color, Roxbury ex­
perienced fully the negative side of uneven The Community Organizes
development. The "invisible hand" of the
private sector led the assault with massive dis­ Roxbury the neighborhood-a collection of
investment, redlining, arson, and abandon­ land and buildings, housing and businesses­
ment. Between 1950 and 19MO, Roxbury's declined sharply between the 1950s and the
population decreased by 57 percent (Roxbury 1980s. What of Roxbury the community? The
Technical Assistance Project 1986). Roxbury's last thirty years in the history of Roxbury have
housing stock, by now mostly 75 to 100 years been a rich legacy of struggle, organizing,
old, was generally in need of serious repair, but leadership, organizational development, and
as far as banks were concerned Roxbury pro­ consciousness-raising. The very same forces
perty provided no equity. Not only were tenants that oppressed and damaged the community in­
forced out by landlords who milked and then fluenced the forms of resistance that Roxbury
burned buildings, but even many developed to defend itself. The process of self­
homeowners-typically with fully paid-off defense included struggle for civil rights, par-
mortgages-were forced to abandon their
homes because they could not finance necessary
repairs (Kennedy 197 8).
Part of the economic pressure on the housing
stock was. due to the fact that proportionately
higher property taxes were levied in Roxbury
than in any other part of the city. A 1974 study
showed that while Boston's tax liability as a
whole would increase by 20 percent under
market-value assessment, Roxbury's liability
would qrop by 27 percent (Holland & Oldman
1974, 15). In return for higher taxes, Roxbury
got strikingly poor services: "Whole areas, par­
ticularly in Lower Roxbury, were allowed by
the city government to deteriorate. Vacant
buildings were torn down, dumping garbage
was permitted in Madison Park. . . " ("Mov­
ing in Boston" 1980, 5). This did not happen by
accident. It was deliberate public policy to
"triage" neighborhoods, concentrating services
in middle-class areas and particularly neglecting
those neighborhoods occupied by people of col­
or-specifically Roxbury, Dorchester, and
Mattapan (McDonough 1975).
Today 30.5 percent of Roxbury's population
is below the poverty line, and more than one
quarter of Roxbury's families have no worker,
despite large family size and relatively few
elderly. Roxbury has a homeownership rate of
only 20 percent, and 53 percent of all housing
and 73 percent of all rental housing is subsi­
dized (Gaston & Kennedy 1985, 13, 21-22). Of the George Williams photo, Dorchester, Mass.

II
ticularly against school segregation, for hous­ the Black United Front's Operation STOP, a
ing, jobs and services, against highway and ur­ coalition of metropolitan scope, the Southwest
ban renewal displacement, and for political Corridor Coalition, was formed. This forma­
representation and power. tion included inner city black neighborhoods
The forms of expression of this political and white working-class suburban
development have been diverse, forming what neighborhoods, both concerned about loss of
black leader Mel King ( 1981) has called a jobs and housing, along with wealthy suburbs
"chain of change." Given the central role where residents worried about preserving
played by education in reproducing social rela­ "suburban tone" and environmentalists were
tions and the peculiar character of the Boston concerned about the loss of wetlands. This
School Department (the last patronage strong­ somewhat unlikely coalition became powerful
hold of the old Irish populist machine), the enough to force Republican Governor Sargent
struggle for equal and high quality education to call a 1970 moratorium on highway construc­
has evolved over decades and has been central tion in the metropolitan area and eventually to
to the recent development of Boston black redefine the region's transportation plans en­
politics. Efforts by blacks (and later, Latinos tirely. This struggle even had a national impact;
and Asians) to gain access to jobs have been a the coalition was instrumental in the release of
second key area of struggle. Federal Highway Trust Funds (from gasoline
An important component of these struggles taxes) to finance public transit (Gaston 1981).
was the black community's increased capacity The Southwest Corridor Project, a coalition
to generate coalitions, including interracial of city, state and metropolitan agencies, was
coalitions, with other forces in the city and formed to develop the land originally cleared for
metropolitan area. In the late sixties, demo­ the highway for a new rapid transit line. Under
lition began in Roxbury for two new major pressure of groups originally organized to stop
highways, Interstate 95 and an inner city the highway, and elaborate participatory
circumferential road called the Inner Belt. Led planning process was developed for the huge
partly by Chuck Turner, who represented project. Ongoing movements have wrested con-

LNS, AI/ston neighborhood of Boston, 1960s.


-

12
siderable reforms from the Southwest Corridor
Project (e.g., affordable housing and a new
campus for Roxbury Community College).
Until several years ago, blacks and Latinos
were able to have little impact in Boston's elec­
toral arena. While some blacks were elected to
represent Boston districts in the State
legislature, the "at-large" municipal election
system and the grip of a series of machines
dominated by Irish and Italian ethnic groups
served to block blacks from municipal office.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, black activists
ran candidate after candidate, but with meager
results. The NAACP 's Tom Atkins, elected to
the City Council for one term in 197 1, was the
first black elected to a Boston municipal office
in this century; no other black was to follow un­
til 1977. No Latino even ran for office until
1979, and to date, only one has been elected (to
the School Committee).
But in the years since 1977, significant
achievements have been made in electoral © 1978 Punch/Rothco.
politics. The Black Political Task force, formed
in 1978, has become an organization whose wealth, with racial disparities increasing
endorsement is sought by white as well as black (Boston Redevelopment Authority 1984, 5).
candidates. Boston's electorate voted in 198 1 to The city has a changing labor force, a
reform municipal government, instituting downtown investment boom, and a growing
representation by districts in the School Com­ population of yuppies gentrifying its neighbor­
mittee and City Council, and half a dozen black hoods.
candidates have made the breakthrough into Roxbury, on the other hand, has had "the
elected office. Most significant, a black pro­ short end of the stick" in the transformation of
gressive candidate, Mel King, was propelled in­ Boston. As a community, it suffered a
to the final election for mayor in 1983, and, disproportionate part of the loss in old in­
although he was ultimately defeated by a large dustrial jobs, while gaining access to only the
margin, Boston's black and Latino com­ worst among the new ones. As a neighborhood,
munities emerged from the campaign with in­ it was scarred by the demolition for highways
creased political clout. and urban renewal. It suffered through forty
In summary, the period since World War II years of disinvestment with the accompanying
has been a trying one in the city. For the domi­ abandonment and arson, and yet it strength­
nant groups in the city, who tend to speak in the ened its culture and identity, and began to build
name of "Boston," the period was a difficult a serious political base.
transition from an outdated and obsolete city to
one which is "modernized" to the point where New Pressures for Investment
Stephen Coyle, the new director of the Boston Over the past several years, the combination
Redevelopment Authority (BRA), boosts it as of continued pressures for investment in Boston
the "best performing economy, not just in the with the limits to downtown growth has led to
country, but in the whole world" (Menzies consideration of Roxbury as a new target for
1985a). The combined result of a series of business development. In 1984, according to
transformations and policies has been a pros­ Boston's mayor Ray Flynn, $3 billion in new
perous economy, but one tending towards a construction was invested in the downtown,
more uneven distribution of income and mostly into first class office towers. But Boston

13
few other properties downtown to sell for
premium prices. The state legislature is unlikely
to provide such assistance except for emergen­
cies. The administration has to continue to pro­
mote new investment to generate municipal
revenues.
In short, the pressure to invest is enormous,
and the downtown is approaching its limits.
BRA director Coyle's strategy is to continue at­
tracting investment, but limit development
downtown, funneling it instead into the existing
open land nearest to downtown (Menzies 1984,

I
1985b). The situation can be compared to the
,

controlled explosion of an internal combustion


engine: there is a sudden violent expansion of
the activities now concentrated downtown, but

I
there are strong constraints against the expan­
sion. The energy has to be directed somewhere.
Roxbury is located minutes away from the
central business district, with easy access to
public transportation and major regional high­
ways. This, along with Roxbury's large amount
of publicly held (and largely vacant) land,
would seem to make an ideal new turf for
capital. In this context, in early 1985, the BRA
released a "Dudley Square Plan" and Flynn's
African Meeting House, Smith Court, about 1860.
new BRA director, Stephen Coyle, announced
that he had lined up twenty-one developers with
is an old city. The downtown building boom $750 million to invest in the Dudley Station
has strained the infrastructure and physical area (the commercial, transportation and
capacity of the central city to its limits and cultural center of Roxbury).
threatened its historical legacy. Traffic jams are
legendary in the two harbor-crossing tunnels Implications of the BRA Plan
and in the downtown Central Artery, and park­
ing capacity within the city is woefully inade­ The BRA plan, produced with virtually no
quate for current demands. There is little pros­ community involvement and kept secret until
pect for large amounts of additional develop­ its release, has several major components:
ment downtown.
Simultaneously, there is an ongoing fiscal • Development of Dudley Square into a his­
crisis of the local state. In 1979, a statewide torical town center, with the station reno­
plebiscite passed Proposition 2Y2, modeled vated into a "Galeria."
after California's ProposItIon 13. ThIS law • A high-rise "business park," with an initial
limits growth in real estate taxes to 2 Y2 percent 750,000 sq. ft. of space for offices, shop­
of the assessed value of property, the major ping and a 500 car garage.
source of municipal revenue. Boston has been • Converting the Orchard Park public hous­
kept afloat financially through carefully ing development into cooperatives.
negotiated assistance packages from the state • Construction of new single family housing
legislature, and by selling valuable downtown affordable for families earning "as little as
property, such as parking garages, to $20,000 a year."
developers, which has only exacerbated the in­
adequacy of the infrastructure. There are, The BRA claims that this proposed devel op­
however, no more publicly owned garages and ment in Roxbury would not cause displacement
-

14
since new construction would be mostly short run, almost all of them people of color,
restricted to currently vacant land. Although into a housing market with a vacancy rate of
this policy will limit the immediate direct less than 1 percent and with the lowest income­
displacement, indirect displacement, if not con­ to-rent ratio in the country. The longer-range
trolled, will be drastic. A quick analysis of displacement would be far worse, since many
potential residential displacement shows that subsidized units not currently on the auction
the danger is severe. block are in financial trouble and could expect
The mere talk of a $7')0 million wave of in­ a similar fate in a few years.
vestment has alread) accelerated specula­ Displacement in public housing is a
tion in the private housing market and arson. somewhat different problem. There are nearly
The Boston Arson Prevention Commission 2000 units of family public housing in Roxbury;
( 1986) recently released a report showing an over 200 of these units are currently vacant,
alarming increase in the number of suspicious awaiting repairs. Overall, the condition of most
fires near Dudley since the BRA announce­ of Boston's public housing is so deplorable and
ment. Homeowners in the area report the the federal posture towards increased, or even
almost daily receipts of slips under the door continuing, subsidies so negative that what has
from realtors urging them to sell; in classic traditionally been the most secure stock of low
blockbusting fashion, some of these slips allude income housing is now in jeopardy. The BRA
to the threat of an influx of Latinos in tradi­ plan suggests that the 7oo-plus units in the Or­
tionally black neighborhoods. Every week there chard Park public housing development be
is talk of another dilapidated triple decker sold for turned into tenant cooperatives. Unless the op­
enormous sums of money. An eighteen unit block tion includes limited equity, it would be dif­
of apartments was auctioned in 1980 for ficult for the current low-income residents to
$ 15, 000, renovated and recently sold for resist selling in a lucrative market.
$400, 000. In two years, the manager expects it The housing component of the BRA plan,
to be worth twice that on the market (Kaufman called "Building the American Dream," ad­
1985). Given the low rate of homeownership, dresses the construction of only 1200 new units,
the displacement of tenants in this sector has in addition to the conversion of public housing
already begun, before major corporate invest­ to homeownership. By totally writing down the
ment even starts. Some commercial property in cost of the land, using factory-built construc­
the Dudley station area is already increasing in tion methods and piggy-backing every available
value by 50 percent every few months. subsidy, the BRA argues that the units could be
While displacemnet in the open private

AMS
market is most difficult to control under cur­
C ORN ER
HEALTH
rent laws and conditions, the semi-public
market of subsidized units fares little better.
These units make up a large percentage of hous­
ing in the neighborhood, and a substantial per­
C E N TER
centage of them are in financial trouble, as they
are throughout the country. The Department of
Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is
under contract to continue subsidies for 15
years, but it has also gone to Congress to re­
quest a change in regulations allowing the
federal government to strip foreclosed proper­
ties of the subsidies, and to permit their disposi­
tion in the open market with no guarantee of
affordability or security of tenure for tenants.
Although observers believe it is unlikely that
Congress would grant HUD this request, poten­
tially 10, 000 people could be displaced in the
Dorchester Community News photo.

'r

15
affordable by households earning "as little as decade: hotels and office towers. Little research
$20, 000 a year." According to the BRA's own has been done exploring alternatives for job
figures, median household income in Roxbury creation and no attention has been paid to the
was only $4515 in 1980 (Boston Redevelopment community's work preferences.
Authority 1984). And, the number of black For a neighborhood like Roxbury, which has
households in the entire metropolitan area with been suffering from disinvestment for decades,
an annual income in the $20, 000 range is the prospect of investment, especially on the
relatively small. According to the 1980 census, scale proposed, may appear to some like relief
only 20,545 black households earned over from a drought. But working-class com­
$ 15,000 per year in the entire metropolitan munities of color have insisted on gaining some
area. If, as the BRA plan suggests, Roxbury is control of the process, understanding that the
to be repopulated to 1960 levels (over twice the current investment wave has the potential to
present population), the question arises as to displace enormous numbers of people to the
whether it will remain primarily a community point of transforming the population of the
of color. neighborhood. This wave has the potential of
The problem of job creation through destroying the community in order to "save"
development in Roxbury has been a primary the neighborhood.
concern of Roxbury's leaders for years and is
perhaps the single most important issue facing
the community. The proposed BRA plan pur­
ports to create the kinds of workplaces which
have been the staple of Boston's growth in this

16
Community Power and Inclusiveness: first point, focusing on a specific plan at this
The Organizing Committee for a Greater point in the planning process would have meant
Roxbury Neighborhood Authority narrowing the debate to the level of nitpicking
-necessary prior questions would never be
Community activists responded to this BRA posed; OCGRNA refused to get trapped into an
threat by intensifying their efforts to build a agenda set by the BRA which would have effec­
broad-based community coalition that could tively derailed a truly inclusionary process and
control development in Greater Roxbury. At a would have channeled all energy to crafting
press conference held on Frederick Douglas compromises about inessential disagreements
Day, February 14, 1985, the Organizing Com­ (e.g., whether office buildings would be fifteen
mittee for a Greater Roxbury Neighborhood or twenty stories-not whether there would be
Authority (OCGRNA) was formally launched. any office building; whether owner-occupied
The OCGRNA demanded a moratorium on housing would be detached or duplex, not
land disposition until a degree of popular parti­ whether more cooperative forms of ownership
cipation and control could be established. Their might be appropriate). Thirdly, the BRA plan
position was (and is, in large part) based on only addressed development in a small part of
several factors. First, the fact that the planning the Greater Roxbury area, whereas the community
process had been undemocratic meant that the faces crucial community development and
questions posed for the plan to answer were so political issues in many areas of Greater Rox­
narrow that various alternatives dealing with bury. OCGRNA recognized that specific
job creation, housing, and financing were never development decisions in one area would affect
even explored. Secondly, and building on the -positively or negatively-the development

Disruption oj John Brown Memorial Meeting at Tremont Temple, 1860.

17
possibilities of the broader community and t o it.
therefore should not be taken in isolation. Twelve "Agreed Upon Principles" emerged
OCGRNA called for a geographically more in­ from the negotiations; their nature has national
tegrated, coordinated, and community­ significance as a model and precedent for com­
controlled planning process, with powers of munity controlled development. Although the
decision-making placed in the hands of the PAC was not accorded veto power over plans
various sectors in the numerous Greater Rox­ or on selection of developers, it did negotiate
bury neighborhoods. impressive powers which are worth detailing:
The OCGRNA is an extremely broad coali­
tion, embracing blacks and Latinos, merchants
and ministers, politicians and community
organizers, public housing tenants and small 1 . Establishment of an interim PAC- 1 3 members
landlords. In the past year and one-half, already elected by the community; 8 appointed
by mayor.
OCGRNA has balanced its efforts between
2. The PAC will hold community elections in one
concrete planning, grassroots organizing, and year.
coalition building. Perhaps its most significant 3 . The PAC will be the public participatory body
organizing and coalition-building efforts had to for the area and shall set development objectives
do with the negotiations over control of and criteria.
development in the area around Dudley Sta­ 4. All requests for proposals (RFP's) issued by the
BRA for planning or development will require
tion. The BRA, impressed by the level of PAC approval prior to issuance. The PAC will
popular support harnessed by the OCGRNA, approve all criteria and objectives induding type
floated a proposal to create a Project Advisory of use, size, income mix, resident and minority
Committee (PAC) with members appointed by job requirements, resident and minority equity
the mayor and only advisory power over participation, etc.
5. Any comprehensive zoning revision or planning
development. The OCGRNA countered by
for the area will require PAC approval.
organizing constituency caucuses of small mer­ 6. Any other BRA action which alters criteria or
chants, clergy, tenants, neighborhood associa­ specifications will require PAC approval.
tions, community development corporations, 7. Any BRA action or advice which affects
and other groups, identifying representatives development in the area, induding choice of
developers, will also be reviewed by the PAC.
from each sector, and presenting them for
Any differences between the PAC and the BRA
ratification at a Roxbury "town meeting" of staff will be subject to attempts at mediation . If
over 500 people, as a popularly elected "interim differences are unresolved, both the PAC and
PAC" which would serve until broader elec­ the BRA staff will present their recommenda­
tions could be held (it was hoped, within six tions to the BRA Board.
8. BRA will provide full and timely notice to the
months). This interim PAC was presented to
PAC of any planning or development proposals ,
the mayor as an unavoidable presence, and he actions, etc.
was unable to create his own appointed front. 9. The BRA will provide all relevant information,
The "interim PAC" won the grudging studies, maps, etc. in a full and timely manner.
recognition of city officials and entered into to .There will be an interagency agreement between
the PAC and all City departments .
negotiations with the BRA and the mayor. The
I 1 .Project Review Committees (PRC's) will coor­
city accepted the thirteen people whom the dinate with the PAC. PAC representatives will
community had elected as legitimate members sit on all future PRC's.
of the PAC but insisted on the appointment by 12. BRA will supply technical assistance, place, and
the mayor of eight additional people. Perhaps budget (amount to be worked out) to PAC.

the greatest initial victory for OCGRNA was


that the publicity achieved in the process of
electing the "interim PAC" threw a spotlight Mayor Flynn was politically pressured into
on the city's land give-away which embarrassed public support for the agreement-announcing
the city into reinstating the de facto in October 1985, in front of television cameras
moratorium on land disposition, although, in and more than 500 people convened by the
principle, the city continued to refuse to agree OCGRNA, that "we have a deal." Speedy im-

18
The PAC countered by inviting the mayoral ap­
pointees to participate with other PAC
members in a lawsuit to demand that the BRA
cease its redevelopment efforts until certain
legal requirements were met. In a spirit of com­
munity solidarity, most of the mayor's ap­
pointees agreed to joint the suit against the
BRA; later pressure forced some to back out,
but the fact that the mayor couldn't initially
control even his own appointees is instructive.
Among other strategies discussed at the
PAC's town meeting, aside from the lawsuit,
were the possibilities of erecting a "tent city"
on a key site, organizing takeovers of city­
owned buildings, and a major "hands across
Roxbury" demonstration with national
political figures. A Roxbury homeowners com­
mittee was formed and the first of several
c i t y w i d e m e e t i n g s of a b o u t t w e n t y
neighborhood groups engaged i n development
efforts was held at the initiation of the PAC.
These groups, representing all of Boston's
neighborhoods except South Boston and West
Roxbury, have now formed the Coalition for
Community Control of Development and are
considering joining the lawsuit. In a tactical
maneuver around the BRA's source of power,
State Representative Gloria Fox of Roxbury in­
troduced a bill in the state legislature which
aims to create elected neighborhood authorities

"Take It Now, " collage, Kay Brown 1968- 71.


which would bypass municipal structures and
democratize community development.
plementation of the agreement was expected,
but Stephen Coyle, BRA director, kept refusing Parcel 18: What's at Stake?
to put the issue to a vote of his Board. In the
meantime, the BRA continued to plan and to The controversy over Parcel I8-the largest
negotiate with developers. It became clear to development parcel of· the Southwest Cor­
PAC that the BRA had no intention of honor­ ridor-provides an interesting case study, fur­
ing the agreement, but was instead using the ther illuminating aspects of the struggle over
negotiations as a smoke screen behind which to development in Roxbury. Over the last ten
engage in closed-door planning. The PAC years, the Parcel 18 Task Force, a coalition of
decided to directly lobby and pressure the BRA tenants, community development corporations,
Board to vote on the agreement; this effort black developers, agencies, and abutting in­
yielded a negative vote of the Board. The BRA stitutions, has been researching, planning, and
had now officially reneged on the agreement. exploring development alternatives for the site.
Another town meeting was called by the PAC After ten years, considerable work had been
'f
,"
to present the situation to the community and done and was presented to BRA representatives
to explore alternatives for action. In the week for review. Their response: "Thank you for
before this town meeting, Flynn exercised his your input"; they then proceeded to unveil a
option to appoint eight new people to the PAC fully developed plan, quite different from
in another attempt to manipulate the situation. anything the Task Force had had in mind. This

19
Cityscape, painted by Charles Trainor, 1982, Allston, Mass.

plan consists of two 30 story towers, 600 , 000 in two projects with projected total project
square feet of office space with adjacent com­ costs of over $409 million is large enough to
mercial space, parking, and related uses. satisfy the promises (Boston Redevelopment
(Boston Redevelopment Authority 1986, 95, Authority 1986, 140).
96).
The BRA's parcel design is based on an ex­ Evidence of Development-Related Arson
tension of the city's new service economy of of­
fice towers into the neighborhood. While the An even more chilling example of how far the
BRA has planned significant minority equity BRA is prepared to go in defending its role and
and participation in jobs, the PAC argues that prerogatives in the redevelopment of Roxbury
the parcel should be conceived as an extension is offered by the response of the BRA to the re­
of the economy of Roxbury, not of downtown cent report of the Boston Arson Prevention
and that something other than towers of "back­ Commission on the alarming increase in arson
office" space must be built. Light industry, in Roxbury following the announcement of the
small commercial space, and student housing BRA's Dudley Square Plan. BRA Director
are some of the proposals that they feel bear in­ Stephen Coyle led a virulent attack on the
vestigation. Meanwhile, the BRA has extended credibility of the Commission's work, calling
promises of equity participation to non-Task them "bozos" and insisting that they "improve
Force members; the PAC feels that the BRA is [their] methodology or resign" (Frisby 1986).
using this wedge to buy people off and to split He was adamantly opposed to the report's fin­
the community. So many Roxbury residents ding of a connection between arson and
have been offered "a piece" of Parcel 18 that development, because exposing such a connec­
the question arises as to whether even the tion would "endanger planned redevelopment"
BRA's proposal of 25 percent minority equity and "hamper potential financing" (Frisby
-

20
1986). Besides pressuring the Commission's The neighborhood concerned is located just
director to resign, the mayor has proceeded to west of Dudley Station. It has a population of
stack the Commission itself with appointees ex­ about 1 5 ,000, including Afro-Americans, Cape
pected to be more pliable to the mayor's and Verdeans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and
the BRA's position. Although no one in their other Latinos. It's probably the poorest neigh­
right mind would justify arson, the BRA, in borhood in Roxbury aside from public housing
pretending that arson is simply a law enforce­ projects such as Orchard Park which it borders.
ment problem, has acted to undermine a The infamous "Bermuda Triangle" lies within
vigorous opposition to it, particularly in trying the DSNI area as does much other land cleared
to discredit the statistical data that indicates a through arson and disinvestment. In fact, in the
connection between arson, speculation, and area's 1 liz square miles, there are over 1000
development. parcels of vacant land, most of it owned by the
Some of the most creative energy generated City of Boston (Dudley Street Neighborhood
by the fight-back in Roxbury is taking shape Initiative 1986) .
with less relative visibility in various smaller The DSNI grew out of a series of meetings
neighborhoods. Of these localized efforts, the held in 1984 of the area's various human service
Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI) agencies. The Rainbow Coalition and the 1983
stands out as a particularly interesting example Mel King mayoral campaign can be largely
and an indication of trends in local efforts. In credited with helping to move these agencies
fact, GRNA considers DSNI a good example of beyond their former willingness to cooperate to
the type of planning effort they hope will evolve their current development of the trust necessary
in every district of Roxbury. to pJ;m joint strategy. Because of this in-

Blossoming of Technical Assistance

office have taken on many of the utility cases in the


intensity and high quality of political activity Eviction Free Zone. A profile of human service pro­
meJrat(�a in the community is paralleled by a wave of grams for a part of Roxbury has been completed and
fessional and technical activity in support of that a detailed demographic profile of the Dudley
While academia in general has been retreating Neighborhood Initiative area has been computerized
the type of field-based projects initiated in the in a spreadsheet.
the College of Public and Community Service The Legal Services Center has begun work on a
at the University of Massachusettsl data base of all real estate transactions in Roxbury.
torl-wnere both the authors teach-has been the data base is being designed sO that it can be used
the opposite direction and finding the ef­
and rewarding. Beginning with Dudley in
interactively for statistical analysis as well. The Evic­
tion Free Zone Coalition, in conjunction with faculty
groups of faculty and students at CPCS have at CPCS Center for Community Planning has also
in" nl'vp£1 in various ways in studying and giving generated a Technical Support Group (TSG). In its
assistance to community efforts in Rox­ initial stages, the TSG looks to harness technicians to
Roxbury Technical Assistance Project research and provide services in five areas: tenure
'AF·-Idir.:ct(�d by Gaston) has combined classes and equity; development; construction and labor;
instruction in such areas as Community finance; and organizing. Already the Eviction Free
Human Services, Criminal Justice and
AP helped research demographics and
Zone is generating victories for tenants fighting evic­
tions; buildings are being converted into limited equi­
housing profile of Roxbury, held seminars ty cooperatives (Ball 1986). Technical support has
ganizirlg for community activists, developed a facilitated these efforts.
Plan" for the Dudley PAC, generated The main limitation to these various efforts to
non-speculative homeownership, assisted develop assistance has been lack of resources.
Committee of OCGRNA to write a Despite lack of resources, the community struggle
and present it at a "town meeting, " has generated considerable creative activity in pro·
with MIT students t o write a profile of fessional circles which is itself a reflection of decades
firms of the major industrial area near of capacity-building in communities of color and
the New Market Square Area. RTAP among progressive forces. In some ways, people are
CPCS faculty) have acted as counsel for better situated to make a difference now than twenty
PAC, legal education classes have carried years ago, in the heyday ot anti-urban renewal strug­
on the powers of administrative agencies
�vellopme:nt and the CPCS student-staffed law
gles. This seems ironic in the light of the conservative
climate invading urbanism.

21
clusiveness, skillful political and technical them cities moved into locations abandoned by
leadership, and the fact that the DSNI area has a labor force which had fled the city in similar
been the focus of much recent struggle in Rox­ conditions throughout the country. Disinvest­
bury, the DSNI has managed to obtain signifi­ ment, whether planned (as in Roxbury's history
cant resources from business-supported foun­ of redlining) or market driven, is a common
dation. condition among black and Latino neighbor­
A director and full time staff of four have hoods. The majority of vacant land in Roxbury
been hired and they have recently released a was in fact created through national, not local,
well-developed request for proposals (backed programs of "blight removal," urban renewal,
by $ 100,000) for comprehensive physical, and highway construction. The "triaging" of
social, economic development, and housing services is a national practice for the period.
planning. A campaign to stop dumping of gar­ The concentration of publicly assisted housing
bage and hazardous waste on the neigh­ now in danger of losing subsidies is a national
borhood's vacant lots is well underway. Much problem.
of DSNI's organizing and planning work is But, if new forms of abuse are taking shape
done in cooperation with other groups in the in Boston and Roxbury, so are new forms of
area. Currently DSNI is working with the Or­ resistance and struggle. Central to the recent ef­
chard Park United Tenants Association to op­ fort has been the Organizing Committee for a
pose plans for a new prison and a waste-to­ Greater Roxbury Neighborhood Authority. In
energy plant proposed for location in the in­ its vision of class alliances and its call for repre­
dustrial zone adjacent to the neighborhood. sentation by "sector" (tenants, homeowners,
DSNI organizers are amongst the most active in clergy, agencies, small business owners), it
the Eviction Free Zone Coalition. reflects the lessons in unity of past struggles and
political campaigns. In its effort to think in
Lessons for Other Cities terms of neighborhood and local organizing, it
reflects a growing trend by oppressed groups in
The current situation of Roxbury may have this country to "localize" their efforts in order
some peculiarities, but it is in many ways symp­ to mobilize their bases. In its potential for ac­
tomatic of the current situation of working tually delivering some popular victories in the
class communities of color in major US cities. 1980s, it is a fountain of hope.
Chief among the similarities they face is the
problem of racism. It is a central determinant
of the condition of life for neighborhoods like
Roxbury, permeating every aspect of their
economy, demographic structure, institutional
environment, and political situation. It created A t the time this article was written, Mauricio
the ghetto, and rendered its occupants Gaston and Marie Kennedy were both faculty
vulnerable to the abuses of the market and the members of the Center for Community Plan­
state. When conditions determine that the ghet­ ning UMasslBoston 's College of Public and
to is no longer desirable to the powers that be, Community Service. Both were longtime com­
its dissolution is facilitated, or perhaps more munity activists and worked with the Roxbury
likely, its atomization and dispersal into Technical Assistance Project to aid the Rox­
separate smaller concentrations less likely to bury community in the fight against displace­

I
generate resistance and political power. Since ment. Mauricio died on Sept. 13, 1986. A
racism is gaining in strength in recent years, it is notice appeared in Vol. 20, No. 2-3 of RA.

I!
more likely that other centers of black and Marie is continuing her work at the college and
Latino concentrations will find themselves . in the community.
under more vigorous attack in the near future.
Roxbury'S location and its proximity to the A longer version of this article will be appearing
I growing Central Business District is also no in Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geograph y,
anomaly. Black and Latino migrations to nor- Vol. 19, No. 2.

-
I 22
Tbe Mandela Campaign: A Summary Marie Kennedy and Cbris Tilly

On November 4th of last year, close to 50,000 GRIP appealed for votes based on several ra­
citizens of Boston living in or near the predominantly tionales: reversing the decades of racist neglect ex­
black area of Greater Roxbury voted on whether the perienced by Roxbury, controlling the impending
area should leave Boston and incorporate as a sepa­ flood of investment, and simply gaining accountable
rate municipality to be called Mandela, in honor of government . Although the reincorporation strategy
South African black leaders Nelson and Winnie clearly draws on black nationalism, GRIP often
Mandela. The separation proposal-technically a adopted moderate and even " all-American"
non-binding proposal to "de-annex and reincor­ rhetoric : GRIP's main position paper begins, "Inde­
porate" Roxbury, which was until 1 868 an indepen­ pendence. It is as much a part of the Massachusetts
dent town-whipped up a storm of controversy. spirit as it is the American one, if not more so. "
Boston city officials damned it as " economically GRIP's literature emphasized, "Our community is
preposterous and at worst, a program of racial integrated and our city will be, too. "
separation. " The Greater Roxbury Incorporation The second group of actors, the Boston white
Project (GRIP), sponsors of the Mandela initiative, establishment, reacted with a self-righteous anger
maintained, "We want land control because land born of wounded liberalism . Boston's leading daily
control is the key to self-determination. " The separa­ newpaper, The Boston Globe, in a near-hysterical
. tion referendum was defeated by a 3 to 1 margin. outpouring unprecedented since the 1 970s racial
the proposal rekindled a debate that has violence associated with busing, published by our
·.<I'rnm,pr.>tI in US black communities for over a hun­ count at least twelve negative articles on Mandela in
: can the black community (or any other the three weeks preceding the election. The articles
.nu:nuIuty of color) better achieve well being by included two editorials and two signed columns,
simlilat:ion into the white society, or by establishing charging Mandela advocates with "deceitfulness, "
control over development? The "negativism, untruths, and confusion, " making
that rocked Boston in the month "loud, angry charges," being "hostile and divisive, "
r��dirlg the vote on Mandela hold lessons for com- and "promot{ing] racial segregation." The G/obe,
of color across the country. along with other opponents of Mandela, persisted in
calling the reincorporation proposal "secession," a
term which GRIP rejected. The Phoenix, Boston's
leading alternative weekly, joined the Globe in
groups of actors played the most important deploring Mandela.
the drama of the Mandela referendum: the City officials were not to be outdone in the rush to
of the Mandela idea, the Boston denounce reincorporation for Roxbury. Rev. Bruce
which sharply attacked the idea, and Wall, a critic of Mandela, told a Phoenix reporter
COJUec:tion of black leaders and activists who end- that he had never seen Mayor Flynn so angry over an
taking different sides on the issue. issue. A typical comment from Flynn was, "We
people, public television producer Andrew should not slam the door on the future to make up
and architect/urban planner Curtis Davis, for the problems of the past. " Flynn's administra­
the Greater Roxbury Incorporation Project tion released a report that projected Mandela would
Inspired by the incorporation of mainly- run an annual deficit of over $135 million. In the
. East Palo Alto, which became a town in 1 983 , month before the election, city workers were in­
started a breakfast discussion group, then in structed to assume any inquiries about Roxbury
called on Mayor Flynn to hold a plebiscite in (e.g., about assessments and land disposition) were
the question of forming a separate ci­ coming from Mandela supporters and they were to
Flynn refused, they gathered the 5,000 withhold information until after the election. Flynn's
necessary to put the question on the ballot political organization was mobilized to stop Mandela
non-binding referendum instructing state at the polls; city workers were seen at many polling
of affected districts to begin the process of places during working hours.
polratiOn. Jones noted, "We didn't create this The Globe and the Flynn administration made
just described it. The city of Boston is so in­ three main criticisms of GRIP's separation proposal:
segregated, it was easy to divide. " it would pull Blacks out of Boston just at the time
co-founder Davis admitted t o a certain im- they were starting to make progress, it would be
"We concluded that it {a successful move­ fiscally infeasible, and even if it was not adopted it
reincorporation] wouldn't happen if we served to inflame racial divisions. But why was the
the traditional approach. Instead, we reaction of Boston's powers-that-be so violent? We
a storm-trooper approach." He added believe three motivations were involved behind the
decided early on that we wouldn't do any rhetoric.
We spent our own money to avoid the First, city officials and the liberal corporate in­
terests represented by the Globe have staked their
... .'hAiift " beholden to outside interests. We us­
own shoe-leather. " political and development agenda on the image of a

23
Boston that has healed its racial divisions . That im­ Owens-an interesting character who called for a
age is required to attract further development charge of police lines at the giant 1 974 March Against
necessary to shore up Boston's shaky fiscal base and Racism in Boston but later joined the Republican
to assure Flynn's reelection. The Globe's stake is also Party because, he claimed, the Democrats were not
significant; for over thirty years the Globe has been responsive to blacks-told a Globe columnist that
connected with Boston-based financial and develop­ while he "philosophically" supported the reincor­
ment intersts concerned with re-building Boston's poration and would vote for it, "I'm not encourag­
economic power. Mandela threatened to shatter that ing people to vote for it because I don't have all the
image. information. "
Second, they seek to block initiatives for The One Boston Campaign, the organized group
grassroots community control over development­ opposing Mandela, surfaced just about three weeks
not only in Roxbury, but in communities across before the election, and was described by the Globe
Boston-and to perpetuate the "democracy" that as "made up largely of minority clergymen and
depends on the exclusion and demobilization of the business and political leaders. " Its two most visible
many . or at best their subordinate participation in in­ spokespeople were Bruce Wall and Charles Stith, two
itiatives crafted by the reformers in City Hall. A vote relatively young black ministers. Both had challenged
for Mandela would have represented a public man­ Flynn on racial issues in the past, and ironically Wall
date for community control by a large fraction of had even joined the call for a Roxbury plebiscite on
Boston's population. separation in 1985. Wall pronounced that "A
Third, as pointed out by James Jennings of the number of us have planted the seeds of opportunity
University of Massachusetts, the white power­ over the last seven years or so, and we intend to stay
holders of Boston are doing their best to control here," but also acknowledged that he had in the past
black leadership in the city-to suppress insur�ent used the separation proposal as a source of leverage
black leaders, and to facilitate the emergence of over Flynn. GRIP had botched the opportunities for
"cooperative" black leaders. In particular, · Mel such leverage, he argued, by taking itself too serious­
King; who endorsed the referendum, remains a key ly.
figure for independent black and progressive politics Black business owners interviewed by the Globe
in the city. And indeed, King was singled out for par­ complained that reincorporation had little to offer
ticularly vicious criticism in articles that predicted them. Richard Taylor, president of the Minority
that support for Mandela would end his political Developer's Association. stated, "I don't really
career. Even a fter the defeat of the referendum, believe much of the basis of the Mandela proposal is
Flynn and the Globe blasted politicians who sup­ grounded in trying to solve business problems. I
ported Mandela as well as, in the Globe's words, think its root is based in trying to gain political self­
"politicians who counseled 'maybe' on this impor­ determination . . . . There has been no discussion on
tant issue." how it will affect the overall business climate . " Some
Meanwhile, the black figures who voiced opposi­ businessmen stood to lose directly-for example, the
tion to the referendum were catapulted to pro­ minority developers who have a piece of Flynn's $400
minence by the media as "reasonable" spokespeople million deal. John Cruz, a minority contractor who is
for the community. The Globe hailed the new black part of that deal, observed , "Roxbury only recently
leadership that prefers "working quietly within the has begun to attract outside capital . . . . Secession
system, rather than confronting it. " would put it even farther behind . "
Leaders like Mel King and State Representative Although Wall and Stith echoed some of the Flynn
Byron Rushing, who had supported and in some administration claims of new opportunities for
cases helped to initiate earlier proposals for a blacks in Boston, most black le aders who opposed
separate Roxbury, quickly supported GRIP. Mandela took a more independent position . State
Grassroots groups such as the Greater Roxbury Senator Royal BoUing, Sr., patriarch of Boston's
Neighborhood Authority hesitated longer, put off by mainstream black political dynasty, supported the ef­
GRIP's single�minded and sometimes sectarian in­ fort to put the question on the ballot, but opposed
sistence that incorporation was the only way to solve the content of the proposal, saying, "We have the
Roxbury's problems. But the GRNA, as well as pro­ swing vote to determine any election. So why give up
gressive multiracial groups such as the Rainbow the whole pie for just a slice? " BoUing's son Bruce,
Coalition (a spinoff of Mel King's 1983 mayoral cam­ currently City Council President, initially backed the
paign) eventually endorsed the Mandela referendum referendum. His press statements showed him being
as one strategy for commu nity control and self­ slowly dragged into opposition.
determination.
The sharpness and implicit racism of the public at­ The Outcome
tacks on Mandela by the Globe and the Flynn ad­
ministration motivated many black activists and If the adVocates of Mandela saw incorporati on as
other progressives to defend the initiative even more one tool in a broader strategy, why did t he Globe and
strongly. Some other supporters faded under fire, the City choose to cast the referendum as a si ngle­
however . Black state senatorial candidate Bill issue vote? Mel King explained his view, "It is my
-

24
belief that they purposefully focused on racial been active in pulling together a citywide Coalition
divisiveness and separation as a way of keeping peo­ for Community ControJ, which links together
ple from focusing on the real issue. and that is the neighborhoods across the city in demanding greater
control of the land." community authority over development. Boston's
The Mandela referendum went down to electoral powers-that-be tried to use the Mandela referendum
defeat by 75 percent to 25 percent. What are we to to discredit the GRNA and other black groups and
conclude from this lopsided margin? leaders that seek to pursue a co mmunity control
, The answer is not simple. For one thing, because strategy. We believe that instead, the debate over in­
the s hape of Boston's voter districts , 65 percent of corporation is likely to give new visibility and a
those who voted on the Mandela question were political boost to tllat strategy .
white, although 74 percent of those livi ng in Mandela
black, plus 10 percent Latino. But the margin of
was similar in all the wards involved, those
a mainly black popu lation as well as mainly
This article is excerpted from a , longer version
published in The North Star (No . 5, Spring, 1987),
wards, so we don 't believe that this was the key
North Star is available from P.O. Box 9887,
Berkeley, CA 947809. A one year sUbscription (four
some extent, it is appropriate to compare the issues) is $10.00.
to the Puerto Rican vote t'br the pro­
peCl<lenCe parties (which is consistently small) or
QUl:bec:ots plebiscite on independence (which was
Like these other groups, Roxbury Marie Kennedy and Chris Tilly are , longtime labor
would take the risk of polit ical and and community activists in the Boston area. Marie
retaliation and isolation if they actually currently teaches in the community planning pro­
for separation . Dependency dies hard. The gram at the University oj Massachusetts at Boston's
ideology constantly drives bome the notion College of Community and Public Service. Chris is a
the oppressed populations are incapable of hand­ graduate student in economics and urban studies and
their own affairs . On the face of it, the evidence planning at MIT.
• unemployment, high crime-see ms to

this notion . Thus, the 12,000 people who


on Mandela were taking a step th at re.
courage and consciousness. HAS YOUR SUB EXPIRED?
be added that Mandela's advocates did not If you have received a renewal notice recently,
in building broad support for or even under­
please don 't h es i t at e and send it in with your
of the proposed change. GRIP st art ed out
narrow agenda, campaigned for only a few payment right away. You won't miss an issue of
and did not build a grassroots campaign. RADICAL AMERICA and we'U get SOme
the GRNA came around late to support financial resuscitat ion ! H e r e ' s what vour mail­
and although they integrated incor- ing label loo k s like:

�oooo
into a broader vision, they had limited sue­
communicating that vision to the black com­ 10/20/1986 I
Despite the hysteria of the Globe and Mayor
black c ommunity did not get terribly ex­
BOB ASHLEY
the issue: voter turnout was low, and
2 ATHERIDN PL.
nothing like the buzz of 'Organizing and MANDELA, MA 02119
registration that accompanied Mel King's
campaign. The circled n umber is the last dale of your cur­
the re ferendu m had a concrete rent subscription. We have kept longtime
effect which constitutes a positive opening in
subscribers on beyond the end of their subs. So ..
pOlitics, It highlighted ,continuing. problems
black community, revealing that racism is w ben you renew, please include enou,h pay�
racial epithets or physical attacks on ment to cover the issues you have been receiving ,
the issue of community control....of
.. i
s n ce your IasJ payment. If you have any ques!"
�e:IOt:llll c:nt. services-squarely on the'agen­ dons. call or write the office. '
Globe and city government spokes­
on the racial divisivllfle5S of Mandela,
who spoke on thelSsue-meludlng
, t
MOVING??1 ' · ,
Stith--ac�knowiledlled the importance of in-
Don't f�get to ta�e RadictiIAm,� withvoufDroPus I
like the Greater Roxbury Neighborhood a card wltb your old and newaq� ilt J)�ly oftimec .
"
so that we don ' t incur p()$tage due bill� and .YOtloon't t
'
continue to organize for community con.
.
,
variety of arenas . In fact. the GRNA has miSS an issue., '
--------------------... '
2S
COMM U N I TY & K I N S H I P,
H I STO RY & CO N T RO L :
Two Community Activists
Talk about Boston's Future

Bob Terrell and Chuck Turner are activists with broad histories of political work focused on the
, empowerment of Boston's black community. Both were founding members the Greater Roxbury Neigh­
borhood Authority (GRNA), and are in its current leadership. As grassroots organizers, they give us a
concrete picture of how different segments ofthe black community perceive the city elites' current assault on
Roxbury and how they respond to the "full control" stance of both the GRNA and the Mandela initiative to
make greater Roxbury a separate municipality. Bob's current work is predated by years of tenant organizing
in the South End, a multi-racial, working-class neighborhood that vigorously fought the Boston
Redevelopment Authority'S displacement of the people in that area. Part of an older generation of political
activists, Chuck is recognized as one of Boston's most energetic and durable progressive leaders. He was a
co-chairperson of the Black United Front, a coalition of civil rights groups founded in 1 968, and he was the
, director of the Third World Clearinghouse, a community coalition founded in 1 975 which was notably
.•.. successful in uniting black, Latino, and Chinese labor groups. From each of them, we sought information on
, the community issues immediately at hand as well as some perspective on the national implications of these
:; community-related struggles.
,.

April 1979 memorial march for black women murdered in Boston. Ellen Shub photo. 27
.
I nterview with Bob Terrell borhood: it's progress. It's a change. It's going to mean
something better for the community.
RA: Describe the context in which recent black
political efforts around land control have emerged. A number of us were much more critical. We
saw other kinds of impacts and other kinds of effects
Bob: Over the last two and a half years, development on our neighborhood. For example, a couple of
issues have been in the forefront of questions dis­ weeks before that historic meeting, it was leaked to
cussed in the black community. What is the future of the press by a city agency (which has since been
the black community in terms of urban development? phased out of existence) that the BRA had a $750
That is the primary issue right now. On all sides, million investment plan for the Dudley Square area.
Roxbury is surrounded by major development pro­ Now, some people looked at that and said, "Finally
jects that have been pushed by the state. There are the public sector has ceased its disinvestment policy in
problems with speculation and arson in the priva�e Roxbury. This is a major initiative by the Flynn
market. Boston's housing crisis is extremely acute m administration. They're trying to do some good things
the black community. Put together, all of that means for Roxbury and bring the neighborhood into the
rising rents, sales prices, and major struggles with the development boom that has hit Boston." That's how
city around disposition of public land. So develop­ some people viewed it. They took the rhetoric of the
ment necessarily has become the issue that really Flynn administration seriously and they took the
drives the community. rhetoric ofthe BRA seriously. But there were those of
After the 1983 mayoral election, a number of us who looked at that $750 million investment and
people felt that it was time for the community to asked, "But what kind of investment? For what kind
better coordinate and get a handle on all of the of land use?" So the struggle has always come down
development that was about to hit the community to: What kind of development do we favor? How do
simultaneously. In January, 1985, a number of we want the land used? And who will have access to
organizations met to try to assess this situation and try
what's built on it? And what will be the impact on the
to figure out what we should do as a community. And rest of the community in terms of market forces,
everyone-from elected officials to heads of social values and that sort of thing? That has been how the
service agencies to independent activists, people from politics of the situation have broken down. It's not
CDCs (Community Development Corporations) and always a cut and dry thing of liberal vs. conservative
the neighborhood associations-everyone we could or Left vs. Right. Because a lot of conservative folks
think of was invited to that meeting. We reviewed all will, on one issue, say, "Yes, we should revitalize the
the outstanding problems and all the outstanding Dudley Square area." But when they think about
projects and we pushed for the creation of a neighbor­ what it's going to do to their tax bill, in terms of
hood authority that would try to obtain some political property taxes, then they say, "Well, wait a minute,
power and control over the development process. speculative investment may cause me some long­
RA: Did people have a sense of agreement at that range problems in another kind of way."
early stage? How would you depict the spectrum of RA: Conservative folks? You mean homeowners?
political perspectives involved?
Bob: No, just people whose politics are (I hate to use
Bob: Well, there was a great deal of struggle and
Left/Right) mainstream. In the black context, your
tension within the group because people had different assumptions about who will oppose radical initiatives
political perspectives as to how they saw urban around land control can be misfounded. Folks who
development. There were some people who felt that are not terribly opposed to the system as it is will
those large-scale development projects would be a become quite critical of the city's development
symbol of progress. It's very similar to what you have proposals because of how it might affect them
in Third World countries. Here it became apparent directly. Take the case of black private developers
that the government and corporate elite were launch­ from the neighborhood. The have a very specific set of
ing a major effort to redesign Roxbury, with millions interests and because of the racism in the city of
of dollars in investments behind it, and there were Boston, they are confined, pretty much, to developing
some people who, because of their own perception of within the community. And they have a real problem
development or because of their class interests, saw typical of groups in Third World countries who
that development proposal as beneficial to the neigh- occupy a similar position in that class structure: The;.

28
Billboard by Docklands Community Poster Project (England) from Cultures in Contention. Photomontage by Peter Dunn
and Loraine Leeson.

want to make money. They want to be able to opposed to something we want to do, then we don't
accumulate enough capital to do the kinds of projects do it. Most of the people from the GRNA live in the
that will allow them to compete with their white neighborhood and they've got connections with their
counterparts. But they're being forced to do that in a neighborhood association, their church, the block
community that can't sustain what it is they want to club, or whatever, and wherever we've gone and had
do. So, on the one hand, we're always saying to them, a chance to talk to people one-on-one or in small
"We want affordable housing built." And on the groups or in neighborhood associations. Wherever
other hand, the public sector has cut back its the GRNA has had a chance to make that kind of
commitment to affordable housing. contact, we've found that people are very suspicious.
Now, where the black developers could make a When they hear about major investment coming,
real killing and make a lot of profit is to build stuff when the public sector announces that they are going
downtown. But the power structure until very re­ to do something for the black community, right away
cently has kept black developers out of downtown. So people are suspicious. Because we know these improve­
they're in a real bind. And our constant pitch to them ments are not for us. We know that the grand scheme
has been, "Look, if you build affordable housing for over time is to move everyone out of here, get us off
us in the community, we'll support your getting the the land because the land has become valuable.
subsidies and the resources and the linkage funds and About two years ago, the Globe ran an article saying
whatever else you need to build. And if you build Roxbury is a real estate gold mine. And right after that
affordable housing for us, we'll support your right to there was the beginning of mounting speculation and
develop downtown." That's always been our pitch to arson in the neighborhood. So people understand,
private people. intuitivel y and from lessons of the past. For example, I
In the last two and a half years we have am from the South End originally, and we were
established contact with a number of other organiza­ pushed out of the South End by urban renewal. Many
tions, and we also have a public process which we call people of my generation in the black community look
the "town meeting" process, where we invite people at the whole development process with the earlier
from the community. And basically, we take our experience of being traumatically dislpcated by it.
political direction from what people say at that
meeting. I mean, if the community is violently RA: It seems you are highlighting differences not

29
around visions of development, but rather around
tactics and strategies.
Bob: Just about everyone we've come in contact with
is opposed to the dismantling of the community by
displacement. But there are different strategies and
tactics put forward as to how to combat that. The
GRNA believes that we need a democratically­
elected neighborhood authority or neighborhood
council that is given or somehow obtains the political
and legal authority to control all the development in
this area. Now, whether that means a contractual
agreement with the city or the state, whether that
means the BRA ceding that authority to us, whether
that means getting it by way of state legislation or city
ordinance (which we're doing), or through a lawsuit from Movement Toward a New America, Mitchell
(which we're doing), or by any combination of those Goodman, ed.
mechanisms, what we want is such broad and mass with other sections of the black community have
support, politically, at the grassroots level that a been over the issue of whether we should control
developer or a public agency simply cannot enter the development, as opposed to being in an advisory
community without coming to us first. And slowly, a capacity. Some people say, "Look, the best you're
lot of small developers are beginning to approach the going to get is the Mayor and the state to recognize
GRNA and the PAC (which is something the GRNA you as a legitimate body of advisors. Our position is,
created in response to a city initiative and is a 1 ) that's not good enough; and 2) as citizens, we can
recognized body now, notjust by the community but always give advice to the government. I mean you can
by the city on some levels). If we have enough mass do that through your elected officials. You can write
support -which is our objective in 1987, to expand letters, you can have meetings, and all that. We're
and build a real mass base-then they can'tjust come talking about actual power and control over develop­
in here and ignore us because we can raise the cost of ment. And a lot of folks have a problem with that.
doing business to such a level that a developer will say They think it's unrealistic.
it's not a good business climate. We can force them to
negotiate. Now in many parts of Roxbury, a de­ RA: Does it threaten their power?
veloper can't just come into a neighborhood and start Bob: In some cases it would. In fact, in some cases, the
throwing up a building. They've got to deal with the fact that we're struggling for it in and of itself is a
Joint Development Committee in Highland Park, or threat to them, but it shouldn't be. Ifl were a member
the Garrison Trotter Neighborhood Association, or ofthe city council, if I were a state representative or a
whatever the local group is. And what the GRNA is state senator, I would welcome the GRNA. I mean, I
saying is we need to coordinate all of that so that would have all the press conferences in my office. I
whether it's a public or private initiative, whether it's would let them use my office because, as far as I'm
a major public sector investment or major investment concerned, in American society a black leader has
of private capital into the neighborhood, they can't nothing to lose by taking a strong nationalist position.
just walk in. Because we've got too much political They have nothing to lose at least in terms of their
clout and we can make it too difficult for them to do relationship to the black community. For example,
business. So they have to negotiate. during GRNA's outreach, I never have encountered a
RA: Has the GRNA's focus on movement-building
group of working-class black folks who have said to
and full control encountered opposition from some us point blank, "What you are doing doesn't make
established black leaders who made their way in an sense." This does not mean there is a simple forward
earlier political framework and who have played push from the community. There is an historical
more accomodationist roles? dynamic of its own and it takes a while to get to a
certain point where people are ready to go onto
Bob: I think the differences of opinion that we've had another phase. But GRNA and other groups are
-

30
building on the political culture and political history immediately embrace the black community because
that was in the neighborhood. Whenever we have of their own sensibilities or their own attitudes or their
town meetings, we average 200 to 250 people; we've own politics. Sometimes the job they have will bring
had as many as 500 or 600 at the town meeting. And them into contact with the black community. For
whenever we put forward what to some people are example, the hotel workers union has a lot of black
extremely radical positions, they've been adopted. folks like Cape Verdeans or Hispanics and they're
molded into a strong political force that has really
RA: Like...
shaken up the hotel industry in this town.
Bob: Like suing the city, or like asking for, or trying to
RA: How do you assess the work done to coordinate
negotiate for, essentially all the powers that the BRA
diverse peoples behind a radical politics of land
has. Now, for some people that is a radical proposi­
control?
tion, because we would then have private citizens out
of the black community controlling everything that's Bob: I think models are being developed around
done in City Council Districts 4 and 7-which is coalescing different cultural groups. The Dudley
roughly 25 percent of the city. People in the black Street Neighborhood Initiative has done a goodjob in
community don't have any problem with that. And its community. It's very diverse. There are Cape
the few black leaders who do have a problem with Verdeans, Haitians, Afro-Americans, and a few
that have now been positioned in such a way that they whites living in the area and they've done a pretty
cannot publicly oppose it because the sentiment ofthe good job at putting folks together. And I think that
community is, "We have to protect ourselves, and the they've been successful at doing it because they've
best way to do that is to have power and authority respected the independence of everybody's culture;
over all development, over all planning activities,
over all zoning activities. We no longer want the
bureaucracy downtown making decisions for us. We
want to make those decisions. Again, a national
sentiment: it's very old in the black community.
That's why Mandela was given a hearing.
RA: Does the nationalist sentiment conflict with
another dimension of GRNA's politics-a push for
inclusiveness? How do people relate to your reaching
out to different communities of color and new
immigrant populations?
Bob: Historically, black folks have always been less
antagonistic to the presence of immigrants and people
from other countries coming into their neighborhoods
and settling. We've always been far more tolerant
than any other community you could name, in this
city or any other city. We're very tolerant, but
oftentimes, a lot of immigrants who come here don't
want to associate with black folks because blacks are
identified as being at the bottom of the American
totem pole. They will frequently shy away from us,
because they do not believe that we have anything to
say to them that makes any sense or is helpful to them.
I mean, if you come into a new city and you want to
talk to some folks who know their way around and
have the power to do something for you, and you
don't perceive black folks in that way, then there's a
. problem. Now, some do. There are some Cape
Prudential Center, Boston. Ellen Shub photo.
Verdeans and some folks from the islands who

31
they even have a system of simultaneous translation in City, where the Latinos and black commumtles
their meetings. I refer to them as a mini-United intermingle and overlap on several levels. Boston has
Nations. always been very turf-oriented. Even so, a key factor
in the success of organizing has been that there is a
RA: What has been critical in bringing groups
community of activists with a history of working
together in such a unified fashion?
together and defining the issues broadly.
Bob: Again, I think there's a lot of dialogue among a
RA: Do people come out of the same experiences?
certain portion of the leadership (my age and youn­
ger). What we now have to do is jointly build our Bob: Not always. In the Hispanic community, there
mass bases and we somehow or other have more are a lot of folks who come out of the struggle for
communication at that grassroots level. Because that's independence in Puerto Rico-the struggle against
where the real antagonism is. It's the perception some U.S. imperialism. So when they come to this country,
blacks have of Hispanics and some Hispanics have of a lot of them feel that they're only here temporarily.
blacks and it's at the grassroots level that folks are The real struggle is in Puerto Rico. Then there was a
going to have come together and share some ideas. shift in the seventies, when people said, "No, we're
Because they have exactly the same situation. If we becoming part of the American working class and we
get this place, they're also going to get this place. And have subtle communities in New York or Boston or
this is a real challenge. Boston is not like New York wherever and we're going to be here for a while and
we're going to dig in and begin to organize. A lot of
those folks and a lot of black activists were able to
come together and talk. I remember in the late
seventies, in particular, I knew all the Hispanic
activists in my neighborhood. You know, we all hung
out and drank and partied and talked politics and did
work collectively. But that is not the mode of
communication between our communities. In fact,
one reason why Mandela failed is that blacks didn't
do proper outreach in the Hispanic community.
Nobody really explained what the proposition was all
about.
RA: Is there anything else you would add that
informs the organizing you do?
Bob: Intellectually, there are some things happening
in the black community that are very, very interesting.
All around the country, there's a real concern about
the cultural attack that's happening against black
folks. I was in Cincinnati in November; there was a
conference there on the black family with folks from
all over the country. The black social workers
convention is going to be here in Boston emphasizing
the same concern: the black family and the whole
cultural process. We went through the seventies and
we went through the eighties; we went through
Buppie-ism and Yuppie-ism and integration and all
that sort of stuff-and now people are saying, "Given
the fact that on several levels America is falling apart
culturally, what are we as black folks going to do?
What is our response to the industrial system falling
Suspected arson site near Dudley Square, Roxbury. Marie
apart all around us?"
Kennedy photo.
-

32
There's been several levels of response. One is a higher ratio of land to people. Then you would be
cultural renaissance: sharing our history with the able to accomodate new designs for housing that
young people and pushing to investigate (as a number would accomodate large extended families.
of black intellectuals are doing now), ancient African Now, I was lucky in the South End. My
traditions. Going back and looking at ancient African immediate family lived in one house; my cousins
societies and rediscovering both our scientific and rented an apartment right next door; and my other
technological past has real implications for develop­ cousins owned a house further down the block. So we
ment. When you do that, when you begin to look at were able to keep our family network together. Folks
ancient Egypt and Ethiopia and the Sudan and you who come from the Caribbean sometimes have
look at all the great empires of western Africa, you problems because they're used to living together in
begin to develop a perception of development that is extended families. And you hear all these comments
non-western. You begin to understand that what took like, "How could all these folks want to live in the
place in the West was very particular to the West. same building or the same house or the same
And that many of the theoretical conceptions that apartment?" What they're doing is cultural. They're
have come out of that experience, both bourgeois and trying to maintain their extended family because they
Marxist, are Euro-centric. And so there's an interest­ understand that if they get all broken up, they're going
ing synthesis. The whole appropriate technology to have serious problems living in America.
movement and a lot of new ideas around develop­
RA: Let's turn to Mandela-the conception and the
ment are now linking up with the experience and the
campaign itself. How did you and GRNA folks view
value system of our ancient African past. And this sort
it?
of fulfills a prophecy that most of our major black
historians have talked about since the nineteenth
century: that the liberation of black folks in this
country is very much connected to our understanding
of our African past. The trajectory that black folks
were taking, which was disrupted by slavery, is now
being rediscovered.
RA: How does your notion of community develop­
ment connect with definitions of the family that come
out of the black experience, rather than white middle­
class models? This seems pressing since the white
establishment has aggressively revived the Moynihan
Report and the view that the collapse of "the
traditional nuclear family" is key to all that hurts
blacks.
Bob: There's a real need in the black community to
get away from this notion of the nuclear family. We
have to get back to our cultural tradition of the
extended family. And that's going to have a major
impact on how we redevelop the community: housing
patterns, working at home, job patterns. Everything
gets shifted around when we return to an extended
family network. It has major implications for urban
development.
RA: What ideas do you have about that?

Bob: Well, more work should be provided for people


in their neighborhoods. Housing should be rede­
signed. Urban areas are much too congested; we
shOUld push out and use more land. There should be a Children on Wheeler St., South End, c. /890.

33
Bob: Well, first, the idea of Roxbury as a separate raise money to defeat the question went to the
municipality actually goes back to the seventies. But it Campaign for One Boston to finance their operation.
wasn't until 1985 that the folks who founded GRIP Given all that, I'll let your readers draw their own
tried to give it some organizational life. The reason conclusions.
that a lot of people were interested in Mandela was
RA: You've suggested how you, and others from the
because it was another strategy for controlling land. It
GRNA, viewed the benefits of the Mandela cam­
was another way of instituting a community control
paign. Were there also reservations?
process.
Bob: The GRNA decided that a struggle to establish
The choice of the name, Mandela, was made by the
Roxbury as an independent city should be viewed as a
people in GRIP for their own political reasons; they
positive tactical option, if nothing else, to pressure the
wanted to make a link to the South African struggle;
city and state into acceding to the community'S
they were employing an internationalist rationale that
demands regarding development. But we also have to
is consistent with earlier Afro-American nationalist
look at the issue of whether or not Roxbury, as a
traditions. I understand their reasoning, but I would
separate municipality, would have a relationship to
have preferred another process for choosing a name; I
the state structure similar to the one it now does.
would have let the folks in the neighborhood do it.
There are basically five different charters that a town
At first, those of us who were in the PAC or the
or city can choose from that would affect how they
GRNA, the folks who had done that body of work,
organize their town or city government. And all of
for a long time took no position on municipal
them are based on the state constitution so none of
incorporation, but once Mandela got on the ballot, it
them are really going to structure in democratic
was clear it was going to be a community-wide issue
control. I've always maintained that there would still
and we supported putting it on the ballot so folks
need to be a neighborhood authority even in the new
could vote it up or vote it down democratically. But
municipalilty.
we also felt that we wanted it to pass for a simple
reason: We felt it was important to keep the issue of RA: Sort of like a union still needs a radical caucus.
land control alive. And this was another tactical
Bob: That's right.
option that the community could use to its advantage.
And also, the first step would be a feasibility study. A RA: What about differences between tactics inherent
feasibility study would expose the real conditions in in Mandela, as compared to the GRNA? The
the community and this would be an invaluable Mandela campaign was essentially electoral politics,
resource for organizing. This is the reason the city and distinct from the grassroots movement-building ap­
state opposed it. Remember, it was a non-binding proach cultivated in GRNA. Aren't there tensions
referendum. The state legislature wouldn't be called between the two? Must one choose one over the
upon to do anything; it simply instructed our elected other, or can you use both? This question touches not
representatives to convey to the legislature our just on Boston, but on areas elsewhere in the nation.
opinion on the subject. That's all it did. But why did
Bob: I always think of electoral politics as a tactic in a
Ray Flynn put over 300 city workers on the street and
hire a special consultant to raise funds to defeat it? larger strategy. And I think, like any other tactic, you
And why did Boston's corporate elite and its political should figure out how much time and energy you
arm, the Vault, put up money to defeat it? The real want to put into that to get the gains you want. But I
opposition was not indigenous; it was forged by a few think it's a tactic. It certainly isn't the only one. I think
individuals who were funded from outside. that there are probably twenty-five others we should
investigate and utilize. So the GRNA and Mandela
RA: Even someone like the Reverend Stith wasjust a can and do mesh.
front for Flynn?
You see, black folks can't afford to back
Bob: Well, let's just say that Reverend Stith's political themselves into an ideological corner and then, from
position perfectly coincided with Ray Flynn's politi­ that corner, be limited in what they can do tactically. I
cal position. Add to that the fact that the funding for think they have to move out into the middle of the
his Campaign for One Boston came from the Vault room and use any and all tactics: from public actions
and the fundraiser that Ray Flynn hired privately to to organizing unions for folks that are non-unionized,
-

34

j
from running progressive or radical candidates for Bob: I think what the GRNA is doing, what Mandela
office to organizing alternative institutions -whether was doing, what the Initiative is doing, what a
it's a food co-op or a school or a housing cooperative. number of groups in Roxbury are doing definitely
We have to use all of those strategies across the board. have direct applicability in other urban areas. If you
We have to not only march on city hall but we have to go to Chicago, New York, or Philadelphia, there are
sue the city as well. We should use every single tactic similar problems. And there are areas of Harlem,
we can think of to move our issues forward. I don't areas in D.C., areas in Detroit with the Renaissance
think we should back off from anything. Everything program, and areas in San Francisco where black
that mobilizes and brings people out is an advantage populations are threatened with displacement. San
to all of us. I don't care who does it. It doesn't matter if Franciso, by the way, already constitutes a case where
people are concerned about picking up leaves in a city suffered a net loss of its black population
Franklin Park and they tum out 5,000 people. The directly due to displacement, office tower develop­
idea is, the more people, the better. ment, the encroachment of downtown on neighbor­
hoods, etc. It's the same thing that we see in Boston.
But it's also a matter of how you perceive
So I think that, although the models may change and
organization. We may have only 100 people that are
how people organize to deal with the crisis might
members of the GRNA, but if 80 percent of the
shift, what we're doing here can certainly be dup­
neighborhood believes in what we believe, they don't
licated, amended, changed, and improved upon in
need to be members. They don't need to come to all
other parts of the country. The challenge is the same.
the meetings. All we need to know is that the majority
The black community'S going to have this challenge
of the neighborhood backs what we're doing. That's
no matter where we are.
all we need to know.
RA: So you think that development is really the key
RA: And the more tactics you've got...
issue?
Bob: ...the more people will come out.
Bob: No question that, for us, development is going to
RA: Do the lessons you're learning here in Boston be the key question for the remainder of the eighties
help to deepen and broaden the struggle nationally? and for the balance of the twentieth century.
Does it help to define a model?

981 Atlanta Mothers ' Solidarity march in Boston, organized by CRISIS. Ellen Shub photo.

35
Interview with Chuck Turner Then, there was a strong nationalist perspective that
said that we have to create our own economic bases of
RA: How would you compare the current political power and support. It was a minority viewpoint, but it
struggle for land control with earlier efforts in the was heard and respected. At that time, the majority of
sixties and seventies? folks in the black and Hispanic communities in
Boston were trying to push into the established
Chuck: In the two preceding decades, political groups
economic system. Organizations and individuals
came out with financial strategies that focused on
were focusing on how to get into the police and fire
affordable rent. Using hindsight, we can see that their
departments, how to gain city jobs, how to get a foot
target was not only too narrow, but would eventually
into the private sector. Now, two decades later, there
become, fifteen to twenty years later, economically
is a lot of skepticism about the ability to move into the
obsolete. So in this round of discussions, people are
overall commercial economy and experience any
talking about equity ownership and cooperative
success there. People realize that even if they can get
housing-strategies that allow people who live here
jobs-because of racist attitudes, it's generally as
not just to be renters, but to have authority over their
laborers, clerks, even lower-level administrators­
situation. This shift, by the way, does not represent an
they still have little chance at gaining a level of income
increase in militancy over the past. During the two
that's going to enable them to build a life for
preceding decades, organizing was very focused on
themselves.
increasing access to power and control; but today
there is more sophistication in terms of what strategies RA: In 1984, after a series of meetings, GRNA
can, in fact, lead to control. So the focus is currently formed as the community'S response to the current
on equity housing as opposed to rental and on having development crisis. Looking back, have there been
clear authority over how decisions are made, rather major surprises in how events unfolded?
than just being a participant in an advisory way.
Chuck: First, the city hasn't pushed the land dis­
I'd like to make another contrast with the
position as strongly as we thought initially. Despite
political environment today and that of the sixties.

from Movement Toward a New America, Mitchell Goodman, ed.

36
leaks of grand designs, the BRA has wound up development has maintained itself. While some
focusing on only one parcel, Parcel 1 8, the most organizations are not as strongly behind it as others,
highly-valued piece of community land. Even on that, there has been an enduring core of adherents for the
they have not been able to keep pace with their idea that the community should empower itself.
rhetoric of 1 985. And that's good; it's working to the
RA: Let's shift to Mandela. How would you describe
advantage of the community. The fear was that they
people's relationship to the concept? Also, how do
would try to push much more quickly to do dis­
you make sense of how little support it received in the
positions. And I imagine that there's been a desire to
voting booths?
do that. But the opposition has made that much more
.. ,

difficult. Chuck: I think everybody acknowledges that fun­


Second, for me personally, it's unusual that the damental power over how decisions are made is the
black churches haven't gotten involved as much as I most effective way for the community to gain its
would have expected. I'm not sure of all the reasons objectives. Even conservatives (those who represent
why, but I would have imagined that, from the business interests and the more private development
standpoint of the maintenance of the congregation, concerns) take the position that community authority
and their own situation, it would have made a lot of would bring rewards. What holds people back from
sense for the churches to play a very active role in the actually voting for Mandela - and this is why the
dialogue about what would happen. While there have vote was 75 percent opposed and only 25 percent in
been some churches who have gotten involved, in favor-is the fact that people don't see a feasible
general the churches haven't tried to exercise as active economic strategy that would go along with the
a role as I would have expected. political power.
Finally, although I wouldn't characterize it as a
RA: What about the process? Did it move too fast for
surprise, it is encouraging that during the last several
the community? Some black activists were raising
years, the base of support for full control over

37
political questions about the Mandela campaign­
too top-down and/or mystifying, perhaps, or class
differences within the black community?
Chuck: In my view, the main difficulty was the lack
of an economic analysis, of a clear perspective on how
the operation of Mandela would affect people's lives.
If that had been there, some of the political process
issues wouldn't have been raised as much. For
example, one of the key political concerns that was
raised was the lack of an educational process for the
community. When people talked about that, they
were talking about the problem of economics and
whether or not there would be enough discussion to
really help people understand. Of course, there were
from American Pictures, Jacob Holdt.
substantive political questions, like: Who would
make moves for power? Who would run for mayor? that people of color and white people are facing in the
Who would be the council people? Even so, people industrial part of the country as the economy
feel a certain amount of ease around the idea of a switches. Here, because you have a white, Yuppie
council that came completely out of this community, popUlation that's moving into the city, into a lot of
but they get anxious wondering how much money commercial jobs, there is a sense of buoyancy in the
there would be for police, fire, public works, and economy, a sense that things are moving forward.
other important services. The lack of an economic Blacks and Hispanics, especially the young, become
analysis reflected negatively on the political debate more of a backwater.
and was decisive in Mandela's rejection. When you go out to the Midwest, you realize
The absence of a strong economic analysis that there the whole economy is the backwater to the
stymied people's ability to be behind Mandela on a commercial development that you see on the East and
very individual level. For example, if I'm a twenty­ West coasts, and there's lots of consternation and
three year old who wants to raise a family in Roxbury unclarity, because you can't see how the economic
and wants to have an income of at least $ 1 5,000 a base can provide a framework for growth and
year as a way of moving forward, how do I handle my survival. So what we are dealing with here-around
economic situation? Mandela didn't speak to that. development-certainly connects with other arenas
(Of course, "One Boston" didn't, either.) And then nationally.
there's the larger question that puzzled individuals-if
we're all together, how do we provide money for city RA: Speaking of young people, what role do they

services? Mandela hadn't laid that out. The Mayor play in community organizing? Are they more
also contributed to the confusion by claiming that we susceptible to despair or cynicism?
would only be able to raise $350 million a year but Chuck: Our youth look out into a world where there
would need $450 million. The people in Roxbury are no answers that are worth anything; that is, a kid
who say that the way to subsist is to integrate coming out of high school, thinking about what to do
ourselves into the fabric of the larger system-around and how to move, can find it very depressing. The city
development issues-by and large, they have limited is very glamorous; it emphasizes style, form and
room to maneuver. status-all wrapped up in a financial and materialistic
RA: Do you think the issues and modes of struggle framework. Yet the reality is that there's no way
around development undertaken in Boston are rele­ young black people can rationally see themselves as
vant nationally? part of it. At the same time, these young blacks and
Hispanics and Asians, who are coming up and trying
Chuck: Sure. Look at Detroit. Obviously the eco­ to get into that world, are bumping up against older
nomic infrastructure there can't or is unwilling to people of color who are out there trying to move in
support the people who are there. In many ways, and move forward. That competition brings on even
people of color on the East Coast are facing problems greater alienation and desolation.
-

38
I think that young people are finding a variety of Farrakhan, I think, also appreciates the dilemma
ways to deal with the pain-from drugs, sex, involve­ at a much broader conceptual level. He understands
ment in a very fast life. They are looking for a sense of the dilemma of the country and the lack of moral
aliveness in this situation that the dream of the future values, but it's hard for him to articulate a vision of
does not provide. In past times in the black com­ how to move from the current lack of integrity toward
munity, as well as the white community, there were a sense of wholeness. So he's like a prophet, and Jesse
certain dreams-dreams that didn't work for all of is like a radical in the Roman Senate, and eventually I
our young, but at least there was a vision for the think Jesse will walk out and try to fuse moral and
future. Personal discipline was a value because it political action. But right now, it's depressing. Youth
supposedly allowed you to go through this series of are left out there with no counter-perspective to
steps that would in fact have you emerge with family materialism. If materialism is the sole goal of the
and living place and some sense of stability. I think society it means that without money, you have to prey
that's gone. If you go to Detroit, and see how 250 to on each other. So we're in a toul!h situation.
300 youths are being shot by other youths every year,
that should tell you something about the anger and Bob Terrell is the director of the Washington Street
despair and the lack of any vision that engages young Corridor Coalition and current chairperson of the
black men and women. Greater Roxbury Neighborhood Authority.
There isn't a sense of community; there isn't an
assurance that we are engaged in a process of Chuck Turner is director of the Center for Com­
developing this community that will enable us all to munity Action and vice-chairperson of the Greater
be stronger and feel more vibrancy. While that was Roxbury Neighborhood Authority.
there in the sixties, as the base of moving forward, I
think that that's no longer there as a bridge between Diane Lorello, Ken Schlosser, and Ann Withorn
the various generations. And that's the most difficult conducted these interviews.
problem that we face. This sense of alienation among
young people is confronting all the neighborhoods,
but in black and Hispanic neighborhoods where
there's this history of being kept out, it's even more
acute than it is in South Boston or Charlestown or
East Boston, where at least the mythology that they
can still make it in is there. Here, we don't have that
mythology, so our kids are looking at the reality,
which working-class kids throughout the city are
eventually going to have to face.

1;&
RA: What do you think is going to help engage young
people? Is it cultural stuff, political efforts? Are
Jackson's campaigns making a difference?
Chuck: Well, I'd say that Jesse is the only politician

' . .
on the national level that is even scratching at the
surface of the problem. And I think he's emotionally "Featuring "Conflict, Fear, and Security in the
tuned into it. His statement on Howard Beach was a Nuclear Age"-The Challenge of the Feminist
clear indication that he really understands, on an Peace Movement in Italy by Elisabetta Addis
intellectual and emotional level, the nature of the and Nicoletta Tiliacos, and, Her Story of War:
dilemma of capitalism: to be trite, that white ghettos Demilitarizing Literature and Literary Studies
are jammed in the same way that black and Hispanic by Lynn Hanley; On the German Question:
}; ghettos are jammed, given their similar relationship to Left, Right and the Politics of National Identity
industry and capitalism's manipulations. He under­ by Hans-Georg Betz; US Media and the 'Elec­
stands that. However, the Democratic Party shows no tion Coup' In the Philippines by Frank
capacity to either understand or deal with the despair Brodhead; Letter from Berlin; Tribute to
that is spreading through the country and its youth. Genet.

39
S E A RC H I N G FO R
' COMMO N G RO U N D ' :
A Review Essay

James Green

Common Ground, the Pulitzer-prize winning book by J. Anthony Lukas about three
Boston families during the desegregation crisis, has received widespread praise and intensive
publicity, and despite its imposing length of over 600 pages the book has become a best­
seller. Reviewers liked it for telling the "compelling " stories of city families in turmoil and
for describing the "gritty" reality of race and class conflict . Like other books in the new
non-fiction genre, this work provided real-life stories as sensational and gripping as fiction.
"This is the riveting stuff of genuine tragedy . . . " wrote Boston novelist George Higgins
for Newsday, " . . . a true story vastly broader in scope than the nonfiction novels of
Truman Capote and Norman Mailer. " Perfect material for a television " docudrama, "
which is what will become o f Common Ground next T.V. season, according to p lans an­
nounced by Lorimar Productions, who bring us that long-running saga of corporate greed
and family hate, "Dallas . " !
Common Ground has all the ingredients of a great tragic novel, though Lukas swears
"Nothing has been disguised or embellished . " Indeed, many reviews , like the one in the
L.A . Times, tout is as " A book that pulls the reader along like fiction , " but with ' 'a careful,
: dispassionate reconstruction of events . . . " . It is, said Time, "a model of thoroughness

Little Rock Central School, Little Rock, Arkansas 1957. Burt Glinn photo.
41
Sept. 8, 1975. Members of the S WA T team of BPD watch from the roof of Charlestown High School.

and balance." Lukas combines, according to the book fascinating and profoundly troubling.
the Baltimore Sun, "the narrative skill of a Lukas exposes the pain and agony of race, class
novelist and the breadth of view of a social and, indirectly, sexist oppression in the city by
historian to tell this story." 2 listening carefully to his subjects and helping
The book describes three very different them tell their stories (or at least aspects of their
families experiencing this "turbulent decade" stories).
in Boston race relations: the Divers, a liberal Liberal critics and some on the Left praised
Y u p p i e f a m i l y who become " urban the book for offering a "class analysis" of bus­
homesteaders" in Boston's South End; the ing, which took some of the social blame for
Twymons, a female-headed black family who white resistance off the shoulders of ethnic
live in a nearby housing project ; and the Irish working-class neighborhoods, and placed it on
working-class McGoff family of Charlestown. those of suburban decision-makers and power
The McGoffs, as the Twymons, are a female­ brokers who lived outside the city and did not
headed, project family in a poor Boston have to share what Lukas called the " burden of
neighborhood, suggesting the "common desegregation".3 Some liberals of the populist
ground" working-class families of both races stripe, like those who campaigned for Boston's
I i occupied in Boston during the 1970s. current Mayor Ray Flynn (who had been a
Lukas could not have picked a theme more leader of the South Boston anti-busing move­
tragic than the nation's flawed efforts to ment), found support for their view that social
achieve racial equality. In a slightly more subtle policies attacking racism are divisive and that
way, Common Ground reflects another dilem­ the solutions to racial inequality are economic.
ma, rarely treated with any literary power: the Disillusioned liberals and some conservatives
failure of liberal social policy and, more liked the book for criticizing the problem of
generally, the limits of the liberal vision of policy-making by court decree and for ques­
racial equality within a class-structured tioning the social costs and educational out­
capitalist society. comes of desegregation in Boston.
Common Ground is compelling and Common Ground has been praised and
dramatic. Like many people, I found reading presented not only as " the Boston book" but
the best book about the modern urban crisis
-

42
and the failure of liberal social policy. "The political meanings the book's narrative conveys
most important book on an American city that are:
has ever been written, " declared the New First, Common Ground suggests that the
England Monthly. 4 It is particularly appealing problems desegregation encountered resulted
to many liberals who are disillusioned with mainly from poor decision-making by Judge
social policies directed at racism and who are Arthur Garrity and lack of leadership from the
guilty about the blame working-class whites Church, the Mayor and other politicians. The
have received for opposing these policies. As focus remains on white leaders because the
one reviewer remarked, the book implies that crisis over busing was significantly, if not
attempts to solve the race question should be primarily, a "family feud" between the Irish
deferred until the class problem is addressed. In liberal policymakers and politicians and the
this way, Common Ground can be read as a "little people" who felt betrayed. In other
class-conscious book. 5 words, the development of the struggle over
Black reviewers and other critics have taken desegregation is seen as much in terms of a con­
Lukas to task for implying that class is more flict between white liberals and white inner-city
important than race, for ignoring the black working-class people as it is between a deter­
movement for civil rights and desegregation, mined black civil rights movement (and its
for unfairly judging the results of busing, for allies) and the equally well-organized white
soft-peddling white racism by drawing sym­ resistance. Hence there is little history of black
pathetic portraits of white resistance leaders Boston as a whole. Black family history is
and minimizing the racist violence they provok­ substituted for black social and political
ed or condoned. history.
In numerous forums around Boston, Lukas Second, the book presents the struggle over
attempted to answer his critics. He even said busing not only, or even primarily, as a racial
that he was not even writing a book about conflict between blacks and whites but mainly
desegregation or racism, that he was just trying as a class conflict between the poor white Irish
to give a journalist's inside view of what life and the liberal suburban elites (represented by
was like for three families in the midst of urban the Boston Globe's editors, and by "two toilet
crises. Some of this is an understandable Irish" like Judge Garrity and apostate politi­
writer's defense: don't attack me for the book I cians like Sen. Edward Kennedy). In other
didn't write. But much of what Lukas said was words, class (which Lukas calls a "dirty secret"
revealing, raising questions about his motiva­ in American life) played a major role in the
tion and orientation. conflict. Lukas does not say class was more im­
In this review I hope to develop some of the portant than race, but he says something equal­
points critics have made and provide an ly disturbing: that "class resentment did as
analysis of why the book is being read as it is. much as anything [read: including racism] to
What meanings, explicit or hidden, does the feed the fires of [read: white] resistance in inner
author provide about busing and desegrega­ city neighborhoods."6 This emphasis on the
tion, and a�out racism and class conflict? What class aspects of the white resistance serves to
are the implications of the book for our minimize the significance of organized white
understanding of race and class antagonism, racism. Indeed, Lukas is impressed not only by
for desegregation policy and for anti-racist the class resentment of the white opposition but
work? by its attachment to community and
I want to examine four meanings that neighborhood, without racist connotations.
reviewers and others have derived from reading Third, Common Ground implies that since the
Common Ground and explore their political white resistance and its leaders were class con­
implications. Whether Lukas intended to give scious, they would have offered less violent op­


those meanings or not is beside the point, position if the suburbs had also been
though I will try to show where the author gives desegregated through a metropolitan busing
historical and social meaning to his descriptions plan. Thus, the middle- and upper-class towns
of three families "caught in a turbulent would have shared the "burden of desegrega­
. decade . . . ". The fom central social and
• tion," reducing inner-city white class resent-

43
ment and violent resistance. The Decision-Makers
Fourth, the book raises serious doubts about
busing. Because it aroused so much class and Common Ground features portraits of five
race resentment, created such a violent white leaders: Mayor Kevin White, Judge W.
response, provoked white flight and caused Arthur Garrity (who wrote the busing order),
chaos in the schools, Lukas doubts the value of the anti-busing City Councilor, Louise Day
desegregation as an educational and social Hicks, Humberto Cardinal Medeiros and
policy. In the last three pages of the book he Boston Globe editor Thomas Winship. Lukas
presents Colin Diver's doubts about legal solu­ not only leaves out the black leaders who
tions to problems of social inequality. Indeed, shaped the desegregation struggle, the court
by 1976, says Lukas, "the goal of effective order and the community response, he misses as
school desegregation had been substantially well the significance of black history. The book

I
undercut by the steady drain of white begins and ends with the soul-searching of Col­
students. " (Lukas, pp. 648-650) The book ends in Diver, the white liberal lawyer. Lukas' con­
with a back and forth academic debate about cerns are apparently enunciated by Diver. They
the educational value of desegregation based on literally frame the book.
the first two years of busing. Though the con­ When asked at a community forum why he
clusion leaves us with a typical journalist's "on offered five portraits of white leaders involved
the one hand, on the other hand , " the entire in­ in desegregation and not one black, Lukas said
terpretive weight of the book leads the reader to he supposed he should have had a black but was
question the wisdom and value of the court unable to find any one person who stood out
order. s like the white figures he profiles and analyzes.

Manchild in the Promised Land, 1969, by Phillip Lindsay Mason. In Contemporary Black Artists in America.
-

44
This not only betrays a journalist's bias for a better white city schools) and METCO (the
certain kind of biography, but reveals a bias voluntary plan to bus black city students to
against black leadership and a fundamental suburban high schools), which Mel King calls
misconception about what led to the confronta­ "community controlled busing . " 9 Again the
tion over busing. None of these white per­ contrast is stark. The conclusion is inescapable:
sonalities had anything to do with the social Lukas is simply, perhaps willfully, ignorant of
changes that forced Judge Garrity to make the black history and biased toward an interpreta­
decision; the civil rights movement and its tion which focuses on white decision-makers
leaders did, but apparently, none of them were (no matter how indecisive) rather than black ac­
as attractive or perhaps as agonized by indeci­ tivists and powerless parents. Instead of seeing
sion as the people Lukas highlights . Except for desegregation as part of a history of Boston
Hicks, they were all classic ambivalent liberals. blacks moving "from access to power," Lukas
Lukas' incisive legal history of desegregation portrays black people-through the Twymon
in his chapter "The Judge" ignores the pressure family-as victims of historical forces and deci­
the civil rights movement put on the courts and sions beyond their control. 1 0
reveals an elitist bias in the sources . (Lukas , pp.
644-50) In Common Ground, the debate over
desegregation is conducted largely among Har­
vard social scientists ; it is a dialogue between
white liberals and neo-liberals, not a dialogue
within the black community where there was an
important discussion over community­
controlled schools. While Garrity and the
others become central figures in the struggle,
important black leaders like Tom Atkins, Ruth
Batson, Ellen Jackson, Mel King, and Paul Though Lukas hopes t o use family history to
Parks are ignored. The only references to King encourage the reader to see the many sides of
refer to white middle-class people's feeling that the crisis, he spurns black history when it comes
King made them nervous. (Many whites found to explaining how the desegregation case got to
him "an unnerving figure, " Lukas, p . 304.) Judge Garrity in the first place. Thus, he writes
Louise Day Hicks is taken very seriously and " . . . the struggle in Arthur Garrity's court­
exonerated of charges of racism; she was really room that year ( 1974) often resembled an Irish
an opportunist "who didn't really have morality play, fought out between various con­
anything against black people . " Mel King is, ceptions of what it meant to be Irish in con­
instead, by implication, guilty of frightening temporary Boston. It was a family feud. "
white people by being too militant on the issue Lukas wrote this in an article before the book
of racism. was published, entitled "A Touch of Class:
Lukas also refuses to take seriously the com­ Boston' s Busing Fight was largely a feud
munity control movement which had been a among its Irish, " with Ted Kennedy and Ar­
crucial part of the desegregation movement in thur Garrity portrayed as the "two toilet"
Boston. Lukas dismisses it, saying "that most Irishment who had made it and anti-busing
blacks had little faith in community control, " leader Louise Day Hicks representing the ' 'little
while the history o f the desegregation struggle people. " I I
suggests something very different. He ignores This i s a little like John Jakes ' view of the
the attempt made by Mel King and other black Civil War as a tragedy that divided a white
legislators to work out a compromise with family. It is also reminiscent of the traditional
white legislators like Billy Bulger, of South school of historical interpretation of the Civil
Boston , that would have allowed both for black War and the Reconstruction which saw those
and for white community control. Ironically, conflicts as between the North and South, or
Lukas, who favors a metropolitan busing plan the capitalist bourgeoisie and the planter
over the Garrity order, ignores the significance slavocracy, with black people as victims or
of Operation Exodus (to bus black students to witnesses. Until W.E.B. DuBois' Black Recon-

45

..._
L __________________________________________� ,/
,I
struction, white Americans lacked an under­ relatives, the Twymons, as the black family
! standing of the role blacks themselves played in featured in the book. I wonder why. Lukas
deciding the war's outcome and the shape of seems determined to show that racism was less
Reconstruction policy. In his impressive important than class resentment in creating the
research, Lukas ignores the outstanding works white resistance and the violence. Thus, in
on the desegregation struggle in Boston written describing the Debnam's fight to protect their
by Mel King, Byron Rushing, Henry Allen and home against racist attacks he accused "radical
Peter Shrag, a journalist who knew how to do missionaries from Cambridge" of trying to
social history. 1 2 It is more colorful and requires make racism "a central issue in the city , " as
less analysis and interpretive responsibility to though it was not an issue in black people's
write family histories than to write social lives . 1 4 (Lukas, p. 524)
history from a black perspective, but this ap­ Lukas' approach leaves black history to two
proach would have done more than affect the families of color-the Twymons and the
book's readability: it would have altered its Walker Debnams-and leaves it out of the
meaning. analysis of the court order and the events that
Lukas has been praised for his deft handling produced it. As civil rights activist Ruth Batson
of the three family histories, which he said bitterly, Common Ground "completely
energetically traces back many generations. leaves out the struggle that was carried out for
They provide the "breath" of social history, in so many years by black people in Boston" and
the minds of some reviewers. But these histories she fears the book will "forever distort" the
raise serious questions, too. How did Lukas history of desegregation in the city. 1 5
select them and what meaning does he give their
histories? Class Analysis or " A Touch of Class"
We can only speculate about the reasons for
the selections. Certainly picking two female­ Having examined Lukas' historical inter­
h e a d e d p r o j e c t famili e s , from w h i t e pretation, let us turn to the most interesting
Charlestown and a black South End aspect of the book: his class analysis of
neighborhood, helps convey the view that poor desegregation and the busing crisis. As I said
blacks and whites indeed occupied "common above, this sort of class perspective on racial
ground. " But what if Lukas had picked a fami­ conflict appeals to a variety of liberal, populist
ly of white homeowners whose breadwinners and leftist reviewers who all are opposed to, or
had fairly well-paid jobs in segregated city disillusioned with, anti-racist organizing and
departments or building trade unions? Would social policy. Lukas draws heavily on the view
this have conveyed a different meaning about psychologist Robert Coles offered at the time,
the stakes in the desegregation struggle? Would one supported by Boston journalists like Mike
it have suggested that white workers in Boston Barnicle and Alan Lupo who spoke to , if not
had a material stake in defending their relative for, white working class readers. 1 6 "I don't
privileges? 1 3 What if Lukas had picked a black think that busing should be imposed like this on
family of homeowners, like the Debmans, who working-class people exclusively, " Coles told
were defending their home against racist white Barnicle in a Globe interview . Suburban people
gangs? Would that have helped to show how should share . in the process. "The ultimate
the racism reflected in school desegregation had reality is the reality of class, " Coles concluded.
deeper roots in residential segregation? Indeed, "And to talk about [busing] only in terms of
what if Lukas had picked an activist black racism is to miss the point. " (Lukas, 506)
family, like the Debnams, to compare with an This view has a certain appeal. Busing was
activist white family of anti-busers like the imposed on white working-class people who op­
McGoffs? Would that have given the readers a posed it; it was forced, because it came through
different sense of the activism in the black com­ a court order; it did limit white residents' access
munity and the stakes it saw in desegregation to their neighborhood schools; it was a policy
and in defending themselves against racist at­ made by white professional people, not
tacks? I understand that Lukas at first in­ working-class people; it did call up poor white
vestigated the Debnams, but later chose their resentment against the liberal Irishmen like

46
Garrity and the Kennedys, and this could be
understood as a kind of "class resentment. "
Common Ground concludes with a thought­
provoking discussion of class, Lukas seems to
share Colin Diver 's new understand of the
"class dimensions" of desegregation. Diver
came to see the racial dilemma "less in
purely racial and legal terms, more in class and
economic terms . " Indeed, "wherever he look­
ed he saw legal remedies undercut by social and
economic realities "-a real dilemma in
desegregating public institutions when the labor
and housing markets remain segmented.
"Eventually, he believed, the fundamental
solution to the problems of a city like Boston
lay in economic development. Only by pro­
viding jobs and other economic opportunities
for the deprived-black and white alike-could
the city reduce the deep sense of grievance har­
bored in both communities , alleviate some of
the anti-social behavior grounded in such
resentments , and begin to close the terrible gap
March 14, 1976. South Boston politicians celebrate St.
between rich and poor, the suburb and the city,
Patrick 's Day: Sen William bulger, president of Mass.
the hopeful and the hopeless . " (Lukas, p. 650) State Senate, at the microphone; Rep. Raymond Flynn,
Class analysis is necessary to understand the and City Council president Louise Day Hicks.
busing crisis and racial conflict in Boston, but
Lukas does not really offer it to us. Instead , the home owner, the law-abiding, tax-paying,
class is separated from race and presented as a decent -li v i n g , hard-working forgotten
sort of competing oppression (very much like American . ' "11 Lukas seems to have absorbed
many Boston Irish people view their the unspoken assumption which flaws many
history-as one of oppression equal to that of populist appeals: the notion that the working
blacks). Thus Lukas found himself in the un­ class is only white. Thus , the remarkable
comfortable position of being seen as em­ response one often hears to anti-racist and de­
phasizing class over race, when his main segregation politics: how can you get "working
mistake was not seeing the connection. Class is class" support for that?
also separated from class consciousness, so that What Lukas gives us is "a touch of class, "
if busing opponents show class resentment not class analysis. There are at least three maj or
toward liberal suburban judges and politicians, problems with the class interpretation he offers :
they are by implication class conscious. Thus , first, h e exaggerates class conflict in the black
Louise Day Hicks is presented not as conser­ community, and ignores it within the urban
vative or reactionary, but as a kind of urban white community, preferring to focus mainly
populist, like one of her followers, the current on the "family feud" between the inner city
mayor Ray Flynn. "She was staunch for labor and suburban Irish. Second, he is so focused on
and the Democratic Party . . . , " Lukas writes the "class conflict" between urban anti-busers
in "A Touch of Class . " "Her invective focused and suburban liberals that he ignores the real
on 'the special interests , ' 'the Establishment, ' ruling class in Boston and its role in creating the
'the outside power structure, ' 'the rich people crisis. And third, he fails to understand the
in the suburbs, ' 'the forces who attempt to in­ interpenetration of class and race in the United
vade us . ' 'You know where I stand' was her States and the influence racism has had on
most famous slogan, but another was 'Boston white class consciousness. In sum, racism,
for the Bostonians . ' By Bostonians she meant parochialism , and j ob consciousness of
'the workingman and woman, the rent payer, populist leaders like Louise Day Hicks is under-

47

--------���----�--����--
estimated, while their antagonism to the Of course, the micro-history of the McGoff's
wealthy suburbanites and privileged liberals is Irish family shows parallel divisions of class
confused with class consciousness. and culture. Lukas shows how Irish family life
First, Lukas' history of the Walker-Debnam contributed to fierce community consciousness
family and, to a lesser extent, the Twymons, in neighborhoods like Charlestown, but he
emphasizes divisions of class, culture and underestimates the class divisions within the
region. "Battles of region and class [were] community. In focusing on Charlestown there
fought out within the Walker household, " he is an u nderstandable attraction to a strong
writes . (Lukas, p. 6 1) There is nothing wrong sense of community, which Lukas describes
with describing these differences, though it is well. The class differences within communities
surprising that gender conflict-so fully de­ like Charlestown and South Boston are not so
scribed by black feminist writers-is missing. obvious to an outside observer, but they are
The problem is that Lukas has no understan­ there, as any project kid from Southie will tell
ding of the impressive ways in which black you.
families and communities came together, Lukas' discussion of class barely touches on
whatever the particular family history. He is ig­ the real Boston ruling class. Common Ground
norant of the history of black family structure does make a contribution by providing a
and reconstitution described in the important devastating account of institutional failure in
work of Herbert Gutman and Leon Litwack. I S the Catholic Church, liberal confusion in the
Because h e focuses on the micro-history of Boston Globe and political cowardice and blind
black families he misses the macro-history of ambition in the Mayor's office. But only on
black community-building and the importance two occasions does the author discuss the city's
of extended and alternative forms of family life real economic rulers and their role in the
and kinship. These bonds of community tran­ drama.
scended family feuds . This is the kind of inter­ Once Lukas actually refers to the "city's rul­
nal view of black family and community we ing class" (Lukas, p. 36) in describing the scene
gain from Mamie Garvin Field's luminous when Boston's black community rebelled in
reminiscence of black Charleston, The Lemon 1967 and Mayor Kevin White requested help
Swamp and Other Places. from the city's ruling elite-organized into a

Dudley Station, Roxbury. Mural by Dana Chandler, Jr. , photo by A kin Duro.

i
committee of bankers, businessmen and
lawyers called the Vault. White asked the Vault
for $ 100,000 to sponsor a James Brown concert
in the Garden, which had been cancelled out of
fear of racial violence. The Mayor also asked
the businessmen for a million dollars to provide
"emergency palliatives" for the Roxbury
"tinderbox. " Banker Ralph Lowell, a descen­
dant of one of the city's oldest elite families
replied : "I am afraid the figure you mention is
out of our league. "
Worse still, the banks promoted residential
segregation and racial confrontation with
block-busting mortgage policies in Dorchester,
a populous working-class section of Boston.
Lukas expains how twenty-two Boston banks
banded together to provide mortgages for low­
income blacks in a program called the Boston
Bank's Urban Renewal Group (B-BURG).
However, these mortgages were granted to
blacks only within a narrow strip of land cut­
ting through Dorchester which had traditional­
ly been the Jewish community. The path skirted
the Irish Catholic neighborhoods that had
"resisted Jewish encroachment and were likely
to repel blacks even more adamantly, " as
Lukas explains . "By taking the line of least
resistance, B-BURG had done nothing to help
blacks break out of the ghetto. It had merely
enlarged and reinforced the ghetto. " After this
incisive analysis, the author seems to let the
banks off the hook by describing the B-BURG
effort as an example of how the "best inten­ recession of the seventies, fought it out with
tioned programs " s ometimes produce even more depressed workers of color for
"dubious social consequences" -in this case scarce j obs, housing and schooling oppor­
"unintended consequences . " (Lukas, pp. tunities for their children. 1 9 By only touching
2 1 1 - 1 2)
on ruling-class responsibility for poverty and
These touches of class reveal big gaps in the racial conflict, Lukas shows his limited under­
picture Lukas presents of the crisis. Missing is standing of class oppression and also his mis­
an analysis of the real ruling class of bankers,
understanding of white working-class con­
corporate lawyers, and big businessmen who sciousness and how it has been shaped by
made Boston a leading center for the concentra­ racism .
tion of capital (second only to New York), but
Lukas admits that he is puzzled by this con­
refused to share any of that wealth in the poor sciousness. "In my conversations with Charles­
black and white neighborhoods . While the town's Irish-Americans over the years, I found
"New Boston" policies created a glittering
relatively little rage directed against the fabled
downtown and skyrocketing real estate invest- Yankees, generally perceived to be effete
ment, the neighborhoods stayed poor and the
, of;

II f: :
bystanders in the city's central dramas . And
l .\k median income remained strikingly low. New
j �.
despite many acts of violence and ridicule
jObs went mainly to suburbanites while white heaped on blacks during those years, it often
orkers. extremely hardpressed during the
seemed to me that they were less the genuine
.
49
1

r
objects of that anger than scapegoats for a ter­ But Curley's populism was exceptional. He was
rible rage directed against others . " And the a maverick who rebelled against the intense
others were the suburban Irish, "their own kids parochialism and racialism of the Irish ward
who had deserted the old neighborhood, the old bosses and the extremely conservative Catholic
church, the old tavern, the old pieties for the Church, personified by Cardinal O'Connell
comforts-and immunities-of the suburbs. " 2 0 who openly discriminated in favor of wealthier
No wonder black readers were outraged by parishioners.
the way in which Lukas "tragically underesti­ The political and cultural history of the
mates or ignores the depth of . . . anti-Black Boston Irish developed in a context of militant
feelings" in white neighborhoods. 2 1 One of the Protestant reform which included the anti­
problems with oral history, even the compelling Catholicism of the Know Nothing movement
version Lukas offers, is that people are often and the anti-working class aspect of prison
providing cover stories. Lukas listened careful­ "reform, " compulsory schooling, and other
ly to what white people told him about their forms of social control . Led by a very conser­
feelings and he believed and respected what he vative Catholic clergy, the Boston Irish
heard. Indeed, the people being interviewed developed a reactionary posture toward these
probably believed what they were telling him. reforms. The Irish Catholic reaction to Protes­
Like Louise Day Hicks, they had "nothing tant reformism included a deep antipathy to the
against black people. " Southern blacks have anti-slavery movement. Another path might
often said that one of the most outrageous have been taken. In 1 848 Daniel O'Connell, the
aspects of Northern racism is white people's un­ "Great Liberator , " spoke at an abolitionist
willingness to own up to their feelings and to meeting in Faneuil Hall and presented a peti­
admit that their actions toward black people do tion with 60,000 Irish signatures demanding
not comport with their language. Lukas had in­ abolition of slavery. This could have been the
deed written a book about hatred , but he beginning of an Irish-American move to sup­
doesn't seem to know it and neither do the port anti-slavery, but it was not. Originally, the
readers who call it a healing book. As Globe reactionary posture of Boston Irish leaders was
columnist Ian Menzies put it, this is not a "lov­ related to the anti-Catholic , anti-labor
ing book" that does a "great service" to the ci­ character of white Protestant leaders. But, by
ty. It is a "book about hatred, which it has the time of the Civil War, Irish Democratic
done nothing to reduce. " And "hatred, like politicians had helped turn suspicion of anti­
sex, sells. " 22 slavery politics and Protestant reform into a
We need to know that Boston has an full-blown racist fear that free people of color
unusually hateful history, and that ethnic and would compete with the Irish for j obs. So in a
community identity, especially among the Irish, distorted way class consciousness of a narrow
evolved here in a particularly negative, conser­ sort fed racist consciousness. 2 4
vative way. That evolution had roots in the hate Reactionary scapegoating often exploded in
the Irish immigrants encountered and the class the Hub even when blacks were a small ghet­
resentment they experienced through enforced toized minority before World War II and race
poverty, incarceration, condescension and ex­ was not a major issue in Boston politics .
ploitation. This is what Boston Irish oral Italians constantly faced violence from North
histories tell us so eloquently. This is also the End Irish gangs during the 1 890s until the Irish
class resentment that Mayor James Michael retreated across the Bridge to Charlestown.
Curley harnessed in an inconsistently but Lukas mentions this in his colorful portrait of
generally populist attack on the Brahmin elite. Charlestown communalism , without ap­
"His main political strength was his ability to preciating the ways in which intense
define, dramatize, and play upon the discrimi­ parochialism bred an atmosphere of hate . He
nation, resentments, and frustrations suffered does comment on the amazing anti-Italian and
by the Irish community in its long passage from anti-Portuguese prejudice among many Irish
despised immigrant minority to a politically ir­ Catholics, but he does not explain it or relate it
resistible but economic blocked majority. " 2 3 to neighborhood identity.

50
Lukas has said that his book is really about
the conflict between the black demand for
equality and the white urge to preserve com­
munity. He thought both values were impor­
tant, but he failed to fully understand the
xenophobic aspects of communalism . He also
failed to learn from black history that com­
munity and equality are compatible and that
race is the main reason these two values seem to
be in conflict.
James Michael Curley tried to overcome
some of the most reactionary aspects of ethnic
parochialism and Catholic conservatism. He
created a citywide patronage machine that in­
cluded Italians, Jews, East Europeans, Asians,
and Blacks as well as Protestants . In doing this
he broke with the old ward bosses and their nar­
row ethnic politics and refused to pay homage i
to Cardinal O'Connell, who supported Franco
during the Spanish Civil War. 2 S As a city
politician Curley made himself accountable to
working-class voters throughout the city and
espoused a fairly class-conscious kind of urban
populism recently revived by the current Mayor
Ray Flynn .
But Curley 's populism was not the
mainstream of Boston politics and ultimately
did little to foster tolerance or to alter the city's
cultural politics . Indeed, Curley himself at
James Michael Curley (left) and "radio priest" Charles
times fostered an atmosphere of hate. He
Coughlin.
deliberately curried favor in the 1 930s with the bury during the thirties, describes the huge au­
reactionary radio priest Father Charles dience for Father Coughlin's Sunday afternoon
Coughlin and turned to vicious red-baiting radio broadcasts. "He would preach in his
when the Communist-led unemployed move­ musical voice this extraordinary equation in
ment exposed the breakdown of Curley's which the Jews were both the worst of the
patronage when he was mayor in 1 932-33.
bloodsucking capitalist bankers and the
Curley made speeches to hold his support in the
Bolsheviks running the USSR. Some of his
Jewish community when he ran for office dur­ more zealous supporters would, on the basis of
ing the 1 940s and he even j oined the NAACP, this inspiring message they heard every Sunday,
but he had no real influence on the terrible out­ go find Jews' heads to bash . " No wonder that
breaks of anti-semitism that afflicted Boston. In by the early 1 950s Nat Hentoff felt compelled
the 1 950s Boston also became a center of sup­ to "leave the heavy air of Boston , with its tribal
port for Sen. Joe McCarthy's crusade against hatreds, the anti-Catholics sometimes being
Communists, liberals and civil libertarians . Of almost as venomous as the anti-Semites, and all
course, McCarthy was even coddled by Jack mocking the Negroes . " 27 Hentoff left just when
Kennedy, who represented the new liberal wing the largest black migration to Boston was
of the Irish Democratic machine . As an Irish beginning .
Catholic labor activist told me: "The Boston Tom Atkins , the first black to serve on the
Irish loved Joe McCarthy. My mother-in-law
City Council in modern times and leader of the
still thinks he was crucified. " 2 6
NAACP during desegregation, wrote : "Lukas
Nat Hentoff, recalling his boyhood in Rox- would have the reader believe that the

51

-
A nti-busing rally, 1974.
resistance to desegregation in South Boston, air. That poison had been pumped into the at­
Charlestown, and other white areas was more mosphere for decades . 3 0
turf-defense than racism, thus ignoring the am­ In sum, we need more than a touch of class to
ple evidence that resisters weren't shouting understand Boston's racial crisis . We cannot
'buses go home, ' but rather 'niggers go separate class from race. We have to be able to
home . ' " 2 8 explain that class divisions were not just drawn
The point is not to condemn the Irish as the in the ways that Charlestown residents described
most racist group in Boston. Other ethnic them to Lukas-between the inner city whites
groups developed their own tribal hatreds. The and the suburban Irish liberals who betrayed
Italians' victimization by the Irish did not make them. This was the kind of class consciousness
the North End a more tolerant place for people that demagogic Democratic leaders had been
of color than Charlestown or South Boston. 2 9 fostering in Boston since the abolitionist days.
Indeed, it might have been more dangerous for This was Louise Day Hick 's game; she
people of color than those mainly Irish neigh­ detlected class resentment away from the big
borhoods where a few blacks lived in projects in bankers and businessmen who foster class and
the 1 960s . race conflict and away from neighborhood
In seeking to understand, explain, and de­ bankers and businessmen like her father. This is
fend the Charlestown Irish, Tony Lukas can the same game being played by Jimmy Kelly
only take at face value the Townies' defense of who parlayed his leadership of the militant anti­
community and family, their class resentment black South Boston Information Center into a
and ethnic pride because he cannot understand seat on the present Boston City Council. Kelly
the negative actions those feelings produced talks like a class conscious trade unionist (he
against people of color. Thus, Common was an official in the Sheet Metal Workers
Ground reads like a loving book and complete­ union) but in the city council he votes against
ly misses the palpable fear and hatred that hung rent control and supports the big developers.
over Boston like a cloud of poisonous gas in the To Lukas, politicians like Hicks reflected
early 1 970s . Racism did not come out of thin Irish Catholic class resentment more than

52
racism. He says in an article, "Louise's stand fits, however, including controi of better pay­
against segregation tapped a resentment rooted ing city and union jobs that could lead to an
less in race than in class " 3 1 but he ignores the escape to the suburbs, as all of Alice McGoff's
role demagogic politicians and trade union siblings escaped from Charlestown.
leaders had in shaping a narrow job con­ Monte Neill, a historian of Boston education
sciousness which was often masked with class and race relations, makes these conclusive ob­
rhetoric and he misses the significance of servations: "What Lukas fails to do is to indi­
racism in shaping that consciousness . It was so cate the overall hierarchy in the relative posi­
well understood, so deeply ingrained by the tions of poor working class whites over poor
1 970s that all Hicks had to say was "You know working class blacks. In effect, he adopts the
where I stand. " position of [current Mayor Ray] Flynn: we're
When the anti-busing groups defended neigh­ all poor together . He does of course, see race as
borhood schools and complained about sending a problem, but his book fails to reveal that race
their kids to dangerous neighborhoods , they and class are not two distinct problems but are
spoke to real communal and parental concerns , interconnected because in the US race is also a
as Lukas shows in his profile of the McGoffs . class category: Blacks are kept last hired and
And in the minds of some parents these con­ first fired , in the lousiest jobs, most
cerns may not have been racially motivated . In unemployed , etc. . " Because Lukas fails to see
other cases, genuine fears were manipulated racial aspects of class segmentation, he ignores
and used as codewords to promote racial fears the crucial role played by the poor white work­
and racist attitudes. Of course there was plenty ing class (and the politicians they elect) in rein­
of vicious overt racism expressed during the forcing segmentation. "For all their complaints
busing crisis (only described briefly in Common against the Yankees and the two toilet Irish, the
Ground), but the codewords were more com­ poor Irish in Boston have allied with these
mon, and Lukas does not know how to inter­ enemies against a weaker enemy, the blacks, "
pret them. Because he misunderstands the Neill concludes . "So long as they continue to
social and cultural history of Boston, he takes do so, real change will be severely limited. "32
the language of class at face value and misses Lukas declares elsewhere that he is no Marx­
the conservative and often racist components ist, and does not propose a socialist solution. 3 3
underlying it . This presents a serious philosophical problem
There was a class dimension to this, but not of the book : having proposed a class analysis of
the one Lukas identified. This was the lrish­ racism, social policy, housing and economic
dominated patronage machine which Louise opportunity, the author shrinks from class con­
Day Hicks represented through her control over scious political solutions. The author is essen­
school department jobs. That machine really tially a liberal elitist and pessimist who has no
controlled public and much private employ­ faith in the ability of working people to find
ment and gave white ethnics access to certain "common ground" or make a class analysis of
economic opportunities. It was understood that their predicament. That is why he places Colin
this access would not be shared with other and J o an Diver , the liberal " u rban
group s , especially blac k s , Asians and homesteaders, " in such a central place in the
Hispanics. (Lukas ignores the violent struggle story. Though they were not actively involved
that took place over construction jobs during in either side of the busing struggle, they are
the same period of Boston history.) During the made to represent the enlightened, educated
seventies, white working-class people supported professionals in government and the founda­
politicians like Hicks, and later "Dapper" tions who will save the city from warring races
O'Neil and Jimmy Kelly, who maintained this and classes . When the Divers pack up and leave
advantage in terms of access 'and opportunity the South End for suburban Newton, Lukas seems
through patronage. Ironically, whites did not to despair. The Divers and their friends seem to
gain much of an advantage over blacks in the leave the city because of desegregation (though
quality of schooling they received (though they they supposedly came to live in an integrated
did get teachers of their own kind and better ac­ neighborhood). Lukas shares Colin Diver's
cess to resources). They did gain material bene- neo-liberal fears of counter-productive policies

53
like desegregation as well as his fellow Harvard in America's ongoing conflict between poor
graduates' concern with "class issues . " (Lukas, blacks and whites. But it is a distorted story,
pp. 642-43 , 650) Ironically, class is being used one which does violence to people's history and
here to criticize one of the few opportunities to people's understanding of what desegrega­
black and white people in Boston had to get tion meant to the city as a whole.
together and fight for educational resources
they had both been denied. Sharing "the Burden of Desegregation"
Finally, for all of Lukas' emphasis on class
he ends up painting a strictly black-and-white Lukas criticizes the Garrity order for not in­
picture which ignores other social differences . cluding the suburbs in a metropolitan plan,
Lukas ignores ethnic and class differences in thus asking wealthier whites to "pay the price"
the communities of color. The METCO pro­ and "share the burden" of desegregation with
gram to bus black children to the suburbs was poor whites. Presumably, a metropolitan plan
an effort at community controlled busing, but would have reduced white resentment and
it also removed children whose parents wanted resistance.
to be particularly involved in school issues, and Lukas dismisses black opposition to this kind
many . of those parents were black professionals of solution, even though it was universal.
and business people who were leaders of com­ However, he fails to explore the reasons for this
munity struggles on other issues . 3 4 opposition. Tom Atkins explains it this way:
Lukas simply wipes out other ethnic groups " . . . the Supreme Court made it abundantly
of color, including Asians and Hispanics, who clear that 'the scope of the violation determines
were seriously affected by the whole desegrega­ the scope of the remedy. ' In Boston the copious
tion struggle. Miren Uriarte's oral histories of record compiled in federal court established
Boston Hispanic leaders reveal a constant com­ that Boston officials manipulated Boston boun­
plaint that these people are left out of Common dary lines, discriminated against blacks in fill­
Ground, gone without a trace. The growing ing Boston faculty and administrative ranks,
Hispanic community was caught in the conflict used buses deliberately to separate Boston
over busing. It refused to support the anti­ blacks from Boston whites, deliberately assign­
busing movement, but it found that the court ed black and white Boston students and staff in
order subverted the "clusters " of Spanish­ a racially segregative manner, discriminated in
speaking students required for a bilingual pro­ the allocation of Boston educational resources ,
gram it .had achieved only a year before the bus­ manipulated Boston grade structure so as to
ing order. In this sense, Hispanic parents had a create racial segregation, deliberately over­
far more legitimate criticism of the order on crowded Boston's black schools when white
educational grounds than white parents; they schools were under-utilized, and deliberately
eventually had to go to court to try to protect cited Boston schools so as to take advantage of
the bilingual program . But even though Boston 's residential segregation. "36
Hispanics were hurt by the order and even Not only did Boston have a legal, moral and
though they were at a desperate preliminary political obligation to provide equal educa­
stage of just fighting for access to public tional opportunity to all children, but all of
schools, they refused to join an anti-busing Boston's residents had an opportunity to hold
movement that made the black community its their own city's educational system account­
target. Paradoxically, leaving Hispanics and able, something metropolitan busing would
Asians out of the story exaggerates the racial surely have diluted. Lukas also underestimates
nature of the conflict. By ignoring ethnicity and the resources Boston could have brought to
nationality, Lukas unconsciously heightens the bear if it had a real commitment to quality
significance of race, by excluding groups who public education. Boston Latin School's quality
are not part of the white resistance or the Afro­ (as a college prep exam school) shows what
American community.3s might be possible with the right support .
It may make a good story, and good TV, to Boston did not need the suburbs to educate its
see the Boston busing wars as a colorful " feud children, black or white. By ignoring the class
between the Irish" and another tragic chapter differences within the city, the fact that more

54
Black students arrive for first day of classes at South Boston High School, 1974.

privileged whites had long sent their kids to Furthermore, Lukas sees only the divisive
parochial scools, and by ignoring the real ruling aspects of desegregation, not the possibility
class of bankers and businessmen who withheld that desegregation within the city of Boston
their vast financial resources from the public would make it possible for working-class whites
sector, Lukas leaves the impression that Boston and people of color to create political coalitions
schools could never have served city children to demand better education. That political
without a busing plan that asked suburbs p o s s i b i l i t y - w h i c h d o e s n o t i nt e r e s t
(which also vary in class and wealth) to share Lukas-was a n impossibility as long as a dual
the "burden . " school system existed. It is then no surprise he
Lukas implies that a metropolitan plan skims over the absymal quality of Boston
would have reduced white resistance to desegre­ public education for all races, something which
gation, if not heightened white acceptance. He did not escape earlier journalistic investigations
ignores the possibilities of white resistance to of the patronage-ridden system. During the
busing in Boston's notoriously segregated 1 940s Louis Lyons wrote that "a narrow­
suburbs. Indeed, the anti-busing movement minded Catholic establishment had rejected
drew many suburbanites into its ranks, even federal aid to education and had opposed
though they were unaffected. In 1 974 only four 'every advance in public education . ' " Nothing
suburban communities voted to continue MET­ had changed by the 1 960s when the public
CO and five rejected it. l 7 schools were truly impoverished, and nothing
And i t i s not necessarily salutary for black would change until the civil rights movement
and white working-class children to be schooled challenged the system . l 9
with wealthier privileged kids. Urban culture, T h o u g h L u k a s admits metropolitan
black and white, is different from suburban desegregation was legally impossible (the
culture. "Rock Against Racism " was one of Supreme Court rejected these plans for the
the many progressive programs that emerged reasons Atkins explained), he still proposes
out of the raCial crisis; it showed that street kids it-which seems academic at best, and at worst
of all backgrounds had a common youth an attempt to use class resentment to justify
CUlture, one that could be expressed in a de­ race inequality. It is offensive not only because
segregated urban school system. l 8 it ignores the possibility of white and black

55
class unity, but it sees desegregation only as a several important reasons , even if it produced
"price" working class whites had to pay. increased racial conflict, white class resentment
(Lukas, p. 27) And this says a lot about how and flight from public schools. "Eyes on the
Lukas regards black people. Prize" reminds us that even the most
Commenting on the debate about Common outrageous aspects of Jim Crow segregation fell
Ground, Mel King had strong words for those only after extreme white violence and white
people who hold that the busing order was "a flight. Public schools in the South are now
way in which the so-called preferred people primarily black in many areas , because whites
were not forced to carry the burden-the refuse to support them. But this does not make
burden-of the desegregation process . " His desegregation a failure, because the primary
message to them was: "Black people are not a goal of this struggle for people of color was not
burden. " Keynoting a conference on the "New integration, but access to educational resources
Boston" at Boston College in 1 984, he and institutional power. I wonder if Lukas
declared: "That is a mean and vicious way of would doubt the value of desegregation in the
saying something about black people and peo­ South because it increased poor white class
ple of color in this city . " " We were, and in fact resentment and white flight from the public sec­
are, an opportunity, " he continued. Desegrega­ tor. I doubt it. Lukas is expressing the disillu­
tion was an opportunity for people who live in sioned liberalism of the 1 980s and masking it
this city "to open up and act in the most with a concern he and Colin Diver share for
humane way possible. And they blew it . " King "class issues . "
concluded that Boston citizens had an oppor­
tunity to say, Let's have a city where, in Old
Testament terms, "all the tribes were welcome"
and not say the responsibility was on someone
else. "The responsibility was right here, and the
opportunity was a great one. ' ! 40

The Consequences of Desegregation

One of the most disturbing readings of Com­


mon Ground is that the struggle over busing
was not worth the price. Lukas refuses to take
responsibility for this reading, and says he was
not writing a history of desegregation. He does,
however, conclude the book by evaluating only
two years of desegregation and by raising
I

II
serious doubts in the reader's mind about the
value of busing, given white flight, the increase
in white class resentment, the "impoverish­
ment" of the public schools and what he sees as
a lack of class integration in the classroom
(with the removal of white middle- and
working-class kids). As one left reviewer notes:
"Lukas paints a picture of a struggle that
originated in righteous claims, but degenerated
into a grotesque convulsion that benefited no
one. He ends the book with head-shaking
dismay, wondering ever more loudly whether
the court ordered changes in staffing , in
disciplinary policy, in curriculum, and in pupil
assignment policies were worth the struggle. "41
from American Pictures, Jacob Holdt.
Desegregation was worth the struggle for

56
Common Ground also suggests that a more Class" at Charlestown High and the painful at­
accommodationist plan would have reduced tempts of black and white kids to get to know
white resistance and hostility. There is simply each other. Lisa McGoff is obviously changed by
no evidence that fewer numbers of black the experience, and unlike all the other genera­
students would have made any difference in tions of white Townies who went to the neigh­
reducing resistance or increasing acceptance of borhood high school, she has an opportunity to
busing. Indeed, the author notes that even the meet and relate to people of color. Forced
small number of minority students who attend­ segregation had deprived earlier generations of
ed Charlestown High School in 1 972 suffered that opportunity and that possibility for human
from racist attacks, two years before busing. growth .44 For all the empathy Tony Lukas feels
(Lukas , p. 286) He also suggests that a com­ about the injuries of class suffered by the
promise plan for Phase II which called for less McGoffs of Boston, he shows a liberal skep­
busing and different pairings would have en­ ticism about the potentiality for change among
countered less resistance. He also presents white working-class people.
favorably those who rejected the NAACP's This is all the more surprising because he ac­
position on the compromise it referred to as a tually writes revealingly about how the ex­
"Munich accommodation" favoring peace perienced challenged Alice McGoff. She was
over justice. (Lukas, p. 249) Lukas ignores this torn at her daughter's graduation by "seeming­
criticism and praises the plan because it had the ly irreconcilable emotions . " For years she had
support of the "broad middle" which incuded crusaded with the Powder Keg against Judge
Boston 's two daily newspapers, the Mayor and Garrity's "judicial tyranny" and for an ex­
the Governor. But what about the die-hard , clusively neighborhood school. Lukas calls this
well-organized white resistance? Would it really a "fight for self-determination" which was
have been placated by such a compromise? hardly what Alice McGoff and poor whites had
Lukas does not say, but the city's history sug­ before busing. Indeed, Lukas only once mentions
gests that white racism has nothing to do with the poor conditions of the High School before de­
the numbers of black people involved in segregation (p . 285) "Yet Alice had watched
desegregation. Indeed, the vast social science with mounting admiraton as Lisa assumed
literature on desegregation shows conclusively leadership at the school (which included
that white resistance is no greater when peacemaking), managing through force of per­
thorough desegregation takes place; it also sonality to restore some vestige of solidarity
shows that race relations improve when there and tradition. Her child was a determined
are more blacks in classrooms rather than young woman now, armed with the courage of
less.42 her convictions. Some Powder Keg members
The desegregation struggle in Boston has might complain about Lisa's role at the school,
created a "racial imbalance, " but it is a suggesting she had somehow sold out to the
very different imbalance than before-and this 'pro-busers , ' but Alice defended her, proclaim­
was by choice, not by coercion, as it was under ing a mother's pride . " (Lukas, p. 554)45
the old dual system. In this sense white flight Finally, Lukas misses what the desegregation
does not undercut the goals of desegregation as struggle meant to Boston politics in a longer .
Lukas maintains . (Lukas, p. 650) The effort and broader sense than a j ournalist's view of
was part of the black community struggle to history can convey. The struggle brought along
move from an apartheid situation to a position with it a movement to desegregate the work .
. of gaining access and then power in the public force, especially the lily-white staff of the
sector. 43 Boston Schools; it held schools more account­
Lukas also fails to understand how desegre­ able to parents and less to the patronage bosses;
gation began to change the city as a whole. it forced other powerful institutions in the city
Because he focuses so much on white "class to address the problems of public education; it
resentment, " he fails to see how the crisis led to a successful fight for district representa­
helped to change white people and shift the ter­ tion and challenged white control over the
rain of political discourse in the city. Lukas ac­ school committee; it generated support for Mel
tually writes quite well about the "Last White King 's two campaigns for mayor, which made

57

-
racism an issue in city politics for the first time.
Finally, it compelled some white people and en­ Acknowledgements: Thanks to the RA editors,
couraged others to deal with people of color especially John Demeter and Matt Goodman,
and to hear discussions about racism. The to my colleagues at U/Mass-Boston, especially
struggle also offered them a choice about how Michele Foster, Miren Uriarte, Jim Fraser,
they wanted to relate to their fellow citizens in David Hunt and Marie Kennedy, and to Janet
the public sphere. Many whites chose to defend Grogan for some excellent discussions about
exclusion, to reject an opportunity to share the Common Ground.
city's resources , and to deny their children a
chance to interact with people of color, but Footnotes
these are not good enough reasons to doubt the
policy which gave them those choices. 1 . Quotes from reviews in paperback edition of J .
Anthony Lukas, Common Ground: A Turbulent
In sum, Common Ground raises important
Decade in the Lives of Three American Families
questions about the meaning of the desegrega­
(New York, 1 987).
tion conflict in Boston and about the injuries of 2. Ibid.
race and class. Unfortunately, the author does 3 . See reviews in left publications by Mark Zanger,
not take responsibility for all the meanings the "Crossfire , " The Nation, October 5 , 1 985 and Brian
Powers, "Schooling in America, " Socialist Review,
book conveys . Common Ground is a book of
90 (Nov.-Dec. 1 986), pp. 1 20-24. Both have criticism
the disillusioned eighties, filled with doubts of Lukas, but both conclude that the book left them
about the equality agenda forced on this coun­ confused and wondering which side they are on. For
try by the civil rights movement. In a public those on the Left, Lukas's class analysis recalls the
forum Lukas said the book was about the need argument of some communist groups that busing was
a ruling class plot designed to divide the working
to reconcile community and equality in this
class and heighten racial conflict, an argument
society. This is an understandable desire, but it Radical America editorialized against during the ear­
is all too easy to view demands for equality as ly months of the busing crisis in 1 974. "Racism and
being subversive of community, especially Busing in Boston , " Radical A merica, Vol. 8, NO. 6
when they come from a minority. It is too easy (Nov. Dec . , 1 974).
4. Quotes from paperback edition of Lukas, Com­
to question the militancy of equal rights
mon Ground.
movements when in fact we should question 5. Powers, "Schooling in America, " p. 1 23 .
our definition of community and wonder how 6. Parenthetical words are the reviewer's. J . An­
meaningful communities can be if they are thony Lukas, "Garrity as Scapegoat , " Boston
premised on inequality. Globe, Sept . 1 8 , 1985.

58 from American Pictures, Jacob Holdt.

. ..
..................------------------------------------�
7. In a prepublication "op ed" piece, Lukas is 20. Lukas, "A Touch of Class, " p. 1 1 .
more explicit, criticizing the Garrity order for 2 1 . Thomas Atkins, review of Common Ground,
creating white flight and further "racial imbalance in Social Policy (Winter 1 986), p. 6 1 .
the schools, " leaving the public schools "poverty 22. Menzies, "A Dissenting Opinion" and Lupo,
stricken. " It also "hampered the drive for 'quality Liberty 's Chosen Home.
education' because most social science research sug­ 23. William V. Shannon, The American Irish (New
gests that improved classroom performance depends York, 1 963), pp. 228-29.
on integration by social class as well as by race . " 24. Paul Mishler, " Ourselves Alone: The
Antebellum Origins of Racism Among Boston's
Irish-Americans, " Debate & Understanding (Boston:
Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Mel King, Chain of Change (Boston, 1 982). Boston University Martin Luther King Center, 1983)
10. James Jennings and Mel King, From A ccess to makes a revealing analysis of the Irish Catholic
Power: Black Politics in Boston (Cambridge, 1 986). hostility to abolitionism which is rightly connected to
1 1 . J. Anthony Lukas, "A Touch of Class, " the influence of a Democratic Party that fostered
Boston Observer, Vol. 4 , No. 2 (June 1985), p . 9 . liberty over a morality viewed as a Protestant obses­
1 2 . King, Chain of Change; Byron Rushing, sion. The Irish identification with the Democratic
"Black Schools in White Boston" and Henry Allen, Party came at a time when the Southern dominated
"Segregation and Desegregation in Boston Schools" Party was defending slavery. Irish politicians joined
in James Fraser, et al. eds . , From Common School to in this defense. Hostility to abolitionism translated to
Magnet School: Selected Essays in the History of racism in another way: " the class status of the Irish
Boston Schools (Boston, 1 979); Peter Schrag, Village Americans and their relative weakness politically led
School Downtown: Boston Schools, Boston Politics to strategies to advance their interests to the exclu­
(Boston 1967). sion of others . " The Boston Irish hated the Yankees,
1 3 . Green and Hunter, " Racism and Busing in but the Catholic leaders who emerged were forced to
Boston, " Radical America, Vol. 8, No. 6 (Nov.-Dec. negotiate rather than fight the Brahmins. However,
1974). the Irish could compete with the blacks and "lord it
14. John Demeter is the source of information over them . " "Hostility toward the Yankee elite was
about Lukas starting out with an investigation of the deflected onto blacks who shared religious and
Debnam family. The criticism that the Left was mak­ Republican party affiliation with the Yankees but
ing racism an issue was also made of Mel King by who were, in the final analysis, powerless. " pp.
progressive supporters of his opponent in the 1983 85-86.
mayoral campaign. This controversy over racism as a 25. King, Chain of Change, p. 23 and, Shannon,
campaign issue is discussed in James Green, "The The American Irish, p. 230.
Making of Mel King's Rainbow Coalition: Political 26. Charles Trout, Boston, the Great Depression
Change in Boston, 1 963-1983 , " Radical A merica, and the New Deal (New York, 1 977), pp. 56-57;
(Winter 1 984) reprinted in Jennings and King, From Shannon, The American Irish, pp. 228-30. Also see
Access to Power. Lukas on O'Connell, pp. 377-378. The relationship
1 5 . Quoted in Menzies, "A Dissenting Opinion on between political hatred and a reactionary red scare
'Common Ground, ' " Boston Globe, March 23 , mentality on the one hand, and racism and
1986, p. A24. xenophobia on the other hand, has not been explored
16. The first book about the busing crisis in the city fully beyond the post-World War I period. See
was written by Alan Lupo, a Boston native and in­ Stanley Coben, "A Study in Nativism: The
sider journalist. Lukas might have acknowledged the American Red Scare, 1 9 1 9- 1 920, " Political Science
book since it presents virtually the same kind of class Quarterly LXXIX (March 1 964), pp. 52-75.
analysis, as it argues that Boston might have been 27. Nat Hentoff, interview, Boston magazine,
spared some of its agony if the suburbs had been in­ Dec. 1985, p. 22. Martin Nolan, Review of Boston
cluded. The major difference in Lupo's book is its Boy by Nat Hentoff, Boston Globe, Mar. 30, 1966,
emphasis on Boston's violent history of ethnic, race p. A9. On anti-Semitic outbreaks during World War
and class hatred, which Lukas ignores, and its sym­ II, see Shannon, The American Irish, p. 230. One
pathetic portrait of Mayor Kevin White, who looks private organization counted 6 1 1 anti-Semitic in­
very bad in Common Ground. Alan Lupo, Liberty 's cidents in 1 942-43 alone, including 60 physical at­
Chosen Home: The Politics of Violence in Boston tacks. Also see Nat Hentoff, Boston Boy (New York,
(Boston, 1977). 1986) for a discussion of anti-Semitism in Boston.
17. Lukas, "A Touch of Class, " p . 10. 28. Atkins, review p. 62.
18. Herbert G. Gutman, The Black Family in 29. For an example of how an earlier outside

S avery and Freedom (New York, 1 976) and Leon o b s erver romanticized Bosto n ' s ethnic
LItwack, Been in the Storm So Long (New York neighborhoods b y ignoring racial hatred and
1981 ). ' violence, see Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of
19 . Daniel Golden and David Mehegan, "Chang­ Great American Cities (New York, 1961), p . 33
Ing the Heart of the City , " Boston Globe Magazine,
.
which claims with dramatic inaccuracy that the
Sept . 18, 1983 and The Boston Urban Study Group North End's streets were used safely by "people of
Who Rules Boston ? (Boston, 1984). ' every race. "
-------
Postscript : On June 11, 1987, the Boston Globefeatured afront page article announcing that the Divers were returning to Boston-having
bought a condominium in the white middle and upper class Back Bay section. The article described Joan Diver as beingfree ofworry since
her children hadfinished high school in the suburbs and were now in college. The Globe will continue coverage oftheir progress with peri­
odic reports. The Editors .

. -,
I
I ii

30. For a good description of the racist climate in Globe, April 27, 1986, p . 1 especially by a black stu­
Boston at the time, see John Hillson, The Battle of dent who was part of the first class to go through
Boston (New York, 1 977). desegregated schools from the start. When Doris
3 1 . Lukas, "A Touch of Class," p. 9. Brown entered high school, she said everyone ex­
32. Monte Neill to John Demeter and Radical pected violence. She heard stories about riots in
A merica, Jan. 5 , 1 986. Hyde Park High School. "But when I got here, it
33. Lukas, "A Touch of Class, " pp. 9-10. had all changed, " she said. "There was a whole dif­
34. Anthony Hill, who is researching a book on the ferent set of kids here. We had all grown up together
history of Afro-American education, criticized MET­ in elementary and secondary school. Why all of a
CO on these grounds. Jean McGuire, MET CO direc­ sudden would we start fighting?" She worried about
tor, responded that if white parents had a choice to white flight but quickly pointed out, "If the schools
send their children to private or suburban schools, had remained separate, I wouldn't have had a chance
then blacks should have the same choice. This does to meet a lot of different kinds of people. " Ibid.
not however speak to the social consequences of a
METCO program. "Metco at 20" Boston Globe,
May 1 7 , 1 987 See Hochschild, The New American
Dilemma, p . 74 on the "negative effects" of volun­ James Green is an Associate Editor of Radical
tary one-way busing plans. Also see Mel King's America. He teaches in the Labor Studies pro­
criticisms in Chain of Change, p. 87. gram of the College of Community and Public
35. Thanks to Professor Miren Uriate of UMass­
Service, University of Massachusetts/Boston
Boston's College of Public and Community Service
for sharing the results of her extensive interviews and is a member of the Massachusetts Labor
with leaders in Boston's Hispanic community. History Workshop.
36. Atkins review, p. 62.
37. Lupo, Liberty 's Chosen Home, p. 309. Op­
position has recently surfaced in overt white student
reaction to the MET CO program. Boston Globe
VOL. 19,
Magazine, Feb . 1 6, 1 986, p. 62, 67, 72. On informal
segregation in the MET CO program, "Worlds
Apart, " Boston Globe, Feb. 1 3 , 1 987. Less publiciz­
ed racial discrimination had occurred from the start
of the program.
38. Reebee Garofalo, "Rocking Against Racism in
Massachusetts," ONETWOTHREEFOUR: A Rock
'n ' Roll Quarterly No. 3 (Autumn 1986), pp. 75-86.
39. Louis Lyons quoted in Lupo, Liberty 's Chosen
Home, p . 1 37 . The dismal assessment of Boston
schools during the 1 960s in Schrag, Village School
Downtown. For a discussion of the seemingly ob­
vious possibility that "a desegregation order can also
work as a catalyst for other school reforms if the
school system takes the opportunity , " see
Hochschild, The New American Dilemma, pp. 80-8 1 .
40. Mel King remarks at a conference o n the New
Boston at Boston College, October 5, 1984. Thanks
to Judy Smith and Sharlene Boogd Cochrane for a
video-tape of this speech.
4 1 . Powers, "Schooling in America, " p. 123. Featuring BANANAS, BASES AND
42. Hochschild, The New American Dilemma, pp.
PATRIARCHY: Some Feminist Questions
80-8 1 on the negative effects of incrementalism in
desegregation. All studies show that "making many About the Militarization of Central America by
simultaneous changes achieves more desegregation Cynthia Enloe; AT ARM ' S LENGTH :
and avoids more problems than making few or serial Feminism and Socialism in Europe by Marie
changes. " Ibid. Also see Martin Patchen, Black­ Kennedy and Chris Tilly; THE
White Contact in School: Its Social and A cademic
BROTHERHOOD OF TIMBER WORKERS
Effects (West Lafayette, Ind . , 1982), p . 3 3 1 which
points out that race relations were worse in schools AND THE SOUTHERN LUMBER TRUST:
where blacks were in a small minority. Legal Repression and Worker Response by Jeff
43 . Jennings and King, From A ccess to Power. Ferrell and Kevin Ryan.
44. See comments that make this point much more
strongly in " 1 2 Years Under Desegregation, " Boston
-

60

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________________________________________________________
r
W I N T E R I N AM E R I CA
Notes on the media and race

This is the first article in a two part series on race and the media. The second part, which will
center on a discussion of race, politics and media in Boston, will appear in a subsequent issue.

For Dave Witerski

John Demeter

More than any period in recent memory, the US of late 1 986- early 1 987, seems to come
closest to resembling the surrealist notion, "society of the spectacle . " And in the midst
our inundation with scandals and "big events , " from Contragate to Pearlygate, from
....�. ,.,
... .. � to Embassygate, the messenger has become as big a story as the message itself.
Network television executives are called before Congress to assure the preservation of the
blic trust " in the face of costcutting by corporate accountants. The media' s own polls
an alarming dissatisfaction not only with the targets of their investigation, but their
role as investigators . ! In one intriguing coupling, an association of j ournalists has
" " "'�HLIV turned to the Advertising Council to counter this image problem . Prompting this re­

action was a survey showing that one in three Americans felt negatively about the press,
another sampling revealing that one in five citizens would remove freedom of the press
the First Amendment . The planned campaign will focus on the theme, "If the press
't tell us, who would? " 2
Given the dizzying array o f spectacles being paraded before u s , i t seems that an equally
te question would be, " Just what is the press telling us? " Focusing instead on
--U" 'Vl,'" of style and "appropriateness , " very little media criticism is taking up issues of

; Opposite: Dec. 27, 1986 solidarity march in Howard Beach, New York after murder of Michael Griffith a week earlier.
Michael Kaufman photo/IMPA CT VISUALS.
63
direction and ideology. In a period as critical as two decades ago?
the current media-defined, "end of the Reagan There were times this past winter, in fact,
Revolution," such questions are needed. In this when the images from "Eyes on the Prize, " the
article I will offer some speculative thoughts on documentary of the history of the American
one such area-one that rarely is touched in the civil rights movement of the 1 950s and 60s,
current criticism-the implications of media seemed to jump generations onto the nation 's
coverage about race. The information is based evening news. The line between history and cur­
on a sampling of national print and electronic rent events appeared thin indeed-separated,
media and is meant to provoke wider considera­ only by the "colorization " of the latter-day
tion. Examining media treatment of race at this newsreel footage. The timing of the six part
historical moment, I believe, offers the oppor­ series , broadcast on the nation's PBS stations,
tunity to watch ideology in the making . New was deeply ironic, appearing only days after the
frameworks are being shaped; the battle to Ku Klux Klan attack on civil rights marchers in
define what race means in this society is in pro­ Georgia and barely a month after the Howard
cess. In a later piece, I would like to use some of Beach , New York racial attack that left one
these national observations to discuss the black man dead.
curious relationship of race, media, and politics For a national media which had just begun to
in Boston. stir from its trance-like state with somewhat ag­
gressive coverage of the Contrascam scandal,
Deciphering the "new racism" the incidents in Georgia and New York promp-
ted coverage of a phenomenon seen sweeping
In his study of the interrelationship of mass the country. In keeping with media constructs
media and the New Left,3 Todd Gitlin talked of of conflict and confrontation, the coverage in­
news coverage as social management. He detail­ creased when civil rights activists mobilized
ed the ability of the media to orchestrate every­ responses to the New York and Georgia at­
day consciousness through their pervasiveness, tacks. When those marchers came under verbal
accessibility and centralized symbolic capacity . and physical abuse as they rallied, cameras and
While the practices he outlined-ignoring cer­ pens recorded the sights and sounds. In an ap­
tain political developments, selectively em­ parent break with the usual media constructs,
phasizing others, and relying on "official" ver­ background and investigatory pieces appeared,
sions of reality-were identified in relation to there were followups to the stories and serial
the treatment of a large political opposition, I discussions of racism and race relations. Con­
believe they can help decipher the massive cur­ nections were discovered to other incidents
rent attention to the "new racism. " In fact, across the country. At the University of
perhaps one of the more provocative questions Massachusetts campus in Amherst, an assault
about this coverage is whether, in the absence on black students who were celebrating the New
of an influential and farreaching social move­ York Mets victory in the World Series, received
ment like the civil rights forces of three decades relatively minor treatment in October. By late
ago, the media is now attempting to shape con­ winter, after a state investigation had charged
sideration of public policy. 4 What has produced that several white students had initiated the
the recent awareness in print and electronic racist rampage, the incident was pictured as
media of the discrimination, bias, and outright part of a phenomenon that included public
racism seemingly touching every aspect of com­ slurs, cross-burnings , and physical attacks at
munity life? Given the political spectrum within schools throughout the country . As the New
the media, what can we learn from the York Times editorialized with apparent sur­
parameters of the discussion about race? In prise, "Crude overt racial bigotry has again
light of the Republican attack on civil rights, come out of campus closets and onto the
and the lack of any substantive Democratic quads . " l Among the roster of institutions in­
response, is there a struggle to set the terms of volved were some of the nation 's elite, most of
the "post Reagan" agenda and avoid a volatile which had carried liberal reputations as in­
challenge as this country experienced barely cubators of student political activism in the

64
Subway gunman Bernhard Goetz takes his mind offfellow passengers by scanning press reviews of his trial, March 26, 1987.
Bill Biggart photo. IMPA CT/ VISUALS.

1 960s . Today, the Times intoned, they "seem " News" and "Reality"
to be incubators of racial intolerance. "
The coverage contrasted provocatively with Another part of the frame attached to stories
the relative absence of discussions within recent is the shifting between "news" and "official
journalism . In the aftermath of Howard Beach , reality . " Separating the events of this past
the information and reports of racism's con­ winter from "history"-the events pictured in
tinuing presence in every aspect of community "Eyes on the Prize , " for example-helps to
life, from the media itself to professional strengthen the media case for seeing them as
sports, from the education of our youth to even not part of a historical continuum. It is a way
the location of the nation's toxic waste sites6, of saying , we dealt with racism in the past , and
appeared with growing frequency. After For­ we can deal with it now. The New York Times
syth County, and its stark mirroring of the calls these outbreaks "atavisms . " Throwbacks .
footage of " Eyes on the Prize , " any attempt to Columnist Anthony Lewis of that paper, even
look at these events as anomalies seemed to ex­ while criticizing the Supreme Court decision de­
plode. nying racism in the state of Georgia's applica­
But as those incidents intruded upon the tion of the death penalty must first assert:
absence of coverage in the media, they also in­
truded upon a key aspect of the promotion of The great achievement of American society
since World War II has been to turn away from
the conservative agenda in the Reagan era: the the racism that marked our history. Unfairness
containment of the "new social movements"­ of all kinds remains. But we have made extra­
the racial minority, women 's and peace move­ ordinary progress in ending official racism: the
ments-which were held responsible "for the expression in law of racial hatred and fear. 8
decline and dislocations Americans had ex­
perienced in the late 1 960s and after. ' " But the "laws on the books" approach offers

65
l
little comfort when there is no enforcement , or Perhaps one of the clearest self criticisms was
worse, as Juan Williams has commented, when voiced recently by Ted Koppel, host of the
the Reagan approach has been ABC-TV "Nightline" program. On the April 6
show that featured the much-reported racist
. . . to narrow the entire civil rights policy
remarks of baseball executive Al Campanis,
debate to a zero-sum game in which blacks are
trying to take away jobs and opportunity from that there were few blacks in managerial or ex­
whites. In that atmosphere there is little room ecutive positions in professional baseball
for a middle ground. Blacks and whites are because they lacked "the necessities " to assume
polarized. It is all too apparent that while such work, an embarrassed Campanis tried to
Reagan's men speak in self-righteous tones
turn the tables on his interviewer. Asked how
about discrimination against hardworking
whites and the need for blacks to do more to many black TV executives there were, Koppel
help themselves, these men have twisted the answered,
Civil Rights Commission into an advocacy
group for the administration's position that "If you want me to tell you why there aren't
helping blacks is reverse discrimination.9 any black executives, I 'm not going to tell you
it's because the blacks aren't intelligent
For all the verve the media suddenly showed enough . I'm going to tell you that it's that
in uncovering the racism behind the events of whites have been running the establishment of
broadcasting, just as they've been running the
Howard Beach and Forsyth County, its surprise
establishment of baseball for too long, and
at these overt manifestations was a result of its seem reluctant to give up power. I mean, that's
own constructs-its failure to cover racism in what it finally boils down to, isn't it? " 1 2
the previous decade; its inability or unwilling­
ness to distance from the "official" proclama­ The Federal Communications Commission,
tions that were moving toward a "color blind" it should be noted, it currently reviewing its
society. Additionally, using the New York and policy of granting preferences to women and
Georgia incidents as touchstones, served to minorities in station licensing, fearing that such
allow racism to remain outside the institutions a plan may not result in "diversity" and might
of power, including the media. prove " unconstitutionaL "
If the majority of press coverage of national
race policies didn't exactly dovetail with the The Bottom Line
agenda of the Teflon president, neither did it
offer dramatic protest. As importantly, by not In addition to these aspects , we need to look
relating evidence of continuing patterns of as well at the economic terrain. Local and na­
racial discrimination-from voting rights tional media operations, we are constantly
abuses to weaknesses in enforcement of civil reminded, are businesses after all. And whether
rights statues-to the Reagan administration the process is hostile or friendly, they are in­
policies that encouraged them, the media effec­ creasingly being consumed into larger con­
tively marginalized those forces challenging glomerates. Any understanding of their power
"official reality. " has to sift political opposition with corporate
The story lies as much with the continued ob­ competitiveness. At present, 27 corporations
jectification of the communities of color, their control most of the American mass media.
images presented through mass media, l o as it And, to add to that, one recent report cited,
does with who reports the news and what "many of today's media barons made their for­
"sources" of information are used. As for the tunes doing something else. Laurence Tisch of
latter, the court victory by the black defendants CBS controls a real estate empire and Lorillard,
in the New York Daily News case showed that it the country's fourth largest cigarette maker. I
has much to do with the order of the media's General Electric, designer of nuclear power
own house . " The general lack of discussion plants and much weaponry, now owns NBC . " I J
about discriminatory policies within media Lest there b e any misunderstanding o f the
organizations points a critical finger at the interrelationships, the "daily diary of the
"public trust" as much as any other perceived American dream " (as the Wall St. Journal's
abuses. ads tout) is ready to remind us of the ultimate
-

66

__________________________________________... r�
balance sheet: now is the time for self-help :

There are huge costs to creating a persecutable


·. . to the extent that there has been some
class of citizens. More women and minority
decline in the proportion of blacks in our elite
workers will be unfairly burdened by the 'affir­
colleges and universities, these activists would
mative action' stigma at a time when many are
have us ascribe it to racism-rather than to the
making it on their own. Racial incidents in
ongoing crisis in the ghetto that leaves more
New York and Georgia and on several college
and more blacks less and less prepared to ac­
campuses suggest that laws favoring minorities
may help lead to tragic consequences. 1 4
quire the academic skills necessary to a gratify­
ing and useful life. 1 6

These areas begin t o explain why, although This theme was echoed i n The New York
coverage of race issues has increased massively Times, after its initial editorial on campus
this winter, the political spin on the coverage, racism, with a followup entitled "Lost on Cam­
most of which is more hidden than the pus: Minority Momentum, " that declared
Journal's , continued within already existing " minority youngsters too often defeat
editorial biases. themselves . " 15 Thus, while problems are iden­
We also need to ask why the Contrascam tified within the social fabric, the national
scandal has provided the media with a conve­ paper of record is still free to boost the ad­
nient "window" to enter the " Reagan Revolu­ ministration "bootstrap" theory as well. The
tion" on news as well as op-ed pages, while the refusal to accept any terms but white society's
bankruptcy of a domestic policy that lies own, so evident in both pieces, stretched to in­
behind the reaction of Howard Beach and For­ teresting dimension as · the Times evaluated
syth County has not brought such a systemic black politics in New York City.
critique. As in the split treatment of subway In "Blacks in New York: The Anguish of
vigilante Bernhard Goetz, within the media the Political Failure, " the paper observed that
there is "general agreement that blacks are not
consensus on how to confront our racial history
remains contested . represented in city government in a way that
With the rise of the Right the very would reflect their numbers or voting power . "
parameters of the debate have shifted immense­ Citing "politicians, scientists, pollsters and
ly. Rarely are progressive or radical non­ campaign organizers , " the following reasons
governmental opposition voices heard, even on were listed for the "failure of blacks to unite
the op-ed pages of the "liberal" press, while the and to enter the city's governing coalition : "
likes of the Moral Maj ority's Cal Thomas can
• A current absence o f black leaders with wide
be seen regularly in The Boston Globe. While
appeal.

the president may be forced by trappings of of­ An inability to rally Hispanic voters and
fice to join in commemoration of Martin white liberals in a supportive coalition.
Luther King, J r. 's birthday, no such restric­ [Author'S italics]
tions exist for the likes of nationally syndicated • Political infighting among blacks, a geo­
graphic dispersal and a considerable diver­
columnist William F. Buckley. Buckley's
sity in backgrounds.

response to the media attention given the Difficulties in raising campaign funds and
Howard Beach incident was typical: the dependence of at least some black poli­
ticians on patronage and services controlled
It is simply not correct, the evidence of one's by county political organizations and City
senses confirms, that race prejudice is increas­ Hall. 1 8
ing in America. How does one know this? Sim­
ple, by the ratings of Bill Cosby's television It may b e one thing t o label Howard Beach ,
show and the sales of his books. A nation or a campus cross-burning as evidence of
simply does not idolize members of a race that
nation despises . "
raci s m , but in examllllllg t h e b lack
community's political failures, one seems to on­
While the Right argues that racism no longer ly need to know how they fail themselves.
exists, the neo-liberals are not very far behind. Even when "positive" angles are presented
The New Republic would also proclaim that about black politics, it seems that news ac-
-

67



counts direct their efforts to "certifying" "shrewd" electoral posturing and for obscur­
leaders and creating a rather narrow spectrum ing " the central racial character of these in­
of "sources . " The rise in legitimacy of black cidents . " "Inability to rally Hispanic voters
conservatives in academia and as administra­ and white liberals in a supportive coalition" ap­
tion appointees is one area reinforced by the parently is relative.
media. And it is difficult to view the current Two other examples show that identifying
coverage and not think of Jesse Jackson. leadership and strategy stretch beyond even
Thinking of present media attention to race Jackson. When editorializing on the "new cam­
issues as preparation for dealing with his pus racism, " the Times intoned , "Civil rights
presidential candidacy does not seem cynical . It leaders correctly point to the Reagan
should prove illuminating to see shifts in administration's indifference or even hostility
coverage now that Gary Hart has withdrawn . to black concerns . Administration leaders rare­
Some commentators have already . reluctantly ly speak out strongly against racist acts . " 2 l Less
tagged Jackson as the frontrunner, but a than six weeks later, despite the fact that the
number of recently released polls have begun president still had not met with black leaders or
including candidates who have shown no in­ congressional representatives in his six years in
terest in running or have taken themselves out office, the paper ran a center front page article
of consideration-as in the case of New York on his address to all-black Tuskegee University
Governor Mario Cuomo. The double weight of in Alabama. PRESIDENT OFFERS VIEW OF
Democratic Party presidential candidate and PROGRESS BY BLACKS IN THE U.S. read
"black leader" has already produced some the headline. 22 Dissident views again are con­
startling descriptions as the following phrases trasted to official reality.
from a Washington Post profile of Jackson
show: The Great Fear
" . . . President of Black America. "
"Hard-nosed politicos say the Rainbow exists In a news analysis entitled " Marching on
mostly in Jackson's mind . " Racism: Practical or Passe?"23 the Times car­
" 'He scares m e a little, ' a prominent
ried the contrasts to debates on strategy. The
southern black official said . . . '
'You're saying that Jesse Jackson is a article announced that "civil rights experts"
low life?' one of the authors asked. 'That's were " questioning whether the methods that
about it, ' the man said . " defeated institutional racism in the 1 950s and
"But at Harvard, Jackson gives a masterful 60s can prevail against the more subtle racism
speech, for intellectuals anyway . . . his slang of the 1 980s . " So subtle was the 1 980s' racism
,,
recedes, except when he cornpones it up . . . , .
that it had prompted the paper to run a multi­
part series on New York's racial situation,
Other coverage, a s in the Times article on racism in professional sports, and racial ten­
black political leadership in New York, can sions in various metropolitan area schools and
vary. For example, the report cites the excite­ neighborhoods. In the 60s, the article offered,
ment in the black community over Jackson's the " demands were clear . . . the target was
1 984 campaign: "no local candidate has Congress, the courts and the White House."
generated the interest Mr . Jackson produced to But beneath the "debate, " the real fear
reverse historically low levels of registration emerges. The writer reported a worry, among
and turnout among black voters . " The paper, black leaders, that a lack of clearcut strategy
which of course has much to say about the cer­ had "left their nonviolent approach . . . open
tifying of such leadership, did not let a Jan. 28 to criticism from those who feel more direct
Jackson op-ed piece on Howard Beach slip by confrontation is needed. " With no mainstream
without comment. 20 In his statement, Jackson movement to manipulate, the bogey of angry,
spoke of Howard Beach and Harlem as "two violent protestors is raised. It is a picture that
sides of the same coin, a coin devalued by does not stray far from the fear of "black
Reaganomics . " He was scolded in a Feb. 2 criminals" that is often raised in media crime
"Editorial Notebook" by Diane Camper for reports.
"#

68
!mIi!iII!! -£
March of Black Unity in aftermath of Howard Beach racist attack, Jan. 21, 1987. 4, 000 marched through midtown New York
to Mayor Koch 's home. Donna Binder photo. IMPA CT/ VISUALS.

Three weeks later Police Commissioner Ben­ assault charges in an unrelated incident, the
jamin Ward, in an interview published on the story quoted the man ' s mother, " I t ' s
first page of the Times Metro section, offered disgraceful, i t ' s just a case of reverse
the paper what it had been searching for. He discrimination. " 2 7
worried that unresolved tensions over Howard In the midst of the current national attention,
Beach, the Goetz trial, and police acquittals in the curious relationship of race, :nedia, and
recent deaths of blacks would fuel a " long, hot politics in Boston offers another re vealing win­
hot summer. " 2 4 For the sensational tabloid dow. A little more than a decade ago the city's
New York Post, that line was already crossed. turmoil over school desegregation recast its
Editorializing on the "Day of Outrage" march reputation as the "Athens of Amerka" into the
shortly after Howard Beach, the largest black "Little Rock of the North . " 2 8 That history,
protest in quite a few years, which had wound much to the dismay of the current city ad­
its way through midtown Manhattan, the Post ministration and its major newspaper, The
denounced the marchers as "Mau, Maus. " 2 5 Boston Globe, remains a touchstone for the
So deep has the Reagan worldview seeped in­ present national turbulence. One of the first
to media consciousness about race that it is fair­ New York Times reports on the January 1 7 at­
ly common to see contradictory and bizarre tack in Forsyth County described it as " the
cpmments carried within short news items and most violent incident of its type since mid-1 970s
investigatory reports alike. In the conclusion to Boston . " And as coverage in local and national
l two page report on housing patterns in the ci­ press revealed, it was a 1 983 Boston case that
ty, the Times quoted a resident of an all-white provided the Howard Beach special prosecutor
�ghborhood, "I don't think people here see with the model to break the impasse and push
_judice as a cancer, but as a way of maintain­ indictments of the white youths charged in that
_;the status quo . "26 In a short item on the ar­ incident. In the case of the Boston attack,
- of one of the Howard Beach defendants on several white youths beat and chased a black
" tp
69
i I

man onto nearby subway tracks where he was John Demeter is a member oj the editorial
struck and killed by an oncoming train. board oj Radical America. He was the media
coordinator jor the Mel King campaign during
From its anti-colonialist heyday in the late 1700s, the Eighth Congressional District race in 1986
through its experience as the Northern center for the and is currently researching material on US
anti-slavery Abolitionists in the mid 1800s, Boston media and racism.
has held a reputation as the moral and political con­ Acknowledgements: This article benefited greatly
science of this nation. When racial violence erupted from comments by members of the RA editorial
in opposition to the city's school desegregation in the board, in particular Margaret Cerullo, A nn Holder,
mid 1970s, images of hate and violence on Boston's and Ken Schlosser. Con versations with Virginia
Bullock were also helpful in sharpening the observa­
streets became international news. In 1983, interna­
tions. Needless to say, the author takes sole respon­
tional attention returned as community and political sibility for the opinions expressed in the final version.
activist Mel King's "Rainbow" campaign for mayor
FOOTNOTES
brought him through a victory in the preliminary to
the final election-the first black to reach that level
in the city's history. To many in the media, that elec­ 1 . "Distrust of Reagan Shown in Poll" New York Times
tion signaled a "turning ofthe corner" on the city's May 8, 1987. In discussing the results of a CBS News/New
York Times poll on public reaction to the Iran/Contra
recent racial turmoil. Despite the fact that white
scandal, significant percentages of respondents were cited
populist Ray Flynn, a former antibusing leader from as displaying an increasing distrust of the president and an
South Boston, was overwhelmingly elected in the increasing sense that the media was "overplaying"reports
final (with 80 % ofthe white vote and four percent of of the investigation.
2. "Campaign On Behalf of Free Press, " New York
TImes April 28, 1987. As Philip H. Dougherty's "Advertis­
the black), commentators pictured the campaign as
"issues-oriented," with a mutual repudiation by both ing" column revealed, the ad campaign will use the ex­
candidates of the previous decades' bigotry. amples of exposing Marcos' corruption in the Philippines,
Both the capital city's mayor and the state's gover­ the press' clarifying of Chernobyl, the exposing of Austrian
nor, Michael Dukakis, are riding the rebirth of Bos­ President Kurt Waldheim's past and the reporting of the
Challenger defects. For the role of US media and reporting
ton to a national political stage. Dukakis is among the
of events in the Philippines, see Frank Brodhead's article
frontrunners for the Democratic presidential nomi­ in Vol. 20, No. 1 of Radical A merica.
nation (placing behind Jesse Jackson in most polls). 3. Todd Gitlin, The Whole World is Watching: Mass
Flynn has shuttled around the country touting the Media in the Making and Unmaking Of the New Left
city's rejuvenation, and even addressed the Jan. 24 (Berkeley: University of California Press) 1980.
4. James W . Carey in "The Dark Continent of American
civil rights rally in Cummings, Georgia. But, as is the
Journalism" describes journalists as "active participants in
case nationally, there is an underside to the local mira­ reality making and not just passive observers . " Daniel
cle that has seen this city rise to the top of the nation­ Hallin in "Cartography, Community and the Cold War"
al housing market and become a booming center for speaks to the role variance among media, citing the New

high tech and service industries. As the city moves York Times ' "journalism of policy" as opposed in the
tabloid New York Daily News ' "journalism of
closer to predictions of a Third World majority among experience . " Both essays are in Reading the News, Manoff
its residents by the turn of the century, its communi­ and Schudson, Eds. (New York: Pantheon Books) 1987.
ties ofcolor are experiencing the highest infant mor­ 5 . "Racism: From Closet to Quad " NYT April I, 1987.
tality rate in the US, an increasing re-segregation of 6. "Race Bias Found in Location of Toxic Dumps" NYT
April 16, 1 987, A20.
their public school system, and an unrelenting pattern
7. Michael Omi and Howard Winant Racial Formation in
of discrimination and violence. the United States: From the 1960s to the 1980s (New York:
The second part of this article will detail the Routledge & Kegal Paul) 1 986, p. 1 40.
media's role in coverage of black and Third World 8. Anthony Lewis, " Bowing to Racism" NYT April 28,
community activism, of minority political candidates, 1987.
9. Juan Williams, "Racism Revisited" New RepubliC
and its active role in opposition to community efforts
Nov. 10, 1986.
to control development. 1 0. See "Media Images of Boston's Black Community" a
report by Kirk Johnson for the William Monroe Trotter In­
stitute, University of Massachusetts/Boston, Jan. 28, 1987.
Reported also in "Black and White in Boston" by Kirk
Johnson, Columbia Journalism Review, May/June 1987.

70
The second part of this article will refer to the study and Brooklyn subway station, and the acquittal of a police of­
media reaction to it. The study discusses differences in ficer in the shotgun killing of Eleanor Bumpurs during an
reporting of news from Boston's black community in white eviction.
and black media and concluded, on the basis of a one 25 . Quoted in Thulani Davis and Tom Robbins "Day of
month sampling, that 85 per cent of the major media's ar­ Outrage: The Face of a New Black Power" Village Voice
ticles reinforced stereotypes about blacks. Feb. 3, 1 987. The authors describe a key aspect of the local
1 1 . See Geoffrey Stokes' "The ' News' : New York's black mobilization-its young, nationalist character, and a
Racist Newspaper? " , Village Voice April 28, 1 987. For ex­ grassroots leadership beyond the "recognized" black of­
cellent political appraisal of the meaning of the verdict see ficials the media feels it "understands . " For its part, the
Jill Nelson's "Decision aids fight v. racism in the New York Times has incorporated similar sentiments. See
newsroom" Guardian May 6, 1987. " Black Extremists and Howard Beach" by Michael Myers
12. Reported by Pat Aufderheide, In These Times May (an Op-Ed piece) which blames black "extremists" for
13-19, 1987. jeopardizing the rejuvenation of "a multiracial civil rights
1 3 . Reported in Mother Jones, "Media Watch Issue" movement. " (author's ita!.) Jan. 1 3 , 1 987. In "Violence
June/July 1987. Against Blacks Spotlights Racial Strife" by Samuel Freed­
14. Reported in Geoffrey Stokes' "Press Clips" col­ man on Jan 2, 1987, the article leads with an account of
umn, Village Voice April 7, 1987. Excerpt is from an blacks cheering Larry Davis, accused of wounding six
editorial opposing the recent Supreme Court decision on af­ police officers, with chants of "Lar-ry, Lar-ry" as he was
firmative action for women and minorities. being taken into custody "the way they might [cheer) a box­
1 5 . Nationally syndicated column, appearing in er stepping into the ring . "
Milwaukee Sentinel Jan. 1, 1 987. 26. " Housing Segregation: New Twists and Old Results"
16. Reported in Stokes' "Press Clips" Village Voice NIT April 1, 1987, B1.
Feb. 3, 1987. 27. NYT May 19, 1987, B4.
17. "Lost on Campus: Minority Momentum" NYT May 28. Mel King, Chain of Change (Boston: South End
12, 1987. Press) 1 98 1 .
18. "Blacks in New York: The Anguish of Political
Failure" NIT March 31, 1987, B1.
19. "The Puzzle Named Jesse Jackson: Prophet, preacher, Copies of articles from
politician, performer-or all of these?"
this publication are now
Washington Post National Weekly Edition March 9, 1987.
20. Jesse Jackson, "Atonement for Racist Episodes Isn't available from the UMI
Article Clearinghouse.


Enough" NYT January 28, 1 987.

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21 . See footnote 5.
22. NYT May 1 1 , 1987, A I .
23. NYT Feb. 1 8 , 1987. ure ouse
24. The specific incidents referred to were the acquittal of
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New York Transit police in the beating death of Michael
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£2.50/$4 .50 Margot Harry
I ndia's Green Movements Gail Omvedt
On being powerless in power M u bashi r Hasan
Ideology, theory and revolutio n :
Lessons from t h e M a u M a u AI-Am i n Mazrui
Thomas Hodgkin : an appreciation Basil Davidson
Notes and documents
Resource wars on native lands AI Gedicks
The crisis in modern science Les Levidow
UK commentary: Police (1) The cover-up,
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71
A N T I - RAC I STS A N D
OT H E R D E MO N S : .

The press and i deology I n


Thatcher's Bri tain

This anicle is reprintedfrom Race & Class, JVI. XXVII, Number 3 (Win.er 1986). The quanerly is availablefrom the Institute ofRace Relations,
2-6 Leeke St. , King 's Cross Raad, London WC1X 9HS and is also sold at bookstores in Nonh America.

Nancy Murray

Ever since Member of Parliament Enoch Powell went on the offensive against Britain's
black population in the 1 960s , the press has given his forays inordinate attention. The
xenophobic fears and racist stereotypes which constitute "Powellism" -seeing black people
in terms of an alien influx which has violated the deepest instincts of a formerly
homogeneous people-had become part of a press-created "common sense" about race
long before Margaret Thatcher gave them political respectability in her "swamping" speech
of January 1 978 . 1 Since then, Powell' s racial interpretation of the nation, with its imagined
unity and Burkean reverance for tradition, as well as his supposition that it is "natural" to
want to be with one' s "own kind" and protect home territory from the incursions of
strangers, have found a home in the range of national papers, in the polite prose of the
Guardian as well as the virulent right-wing gutter press.
But three years after the Falklands War quite a specific aspect of Powellism has been
systematically taken up by most sections of the press. 2 In his notorious "River Tiber " speech
of April 20, 1 968, and again, two years later in his Birmingham election speech of June 1 3 ,
I
'I when he sounded the alarm against Britain' s "enemies within, " Powell had targeted a
I 1
dangerous , aggressive minority of "immigrants " and their supporters, who were

72
determined to "consolidate their members, to Monetarism has not only failed to provide a
agitate and campaign against their fellow clinical solution to the pathology of social
citizens , to overawe and dominate the democracy but, with its deepening of social
rest"3-leaving "the rest, " the white majority, divisions, and acceleration of economic decline,
without a sense of who they are, and what is it has come to seem a massive self-inflicted
their rightful heritage. By the mid 1 980s this wound. The Falklands magic has faded, and it
"dangerous minority" who sought to oppress is becoming more difficult for the press to por­
the majority had been given a new name: they tray Margaret Thatcher as a resolute leader,
were the ' 'anti-racists , " a catch-all term applied clothed in Churchillian robes, who alone could
to any person or group who sought to combat arrest national decline and make the country
the racist practices of white society, or who em­ "great" again. 4 As a sign of their increasing
braced the pluralist creed of desperation, Tory image-makers at the recent
"multiculturalism" in the hope that cultural Party conference urged the media to improve
pluralism was, in itself, an antidote to racism. their "presentation" as the only way to shore
For the past two years anti-racism and cultural up an ailing ideology. *
pluralism have been the objects of an organized The media are therefore expected to provide
press offensive, culminating in the revelation what the government cannot deliver: convinc­
that racism is something which black people in­ ing reasons why Thatcherism is on course, pro­
flict on white. In the process, an unashamedly of "that the long years of retreat and self-doubt
racist "white culturalism" has been summoned are over . " s The government is relying on the
forth, as if in this way the sickly national media to "market" not only specific policies,
"rebirth " which took place in the South Atlan­ but the Thatcherite world view, with its
tic could be indefinitely prolonged. dichotomies of good and evil, productive and
non-productive, law-abiding and criminal . Ac­
cording to the new style of "conviction
politics, " the government does not merely
govern, but-animated by the spirit of British
nationalism "which has fired her for genera­
tions past" 6-it wages a regenerative war for
the nation's moral well-being and economic
salvation, and stands between the people and
the prospect of naked lawlessness represented
by the Labour Party. The media played a
crucial role in the vanquishing of the "external
enemy" in the South Atlantic and in Thatcher's
re-election: its continued support is essential if
the loyal troops are to be kept in line and the
M. P. Enoch Powell. battle against the "enemy within" to be fought
For the Thatcherite right to use "race" as the and won . 7
focus of a cohering patriotism is simply to be In 1 970 Powell had envisaged a two-pronged
true to its Powellian heritage-there is nothing a t t a c k i n t h e i nt e r n a l " b a t t l e o f
particularly new in this. But what is new is the Britain"-mounted, on the one hand, by those
. emphasis on rolling back the gains of anti­ disruptive elements which used "organized
( racism in the name of traditional freedoms, na­
'
disorder" to undermine the morale of the
'''.'J tional pride and the liberation of the white ma­ police and the authority of the state and, on the
J!�dority: a development which makes sense given *The current buoyancy of the Tories in the polls
:��t
. he wider political context. For Thatcherite reflects the success of the press in discrediting the
alleged "loony leftism" of the Labour Party. So bla­
, which promised to deliver Britain
tant has the smear campaign become that it has even
the bonds of a moribund paternalism (old been found worthy of mention by the Boston Globe's
and welfarism (Labour Party), is now editorial c o l u m n (See " Lo o nier-than-thou
distinctly frayed and shop-soiled . campaign" , January 23 , 1987).

73
other, by the dangerous, indoctrinating minori­ with genuine differences of outlook. Among
ty. By the mid 1 980s Powell's war had become the tabloids, United's Express (with sales of
Thatcher's: his oppressed majority was preyed j ust over 2 million) and Star (selling half that)
upon by the ever enlarging ranks of the enemy compete for midmarket and working class
I within, and her press gendarmes had taken the readers with Associated's Mail (at nearly 2
I offensive . On the other side were all the forces million), Maxwell's Mirror (3 million and
II which weakened the body politic, and had to be shrinking) and Murdoch's Sun (with a daily cir­

I contained by the law-and-order state-the


criminals and hooligans, the scroungers and
culation of 4 million, the largest selling paper in
the West-and nearly 3 times the size of the
II
,I
feckless unemployed, trade unionists and largest daily in the U.S.). The "quality" papers
Labour Party activists, striking miners and compete for different age groups among the
peace campaigners, Greenham women and middle and upper classes, with Murdoch 's The
women wanting abortions, permissive parents Times (less than half a million) catering to the
and subversive teachers, anti-racists and urban young professionals and businessmen, the
rioters, left-wing extremists and professional Telegraph the old (with sales of a million, it was
agitators. And in the front line, where Powell recently purchased by the Canadian Conrad
had placed it, was "race" with all its Powellian Black) and the Financial Times the more
overtones: exploited to infuse the people with a "enlightened" capitalists, while the Guardian
sense of national identity and patriotism, and has its "liberal" market of half a million
to create the climate in which the Tories would readers all to itself.
appear the sole and necessary defenders of the Since the "New Right" began to consolidate
nation. itself in the early 1 970s, the press has been a
major platform for the propagation of its
Thatcher's Press Cadres views . 8 Considerable cross and vertical fertiliza­
tion has been provided by committed right wing
During the Thatcher years, the political spec­ j ournalists and freelance writers, whose natural
trum of the daily press, for some time the nar­ haunts are the quality papers- The Times and
rowest in western Europe, has contracted still the Telegraph-but who are willing to "slum
further, with only the Mirror and the Guardian it" for the sake of reaching the people. Few are
opposing the Tories (some of the time) . This as omnipresent as the self-proclaimed "West
narrow political spectrum* is one consequence Indian expert, " Roy Kerridge. But several col­
of the most concentrated press ownersip in the umnists have over the past few years
West: four large conglomerates produce four­ significantly lengthened their reach as the Right
fifths of the daily output of nearly fifteen has grown in self-assurance, with the Birkbeck
million papers, and most of the Sunday papers . College philosophy don Roger Scruton and
Competition for the 80 per cent of the popula­ associate editor of The Times Ronald Butt
tion who read a paper every day has more to do writing mostly for The Times, but also, on oc­
with style, pitch and marketing gimmicks, than casion, for the Mail; the right wing convert
*The fact that no daily paper gives full support to the Party, to which it lends support. In the last few mon­
leading party which is left of center makes Britain ths its retreat toward the center has become more
unique in Western Europe. Robert Maxwell, the pronounced, largely in reaction to the success of a
I millionaire proprietor of the Daily Mirror and the new up-market paper, Whitton Smith's Independent,
in wooing disaffected Times, Telegraph and Guar­
I
newly launched L ondon Daily News, is a former

I,
Labour M . P . now in the right of the party. Since his dian readers. A radical popular publication does wait
purchase of the Mirror, he has divested the paper of in the wings-the News on Sunday, put together with
I its tradition of serious investigative reporting on local Council pension funds and trade union SUP­
social issues and has sought instead to compete with port, and due out this spring. But its pre-launch
the seamy "bum and tit rag," Murdoch's Sun. gestation has been marred by bitter dissension about
Recently Maxwell has joined the rest of Fleet Street the sort of paper it should become. The circulation
in attacking Labour's non-nuclear defense policy. figures given here pre-date the appearance of the
The once radical Guardian has taken on a distinct­ London Daily News and the Independent, as does the
ly moderate cast since the formation of a few years analysis which follows.
ago of the middle-of-the-road Social Democratic
-

74

I
I,
I
Paul Johnson writing mostly for the Mail, but their material, have all been instrumental in
also for the Sun; the Bristol University Pro­ molding a version of reality which reflects the
fessor of History John Vincent writing mostly shifting Thatcherite amalgam of "free enter­
for the Sun, but also for The Times, and so on. prise" individualism, social discipline and coer­
Outside the Fleet Street circuit, many of these cion. And what-given its abysmal economic
journalists hatch their ideas in the same think­ record , and its failure to build up new institu­
tanks that have been responsible for the tional links with its working-class and petit­
ideological thrust behind Thatcherism. The bourgeois supporters-coulp. be more impor­
social authoritarian citadel of Peterhouse Col­ tant to the Tory Party than a collaborative
lege, Cambridge, has provided intellectual in­ press which has applauded it for breaking the
spiration for Scruton, Johnson, Peregrine welfare consensus, which has assisted it in fac­
Worsthorne, deputy editor of the Sunday ing down the miners' Scargill and left wing
Telegraph, and George Gale of the Daily Ex­ local authorities; which has given shape to Tory
press, as well as for the Salisbury Group (form­ preoccupation with politicisation in schools,
ed in 1 977) and the j ournal which came out of permissiveness in families and criminals in the
it, Scruton's Salisbury Review. Scruton was streets ; which has helped create the climate for
also a founding member of the Conservative vigorous new policing methods; and which has
Philosophy Group ( 1 975) which has invited i n fl a t e d t h e w o r d " h o o l i g a n " a n d
Powell, Johnson, Butt, the Telegraph 's assis­ "subversive" t o include just about anyone who
tant editor, T.E. Utley, and the prime minister does not see things its way?
herself to share in its deliberations. Other jour­
nalists-like the Telegraph 's Alfred Sherman, The Press Campaign against Anti-Racism
once director of the Centre for Policy Studies (a
leading resource centre of the New Right), and Over the years, the papers have created a
freelance educationalist Baroness Caroline magnetic field around the terrain of race, being
Cox-tend on certain issues to inhabit the liber­ attracted and repelled by the same ideas,
tarian end of the new right philosophical spec­ stereotypes and issues. But recently there are
trum. Still others who align themselves to the signs that such a general concurrence has been
right are, like Honor Tracy, natural Powellites, supplemented by some element of design, as
who claim to give voice to the ' 'instincts' " of the papers have merged in the common intention to
people. debunk anti-racism. Editors select their targets,
But whether or not they share a coherent send j ournalists to research their stories, and
right wing outlook, these journalists, and the then withhold publication until the timing is
editors and sub-editors who solicit and process right in campaigning terms. Once one paper

Rupert Mudoch as he took over London Times, 1985.

75
Brixton, who demonstrated "how to succeed in
Britain whatever your color" -with drive,
determination and the refusal to be intimidated
by young black shoplifters . 1 2 In a Sun lead
story the following day, the Mail article was
quoted to show that " Britain is still a land of
opportunity" and black people "shouldn't
blame their problems on their colour but 'try,
try again' and you will be successful . "
I t i s n o coincidence that, i n all these ex­
amples, it is the Mail which has been first with
the story. If different papers give their own im­
print to presentations of race, from the
"respectable racism" and lofty argument of­
fered up by The Times and Telegraph at one
end of the social spectrum, to the pandering to
prejudice by the Star and Sun at the other, the
Mail occupies a central, and uniquely impor­
tant, position in the market. It is the only daily
paper which sells to all social groups, but ad­
dresses itself particularly to the key Thatcherite
constituency, the lower middle class. Under its
editor, Sir David English (knighted by this
Fascist newspaper sellers, John Sturrock (Network).
government), and its committed band of sub­
editors, the Mail has spearheaded the assault on
publishes a "race" story, no matter how trivial, the "enemies within, " regularly devoting its
others are likely to follow the same trail. And combined lead and feature page and much of its
so the same " news" item (often of no readily "news" to those topics beloved of the New
apparent news value) and accompanying Right: the "loony left," law and order, indoc­
feature can be run in different papers, trination in schools, the menace of anti-racism.
sometimes under the same byline, sometimes Claiming a readership of over five million (it
not. sells nearly two million copies a day), the Mail
In the case of Paul Johnson's nearly full page
report of plans by various Labour councils to Continued on page 79
change street names in order to commemorate
blacks and "class warfare, " the original Mail
story appeared virtually intact in the Sun the
following day under Johnson's name.9 But a
day after a Mail expose of "the torrent of lies
and twisted truths that is indoctrinating our
society today" I O_a nearly two page attack on a
cartoon book produced by the Institute of Race
Relations and a video on policing produced by
the Greater London Council-the Telegraph
came out with its own report on the book and
video. On occasion, a feature (or even a letter) I I
in one paper has become the subject of a leader
in another-an instance being the Mail's promi­
nent center page "success story" following the
Brixton "riot" of 1985. The Mail's story focus­
ed on a black manager of a clothing shop in Protest outside Daily Mail office, Fleet St., 1985.

76
or assault by racistthugs on the street altd< byt'heir �
counterparts in fhe police force: •.. . .. • • . . : < .
.• •• .. BlacK people in Britain·have long orgah.ize.t to de�

• rend clheir communities . and fig/:It for working .class

. ..
.
· jnt�est$i a$ A. Sivanandau ltas dempI1strated in nis
.. .. i�inathistorY ··of·black pr()test.2 Jndeed; 'ilie ; yery;
· ; tenn ;�billlek1 has been nsed by Asians ·and A<fro�
., . 'Carib�earis <I' . s a polltical coior, signifying their . coin­
;jilon stI;iI�� :againsI . raeism arid eXploitation • • I1i
·
· · 1981; and agl!lin inl98S, protest became explo sivej as
·black youth ;arourtd the couritrytook to. the .sQeets in
. revolt. In· Sivanandan's·words. t/:Ie youth have neen
"l\:ept out ofW9tk. <i6d indeed ,of s()ciety by the dic-
;; tates · of :institutionaliied:racisin:. AIid so they tllke
nothing as given; everything Is bl' for questi()i1,
everything is l.lP for c.hange: c�pitalisr values,
.· capitlll:list mores,. capitalist S(iciety. · · And their stf.ug-.
gles Ji�d a resonance in . the struggle of the
unemp)oyed white . yol.lth
aflame} ' � . .. . ... . . . • . .
.
. .
...
and the cities: burst
.• . . . ....: .•• . .. . . . . . . . • ; . . .•...;. .. .

. .

, The image of Btital'n bnrning inspirei:!: the govern­


· .ment ani:!:. the p()pnlar press to seek explanations
' everywhere ..b'llUn ·the ..stark factsof.racism and inn:er
city d istress , amI : temedies in . an jncreas�!.lgly
.milHadzed.police . and the dismf,{ntIing of civiUitier­
·
ties, IfThatcher does &ucceed in wittning a third. term
· ·of· office,. the . role ot' the ptess inlegitilll.llt.ing .
t.he
emerging �l�w Ilnd order' society,....atth� e:Kpe��e of
.bla¢k people,...,.will de&erve much ofthe qedif;
" iNM
·

.. . .
· · •••
·
i fi��te;r �u($i�e 8oufh. AfriaaJl N(}u$e. (lf(ei:: sh�Qiing 0/

� � # �
..
�hildr�n in 8oweto, J.97.6 k("M;:� Watson.: · • .. .

.
. .•p·I.�ge•.• �.�•. .. . .••.• �e• .•.• �o•. ,·.• . .•.•.•
. )

..
. .. ; • . . .
oi dia PUOlicitY' Th reaft r, taceand Cti e• •news<
in .
.
·· ·· · ' T ·
... . '

.
,

·
.
· ·
i\l mages 9fa· · •.• · .· ·p
.

wete steadily to c'onverge, as sensati9n i · ; B


·.•·•. .·.. 1.•.•.'
; . _r
·· · t
•.r•l.•••� St· · w ·· · · l. .
le. .m .•
•. e. . e
. Br ,
Fl�.nye.· p
. .r'l.uto�.Y ' .s0..t ·. l..·.9eS.·i4.. '£h... . 111.8.'. . Y:.O:if ll. . ·C•.k.•..•pe.o.-
.

.
.·lll.en��ing 'black ctinlinalny' wer� maDipullllteij by.
· • . •
.

.
. .
•• ..•..

. ., " < · ;tb.e;press }o ptepare public opini()l\ fQt more vigo rous ·

..

, . . .. . :LA. . Sivanlm,dau, . s stan((.e lq �efJ.ellton,. Race 8;;


·

.
.
.
Fr(jm Re i
. . ' (;111&5
. . •

. . .<· ·fonns of poJicing f,{nd to deepen divlsions within the pam.phlet No. io: Avaiiabte ftOln tlr¢ Instifute of
. working class. the. effect .on the ground.of the race- · . . R:ac� R:��tfonsj 2-6 t:ee�� 'Street, t()ndou WClt U� for
• ri:urnbers-crilll.e !fiixtui:e� especial�ywhenseryed up by . $.3\OQ The Jnst�tute h� ma.i:le.thistexrthe b�sis �f the first
.
·
. . . .

· .E:n�¢h PoweU wi� fullpres� orchesttlition at:a time pictooal history.gf AsiarlsaiJ.i:l A{m��arihbellil� in Britain,
·2t'(}Wi.U · ·9; w:orl\:ing-Glass impoverishment, has b�en The Eighr ;,:tgaifist Racistn. I� # tIte (ourth in ac seties of
sho�t 0rmurder6ns . •.. . ..• . • . . . ; F . .•. ..•.• • . • . . ; . • ••.

� �Z� i\1t
.. .

�:i:�=: t t��j� ��:. . . • � : �


..• . �d�catiomil patl1phleis fot )'Qun� . people� wlikhinclude
. •.. ··. Sdm. tl .�rlte .bla:ck p�Qple . now inhabit t.h¢•. .. . Roots ofRaCism; Ptittirns o.fRaci.w17.a.llljia cartoon book,

..
Ltvef.p601, Bir:mjllt�ttalnl,
Qf Th at c �
, .. • �� �ii c��� � ilin·� r� � il �lefiQm the In-
a �
!
. .
; l;t.i�f;;ait� othe.r. . Cities wh�re: indilstry on:ce tlourished .... 3; A. Sivan�nqan' "�Crutll�h�ing .faccisni: strategies for
C.QllIDIUe to have the> worsLot ¢\lerything�the .
. . the 'SO's" , . Rile:e it �iqssi ··XX\f; 2 (1983}; J'I�r
ip
.
jjli�siI;able. · . e<iticl:ition and Jobs. tile $tiategie$jQ cont�ll blacK :profest the wiike of iJ:te 'riots',

. .
fil.nltlllipllo)rm1ent(!fiore than twice.that . !lee A. SiVanan��Il; ;f�R.a.cistn Awar�P�� .T:r�dnjng and ..
_/etaIIUnelth;P�lO�·111 ' ·nellt oo\lers· af. 13 ..•.••.• •• . . . degr!chttlon:i>,fbla:c�. ��rugg'�' 'i �a:ae.&'.(:IOss:, \lol'.: XXVI, . .
.
.N� �P:�)1i�) .
........

t�(¢:e1�er�lPt�5�llt(1�tjger:of harl�.ss tl[)eitt ·· .. . ..(19�51. . · ; • ••• . ..


. .

)"

I
I I
78

I I
has made intelligible to the many what Scruton
and Butt have pitched at the discerning few. Its
tone is self-righteous and partisan; it makes no
attempt to project an aloof objectivity. Thus,
when Scruton wrote on education for the Mail,
his article was decorated with scare headlines
and sub-heads and an array of hammer-and­
sickle emblems-removing him from the
"above-the-fray" pose that The Times had
vested him with. ' 3
The Mail has pioneered a number o f techni­
ques to make its stand on race (and more
recently, anti-racism) an effective campaigning
tool. At its most blatant, it has resorted to pure
invention, presented with maximum effect, in
order to herald or influence a change in govern­
ment policy. Such was its " One in five babies in
Britain are coloured" front-page revelation,
which it later admitted had no basis in fact . ' 4
Again, i n its "Scandal o f the brides for sale,"
the Mail offered no evidence even when
challenged for its front-page exclusive (Plus ac­
companying feature and leader) about young
teenage girls of Asian descent being "sold" by
their parents to strangers seeking UK citizen­
ship . ' s
Members of bands the Clash, Rich Kids and Steel Pulse
The Mail has at other times relied o n repeti­ protest outside National Front HQ, March 1978. Caroline
tion to convince the public of the ' 'truth, " run­ Coon.
ning consecutive articles around the same
theme, and getting well-known campaigners of ther debased the role of "Crusader" which
the right either to write them or offer their Lord Beaverbrook had carved out for the Daily
byline. Repeatedly it has given prominence to Express-still its closest mid-market rival,
black people who are willing to deny that whose editor was also knighted by the Thatcher
, racism is an issue in their lives, or to complain government. This is not to say that the Express
the effects of "positive discrimination . " It has failed to play a part in the current campaign
has, without legal restraint, conducted its own against anti-racism and cultural pluralism : on
judicial inquiries , and in one notorious instance the contrary, its regular columnist George Gale
claimed to "solve" a crime which the black has, for eight years at least, argued that the
community had (mistakenly, in the Mail's view) "society which was Britain never wanted to
." . laid at the door of white racism . ' 6 And it has become multi-racial, and it does not want to
not hesitated to use its influence with the Home now" and claimed that race relations legislation
Office in order to get across its opinion about was designed " to frustrate the determination of
type of black people wanted in Bri­ the British people to retain their own
as the hard-working, middle class, identity. " 1 8
Catholic Pereiras, who had a flattering Gale and his editors have long been open ad­
of all things British, and who had become mirers of Powell; their paper, the Sunday Ex­
a part of things in their rural Conservative press, was the platform for one of his earliest
··�··5UV'U that the father of the family had utterances on race ("Can we afford to let our
played Father Christmas to village race problem explode?")'9 and his recent post­
Handsworth "I told you so. " 20 But, Gale
Mail has, it seems, appropriated and fur- apart, the Express is not-like the Telegraph,

79
Times and Mail-a favored locale of well­ But for j ournalists of the Right, flexing their
known new right "race" specialists, and it has muscles in the mid 1 970s, the media clamour
tended to be more of a joiner than an in­ about immigration and crime was not enough.
novator-but a j oiner which can be even more Butt, Andrew Alexander ("The time has come
vehement in expressing its views on race than to make a stand in favour of racialism" 22),
the race-mongering Sun. Worsthorne, Sherman and Utley maintained
that there was a "conspiracy of silence" about
Legitimating Racism race, imposed by the old liberal establishment
in collusion with various pressure groups, race
What the Sun dispenses at one end of the relations advisers, like-minded media workers,
social scale, its stablemate The Times churchmen and educators who were seeking to
legitimates at the other-or, to put it different­ suppress open discussion about the "problem"
ly, it is because of the legitimation given to of black people in order to establish their
Powellism by the Telegraph and The Times that "moral ascendancy" over the gagged popula­
the virulent racism of the tabloids is tion-an old idea of Powell 's. As Thatcher pro­
tolerated-and even encouraged. For years, mised to break the welfare consensus, these
sections of the upmarket press have filed j ournalists took it upon themselves to break the
Powell's conceits as "facts" which could be so-called "silence" and the "moral ascendan­
drawn upon for " think pieces " about society. cy" which kept all aspects of race from being
During this time, the Butts , Worsthornes� Sher­ discussed. There was to be an open season on
mans and nameless leader writers have filtered black people.
reality through Powellism, giving it the ruling­ With Thatcher's "swamping " speech and her
class imprimatur. While the yellow press has coming to power the following year, the press
alerted the people to the incoming "floods" of fanned anticipations that at last something
immigrants, and the terror of black crime on significant would be done to satisfy the people
the streets, the quality press has given such whose " instincts" had been violated by the
"scares" the stamp of respectability and the black "influx. " The press egged on the govern­
weight of truth, and erected the framework ment to make it highly unpleasant, if not im­
(Britain as a j ust, tolerant, formerly possible, for black dependants to join their
homogeneous society) within which race was to relatives in Britain, and at the same time collud­
be discussed. The quality press has accepted ed with police in the on-going criminalization
that "natural fears" connected with the black of black youth and with Tory Party indif­
presence are fully j ustifiable: the incoming ference to rising racial violence in the inner
numbers are too many, and mugging is "an ac­ cities. 23
tivity of young black men . " 2 1 Thatcher's re-election on a wave of nostalgia
for past greatness and xenophobia has imparted
a kinetic energy to racist ideology, which has
expanded to colonize ground disputed by one
or other of the "enemies within. " The cam­

� �
paign against anti-racism has had two overlapp­
ing phases: in the first, the battleground has
been the anti-racist initiatives of Labour-led
LONDON LONDON local councils; the "enemy" -the white ex­
AGAINST AGAINST tremists and their black allies or (more general­
RACISM RACISM ly) pawns; the goal-the exoneration of white
culture. In the second, the campaign has
broadened out to include two new fields of bat­
Logo for Greater London Council (GLC) year long anti-racist tle-the schools and inner cities-and the press
campaign. has become more relentless in pushing forward
the attack. The New Right's intemperate, at
time almost apocalytic, denunciations of anti-
-

80
racism have moved from the columns of the
quality press into lead and feature pages of the
tabloids, with the papers warning their readers
that they are facing the threat of cultural an­
nihilation: white extremists and their allies, the
"black racists , " have mounted a "reign of ter­
ror" over the white population en route to their
goal of total domination.

Discrediting Anti-Racist Initiatives

The catalyst for the offensive against anti­


racism was the proclamation by the Labour-led
Greater London Council of 1 984-5 as Anti­
Racist Year, and the decision by other Labour­
Black People against State Brutality march, London, 1979.
controlled local authorities to make the fight A ndrew Wiard/Report.
against racism a political and ideological priori­
ty. In its eagerness to discredit simultaneously to Zimbabwe Road, the Mail rounded up the
both the cause of anti-racism and the Left, the residents of the street and had them
press has widened the parameters of what con­ photographed, with a black woman prominent­
stitutes news. During Anti-Racist Year and ly in front, demonstrating their united opposi­
since then, anything, no matter how trite, tion to the change. This, and subsequent pro­
ephemeral or false, could become fodder in the posed name changes , attracted press attention
press campaign, as Labour councils, as That­ not only from staff reporters, but also from
right wing heavies like Paul Johnson. 26
j
cher led the campaign to abolish them, were
portrayed as nests of extremists who were simp- The facts were often at a premium. In early
ly using black people for their own political September 1 985, for instance, the Sun, Mirror,
" ends-for their votes, their support in anti­ Star and Express all pounc'ed on the " news"
<, abolition and anti-rate-capping campaigns, or that Hackney council was about to change the
'f simply to get some ideological mileage on
. name of Britannia Walk to Shaheed-E-Azam

JA '
, ;; Toryism. 24 Bhagot Singh Avenue ("Britannia no longer
Ridicule was one method which the press rules the waves in a left wing council borough
��, employed against cosmetic or purely symbolic . . . But local Cockneys-who are likely to be
;.• gestures proposed by councils, or alleged to be OUTNUMBERED by immigrants within 1 0
�;; in the making. For instance, over fifty articles years-are furious . 'They're making us
� criticizing the Left-some a full-page long-ap­ foreigners in our own country. ' ) 27 In fact,
;! peared in the national and regional press when Bhagot Singh's was one of forty possible names
there was an alleged leak from Lambeth Coun­ being considered for a new portion of road:
,1 cil that it was about to ban its road safety sym­ Britannia Walk 's future was not in jeopardy.
,�\:: bol, Tufty the Squirrel, on the grounds that it But the press took what it wanted from a coun­
was both "racist and sexist . " The fact that the cil leak, seeing a sinister design (as well as left
was bogus did not deter the papers, which wing comedy) in the proposal to name a street
Tufty irresistible-what respectable after a "notorious revolutionary who was
of the working class would support a hanged for murdering British soldiers. "2 8
which purged racist squirrels? During Anti-Racist Year, and since it has
" Other anti-racist initiatives were discredited drawn to a close, any attempt to look at British
the undemocratic proposals of "tin-pot dic­ history, culture and institutions from the black
,. ;
" who "can't see further than their own perspective has brought the press on to the of­
" 2 5 When Lambeth Council announced fensive, exonerating British society from im­
as part of Anti-Racist Year, it was con- putations of racism, and reaffirming British
changing the name of Rhodesia Road values and "way of life . " Consider the press

81
reaction to a campaign against that embodiment Britain's "natural friend. " " It is probably true
of racist culture, the gollywog. Over 200 articles that blacks enjoy greater freedom, greater pro­
have been written about the Robertson's Jam sperity, greater opportunity and greater peace
caricature, and with only a handful of excep­ in South Africa than in most neighboring coun­
tions, these have either indignantly defended tries. "36 Roy Kerridge's attack on proposals
this " nursery room character . . . much loved that black children be fostered, if possible, by
by generations of true English children" 29 or black families is a good example of the inver­
have ridiculed the campaign, with the Mail get­ sion of terms and meanings employed by the
ting black people to put the boot in.3o As far as right:
the press was concerned, the post-Falklands Why do black people demand apartheid? The
public should be able to cuddle this nostalgic answer is that the new guerilla fighters are . . .
the black equivalent of those Trotskyites who
symbol of imperial rule with impunity. And is it
falsely claim to represent the working man . . .
Anti-Racist Year, an encouragement to those
fanciful to suppose that at least part of the
reason for the press determination to keep this whose interests lie in a racial power structure,
racist emblem where it belonged-on jam jars, seems to have set the seal of officialdom on a
in story books (the "bad" doll among the black movement that is essentially no different
from the National Front. 37
g o o d ) , i n fantilized , in t h e arms o f
children-was the fear that black people were Here, Kerridge has conflated anti-racism
getting out of hand with their complaints about with the revolutionary Left, and-in the next
racism? The symbol was 'lovable' , like Little
Black Sambo (also under attack by 'dismal
fanatics' 3 1) and like the 'affectionate descrip­
tion'32 "Nig Nog . "
If the press was determined t o defeat anti­
racist attacks on the ideological manifestations
of racism, it was equally concerned to expose
the "favoritism " practised by those councils
which encouraged black people to apply for
certain jobs or training schemes , and funded
v,arious " ethnic" proj ects . Inflammatory
headlines in the local and popular press inform­
ed white people that they were being " victimiz­
ed" by "positive discrimination," and that
black people (like women and gays) were fat­
tening off the rates . The Mail referred to the
council practice of "anti-whites' racism"33 and
was quick to point out that it hadn't worked in
America.34 Something as seemingly insignifi­
cant as a council leaflet advertising evening
science courses for "mature students from
black ethnic groups" was thought deserving of
the full Mail treatment-a black person was
trotted out to denounce it on the grounds that
" positive discrimination and enforced segrega­
tion cause bitterness between people. "35
This "enforced segregation" had another
name-apartheid . With easy cynicism, New
Right ideologues denounced black organization
and the black fight against racism as a move
towards apartheid, while considering South Site oj New Cross massacre, Jane Bawn.
Africa-in Roger Scruton ' s words-as

-.-8_
2 ________
John Sturrock (Network).

breath-with the fascist Right. Anti-racism has the other . . . each needs the other to
nothing to do with j ustice-it is all about survive. "40 The decent majority were caught
power. Blacks ("the new guerilla fighters ") between these two extremes, but had more to
were plotting to use totalitarian methods to fear from the new anti-racist "real racists"
dominate and oppress the white population . than from the old-style fascist racists .
The implication is that in this " New Totalitarian in intent, the anti-racists were
Apartheid" (as he called it), they would be at medieval in method, hunting witches to burn
the top, and the white ethnic group firmly and hauling heretics before their New Inquisi­
submerged. tion. Underlining this increasingly shrill press
It was in the second phase of the campaign motif is an undeniable contempt for the people .
.against anti-racism-with the targets subver­ Passive and unthinking, possessing only brute
, ·sion in schools and sedition in the streets-that "instincts, " the people can be mesmerized by
- the press has relied less on ridicule to make its the anti-racist indoctrinators. But if the bogey
,
'point, and more on this type of insolent of the anti-racism is made menacing enough,
casuistry. Roger Scruton, perhaps the most art- they will, so the ideologues seem to believe,
ful of the new right pretenders to profundity, take fright, and allow themselves to be led back
has used his Times ' columns to try out his to the fastness of their national and cultural
historical and philosophical sleights of hand, identity, the Tory Party.
Comparing anti-racism with the Nazi movement
its methods and goal-a final solution. 38 The Taking the Offensive against Cultural
....Jl-. a...."L" were "the real racists " who wer ter­ Pluralism
the white population. 3 9 Such ger­
ma.nctering with words-blurring their mean­ The danger was that the anti-racists (like the
, and drawing up new definitions and peace campaigners and women's movement)
boundaries-was to become the stock­ would get them young, in the schools. In the
of the New Right. For Paul Johnson, wake of the 1 9 8 1 urban uprisings, Ronald Butt
. ' instance, the "race fanatics" formed a had drawn attention to the way dangerous
.
inquisition in 'unconscious alliance' pressure groups were at work in the classroom,
the National Front: "each is parasitical on peddling "black hatred of white society" in the

83
guise of anti-racism: it was this, and not raCIsm "cultural genocide, " which "in effect outlawed
and unemployment, which lay behind the burn­ the concept of the English nation. " 44 Mary
ing of Brixton. 4 1 Kenny thought the proposals would turn "mild
Since the first Brixton uprising and the se­ British people into resentful misanthropes . . .
cond in 1 985 , the subject of indoctrination in as they see everything native to their own tradi­
schools has been endowed with an almost Mc­ tion scuttled. "45 Leader writers concurred, even
Carthyite fervor. Scruton (who has recently when it became apparent that the Swann Com­
devoted no fewer than eight of his Times' col­ mittee had no intention of revolutionizing
umns to politicisation in education42), former education, but instead proposed nothing more
Tory whip Baroness Cox (adviser on education far-reaching than making morning assembly in
to Margaret Thatcher and the Mail) , schools more relevant to children from dif­
Worsthorne, Butt and Alexander, among ferent backgrounds, and giving "minority
others , have advanced "indoctrination" as a languages" equal status with European. Accor­
general explanation for deteriorating morale ding to the Express, this meant that " British
and standards in schools, leaving Tory policy culture and value should no longer come first in
blameless. By making the schools their chosen the classroom, "46 while the Telegraph the
field of battle, right-wing j ournalists have been previous day feared it would " lead only to great
able to take on a number of the " enemies racial bitterness among the white population. "
within" at once-permissive parents, feckless The Telegraph had to look no further than its
teachers reared on 1 960s' pap, outright subver­ own Honor Tracy to find that bitterness per­
sives-"an estimated minimum of 25,000 of sonified. Back in 1 976 Tracy had announced
our teachers are Marxists, " according to one that she was ready to go to jail in order to defy
Mail writer43-and the pressure groups-black, the Race Relations Board and defend the right
gay, anti-sexist, peace, ecology-all with a of English people to live in their own country as
" hidden curriculum" to get their political they chose.47 Her response to Swann was to call
message across. for a white uprising against non-white domina­
The Labour-r;ontrolled Inner London Educa­ tion-"our own new role will have to be that of
tion Authority had meanwhile imposed "anti­ native freedom fighters . We are not merely the
racist" guidelines on its schools, which-in the people of the land, but trustees for those who
view of the Right-forced children to see come after us . "4 8
racism wh'�re none existed, and taught them to It may seem tempting to consider Tracy as
despise their own history and heritage. And in marginal, and of little importance-she did,
London and elsewhere, schools had adopted after all, once use her Telegraph column to de­
"multicultural programmes" (or the trimmings fend a fringe far-right organization.49 But this
of such programmes) which the right feared would be ignoring the increasing convergence in
wou.ld lead to the indigenous "culture" being outlook between sections of the mainstream
reduced to one of many, all getting equal treat­ press and the far Right during the six years of
ment in the classroom. Thatcherism. As far as the attack on anti­
I t was n ' t j u s t t h e practice o f racism is concerned, there is not much to
multiculturalism, with its assumption o f choose between the right-wing press and the far
cultural pluralism , but the idea of i t which was Right ' s Ch o ice (motto : "racialism is
anathema to the Right. The press made certain patriotism"), the publication sponsored by
that the much-reviled Swann Committee on the Lady Birdwood (who marched with both the
education of minority groups would in no way National Front and the British Movement in the
threaten the status quo; "leaks" of its pro­ 1 970s, and spoke on a British National Party
posals concerning "mother tongue" teaching in platform in 1 983). In the spring 1 985 edition of
schools were savaged even before its report was Choice, for instance, which is subtitled "For
released. Alfred Sherman feared the report race and nation , " there is an editorial proclaim­
would recommend "a procrustean pidgin ing the anti-racists to be anti-British, as well as
culture to be imposed on majority and extracts from Scruton's Times column and
minorities alike." and deemed this a recipe for various other national papers.

84
But a heroic native freedom-fighter was at pire"53 and forced to read "Inglan is a Bitch" *
hand-an exemplar for both the mainstream alongside Wordsworth and Shakespeare. 54
press and the fringes beyond-Ray Honeyford, Their classes were constantly being interrupted
the Bradford headmaster. Well over a thousand when Asian parents took their children to In­
articles have appeared in the regional and na­ dia-"wildly and implacably" resenting "sim­
tional press about the man who defied the race ple British requirements" of keeping atten­
inquisition, and dared to speak his mind, since dance during the term . 55 White victims endured
Honeyford first publicly displayed his pre­ all of this in silence until, that is, Ray
judices in the Times Educational Supplement Honeyford, the man on the spot, the former
and the Salisbury Review. 50 Since then, parents Labour supporter who at last saw the light,
at the Drummond Middle School have cam­ dared to say enough is enough.
paigned to have him sacked, while the press, by If the first phase of the campaign against
and large, has absolved him of racist sin, and anti-racism was an attempt to exonerate British
pronounced him instead a martyr. culture from the charges of racism, the second
For Honeyford, it is whites who are at a phase, fuelled by the Swann and Honeyford
disadvantage in schools like his which have a controversies, has sought to ensure British
majority of black children, white children who culture its "rightful " primacy of place in
are the victims of "racism. " 5 1 They are forced schools and society generally: this should not
to learn alongside children for whom English is become a multicultural country. Over the past
a second language (' 'true of all Asian year there has been a steady flow of editorials
children") and others "from homes where and articles relating to the Honeyford case. The
educational ambition and the values to support
it are conspicuously absent (i.e. , the vast ma­
*"Inglan is a Bitch" is a poem/song by Reggae Dub
jority of West Indian homes . . . ) . " 52 They poet and political activist Linton Kwesi Johnson.
were being taught "to denigrate the British Em-

- tOUFOt;r;fBl£ - lVXVRIOfl.(-

85
victimization of Honeyford for his truth­ notice: assimilate, before the patience of the
telling, the plight of white children (and white white majority runs out.
values) in cities like Bradford, the threat to Bri­
tain's cherished institutions, like freedom of 'Black racists' in the streets
speech and democracy, now under attack from
the "hysterical political temperament of the In­ It was within this context of a resurgent white
dian sub-continent" 56 and home-grown ex­ culturalism that the press descended on Hand­
tremism are some of the themes which the press swo(th, Brixton and Tottenham, during the
has taken up, while denying finding "the "riots" of 1 985, and emerged to give that
remotest indications of racism" in Honeyford's notice the force of an ultimatum :
articles . Honeyford was, in this same Telegraph Either they obey the laws of this land where
editorial, being persecuted for "the unpar­ they have taken up residence and accepted
both the full rights and responsibilities of
donable sin of referring in public to racial pro­
citizenship, or they must expect the fascist
blems where whites are the victims . " 57 The Mail street agitators to call ever more boldly and
has taken a leaf from Scruton 's book, and with ever louder approval for them to 'go back
characterized the campaign against Honeyford from whence they came . ' " l
as the work of extremists who "prate of the The press has (like the government) been
evils of racism " and themselves " personify reluctant to endorse Powell's "solution" of
Fasicsm. " 5 8 So successful has the media been in repatriation-though happy to give it a blaze of
turning an obscure headmaster into a national publicity. By 1 985 repatriation was both too
hero and sage that the Prime Minister recently late (too many blacks knew no other country)
beckoned Honeyford to London, to give her and impractical-impossible for a "law and
the benefit of his advice on education. order" government to set in motion without in­
For Tories swept into office by rekindled curring an unacceptable level of disorder. But if
faith in "the nation that had built an Empire repatriation was not publicly embraced, neither
and ruled a quarter of the world , " 5 9 was it altogether shunned. Powell won praise in
Honeyford 's stand, and the ideological mileage the Express for saying that the Handsworth
which the press has got out of the campaign to
oust him, could not be more timely. For since
the election of 1 983 the spirit of patriotism has
seemed increasingly empty and directionless,
and racism has moved in to fill the Falklands
void. And so, editorials, features and letters to
I
the press have warned the "indigenous " in­
I habitants of the threat to their history and
traditions posed by anti-racism and other
cultures-it might not be too late for that
"Tory-led programme of positive assimilation
based on a fervent faith in British superiority"
which Peregrine Worsthorne had urged in the
Sunday Telegraph in April 1 98 1 . Cultures were
not all equal, and British people should not be
cheated of their birthright. Why should they be
expected to tolerate the fact that "ethnic
groups" are "encouraged to maintain the self­
same culture, religion and lifestyles, etc, which
failed to produce mass material prosperity back
home while at the same time enjoying all the
material benefits available here . . "60 By 1 985
.

the right-wing press was putting Britain's black


West Indian immigrants arrive, 1950s. Press Association.
population, still called "immigrants , " on

86
"riot" showed repatriation was the only solu­ than a few column inches long, devoting its en­
tion-he was, as ever, "doing the nation a ser­ tire leader page to " the high price of telling the
vice" by refusing to allow "the race problem" truth . . . We have tyranny and racism now . . .
to be swept under the carpet. 62 Shortly after­ black racism. "67
wards, the press made much of the statement by There are racists on the streets-black
Tory MP Nicholas Fairbairn that "West In­ racists:
dians " were "lazy" and that they should either Either they forgo (sic) the anarchic luxury of
get to work or get out. (Within two weeks of the these orgies of arson, looting and murderous
furor aroused by his remark, Fairbairn was assaults against the men and women whose
task it is to uphold the laws of this land or they
writing a column in The Times: in defense of
will provoke a paramilitary reaction unknown
South Africa, the only country in Africa to mainland Britain. 68
"where prosperity reigns . "63) Such is the Mail's solution to black racism-a
When they were not paying heed to Powell or French-style riot control force to protect pro­
the likes of Fairbairn, the tabloids indulged in perty and responsible citizens from the
the most florid sort of Powellism-unsubstan­ chronically lawless, outside the pale of assimila­
tiated anecdotes about what white people have tion. 69 Whether or not the Mail's recommenda­
endured from their black neighbors, all passed tions are taken up, there is no doubting their
off as "fact . " Listen, for instance, to how Lyn­ appeal for a government which senses in the
da Lee-Potter of the Mail described the white inner-city revolts the makings of a new
victims of "racism" in terms appropriated Falklands factor-wherever the next trouble
from the black experience: spot, the police Task Force will be sent to show
Elderly white people on the estates are abused, the necessary resolution and keep the flag fly­
spat on, terrorised, called pigs and scum and
every single authority has let them down.
ing, while Labour opponents, portrayed as soft
Politicians don't make stirring speeches about on law and order, are written off as not fit to
them, police do little to protect them. Jour­ govern. The national sense of purpose-that
nalists don't write about them . . . " 64 " new confidence born of economic battles at
· A week later she wrote another feature under home and tested and found true 8,000 miles
" the headline "Thank God you have written ,,
away "o-will be kept alive at the expense of
.
. what we think" -again, reproducing scare Britain's black population, scapegoats for the
, including one from a policeman com­ monetarist blight. And meanwhile, the That­
about " racial crime and law cherite cadres of the press will keep up the
." Her message was that white people pressure-assimilate, or else.
speak up now-and overcome the But what does assimilation mean in That­
'powerfully effective censorial campaign that's cher's Britain? What can it mean for black peo­
brainwashed us all. "65 ple, Asian and Afro-Caribbean, who have been
What is most disturbing about the bulk of the confined by racism and monetarism to the
coverage of the 1 985 "riots" and their inner-city armies of the forever jobless, and
aftermath-perhaps even more unsettling than whose culture of resistance to racism has itself
. . the chronic misreporting, vicious stereotyping been deemed racist? Can it mean much more
and refusal to give serious consideration to for the relative few who have escaped from the
causes-is the malign animosity it reveals. ghettoes , and can assimilate in their class (the
September 1 985 the yellow press has been press loves 'success stories ' of upward mobility)
i�'\.lILI1!;Jlll!; in its own form of racial violence, but not in their culture? Or the still fewer who
complements (and encourages) the grow­ have assimilated in their class and culture-like
racial violence on the streets-about which the Mail's model family, the Pereiras-only to
has, with one temporary lapse, maintained a find themselves still the target of racist attacks
ly steady indifference.66 From one end of in the streets, housing estates and the suburbs,
press spectrum to the other, racism has been violence which is becoming an habitual, every­
f�C1€:nrled as something black aggressors prac- day expression of the British way of life?
against their white victims, with even the With anti-racism execrated by the press,
which rarely runs a leader which is more assimilation means acquiescence in the racist

87
status quo; it means the acceptance of an 16. On January 19, 1 98 1 , a fire broke out during a party
in New Cross, London, which eventually resulted in the
ideology which stresses British tolerance and
death of 13 black teenagers. Almost immediately the Daily
decency, however much at odds these are with Mail ruled out a racist attack ("there's not a shred of
the reality of daily experience. It means the em­ evidence"), saying left wing militants were out to exploit a
brace of a backward-looking patriotism and racial motive (January 30, 1981). Three years later it found
nostalgia for Empire, and respect for the the "mystery man" who it claimed started the fire: a black
partygoer (May 7-8, 1 984). The case has since then been
"homogeneity" which, in new right doctrine,
closed without anyone being charged.
gives the nation its coherence and meaning, and
17. The Mail first took up the Pereira case in September,
which makes black people-however hard they 1983. Its support of the Pereiras intensified in May 1984
try to "assimilate" -outsiders . when these "overstayers" were given permission to reside
permanently in Britain. During this same month a 20 year

FOOTNOTES
old sari-clad widow, Afia Begum, was with her small
daughter, ambushed and deported from the country,
without the Mail showing any concern. Her case for perma­
1 . " People are really rather afraid that this country might nent residence was a strong one, but she did not have an
be rather swamped by people with a different culture and if
English village behind her.
there is any fear that it might be swamped people are going
1 8 . Daily Express, June 1 3 , 1978.
to react and be rather hostile to those coming in. So, if you
19. Sunday Express, July 9, 1967.
want good race relations, you have got to allay people's
20. Sunday Express, September 15, 1985. In the same
fears on numbers . " Quoted in The Times, February 1 ,
issue, the paper's editor, John Junor, chimed in with some
1978. positive words about Powell: "But isn't everything he said
2. The only daily papers which have not participated in then coming to pass now?"
the campaign against anti-racism are the Guardian, the
21. The Times, August 10, 1982.
Financial Times, and, to a certain extent, the Daily Mirror.
22. Daily Mail, November 9, 1 98 1 .
Alone of all the press, the Communist Party's Morning Star
23 . For the infiltration o f the Tory Party by the National
has taken a consistently anti-racist line, but its circulation is
Front, see "Draft report of the National Advisory Commit­
tiny.
tee of the Young Conservatives, " 1983.
3. Speech delivered April 20, 1968 which concluded: "As
24. The Thatcher government has passed legislation
I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman I
abolishing the Greater London Council and six other
seem to see 'the River Tiver foaming with much blood ' . "
Labour-led metropolitian councils on April 1 , 1 986 and has
4. See Anthony Barnett, "Iron Britannia," New Left set limits ('rate-capping') on how much other councils can
Review (No. 134, 1982). spend.
5. Speech by Nigel Lawson, June 22, 1982. 25. Daily Mail, November 12, 1984.
7 . Margaret Thatcher reportedly used the term in relation 26. Johnson writing in the Daily Mail (July 1 , 1985), and
to the striking miners when she told the Tory back bench
Sun (July 2, 1985).
1 922 Committee that we had fought the enemy without in 27. Sun, September 7, 1985.
the Falklands and now we had to fight the enemy within 28. Daily Mail (September 7, 1 985). For Peregrine Wor­
(Guardian, July 20, 1 984). thstorne of the Sunday Telegraph: "The presence in Bri­
8. These views range from libertarian beliefs in a laissez­ tain's capital and other major cities of such a large propor­
faire economy and individual freedoms to the social tion of citizens whose allegiances may lie with the enemies
authoritarian emphasis n the maintenance of order and the
of the West could be a real and growing danger . . . our
strong state. For the leading figures and pressure groups of
new ethnic minorities do not sound as if they were at all
the new Right, see David Edgar, Kenneth Leech and Paul
proud or grateful to have become British. Indeed, their
Weller, The New Right and the Church (London 1985).
community leaders give the impression that they hate Bri­
9. Daily Mail, July 1, 1985: Sun, July 2, 1985. tain for her past imperial sins." (September 29, 1985)
10. Daily Mail, October 8 , 1985. 29. Daily Mail, June 12, 1984.
1 1 . On October 1 1 , 1985, a letter from J. B. Fuller, Prin­ 30. Daily Mail, May 5 and 22, 1984.
cipal of Waltham Forest College, London, was published in
3 1 . Daily Telegraph, September 26, 1 985.
The Times. Without offering any evidence, Fuller main­ 32. Sunday Telegraph, May 27, 1984. According to The
tained that "young West Indians" were responsible for the
times (June 22, 1 984) "Nig Nog" was a term all British us­
majority of thefts in his college, and that "many ordinary
ed. Several papers were critical of the firing of the Police
Britons are now becoming aware of being ethnic minorities
Federation's expert on race relations for referring to black
in parts of their own land. " Fuller's letter was imediately
people as "Nig Nogs" in his address to the Federation's an­
taken up by the national and local press, and used as the nual conference in 1984.
pretext for slurs on the Afro-Caribbean community.
33. Daily Mail, May 17, 1985 .
12. Daily Mail, October 4, 1985 .
34. Daily Mail, August 22, 1985 .
13. The Times, February 3, 1984.
35. Daily Mail, May 1 7 , 1985.
14. Daily Mail, February 4, 1978.
36. The Times, April 2, 1985.
15. Daily Mail, August 5 , 1985.
37. Daily Mail, October 15, 1984.

88
........------------------------------------------..------------.

38. "The paths blocked by anti-racists, " The Times, forced if necessary. See John Casey, "One nation: the
April 16, 1985. politics of race" in the Salisbury Review (Autumn 1982),
39. R. Scruton, "Who are the real racists?" The Times, and Scruton's editorial in support of Casey, in Salisbury
October 30, 1984. Review (Summer 1983). Scruton wrote: "While we may
40. "The Race Inquisition: How long before it could be disagree with the policy of compulsory repatriation . . .
unleashed on your life? " , Daily Mail, June 17, 1985. there is no doubt that merely to arrest the flow of im­
41. The Times, July 10, 198 1 . migrants cannot solve the social problem. Constructive ef­
42. See also Roger Sruton, Angela Ellis-Jones and Dennis forts are required, both to encourage those who wish to
O'Keefe, Education and Indoctrination: An attempt at return, and to ensure the integration of those who do not . "
definition and a review oj social and political implications, 62. Daily Express, September 2 1 , 1985.
(London, 1985). 63 . The Times, October 15, 1985.
43 . Rodney Tyler, "This battle for your child's mind," 64. Daily Mail, October 9, 1 985 .
Daily Mail, October 1 1 , 1983. 65. Daily Mail, October 16, 1985 . Her article was accom­
44. Daily Telegraph, January 19, 1985. panied by a lead story on Britain in "a grip of inquisition . "
45. "Race Madness," Daily Mail, September 13, 1984. 66. Racist attacks had been largely ignored b y the press
46. Daily Express, March 15, 1985. during the past two years until the Kassam family was
47. Daily Telegraph (May 29 and June 26, 1976). Tracy murdered by arson in London on July 1 3 , 1985. That, and
was defending Robert Relf, who had violated the Race the rash of arson attacks which rapidly followed, received
Relations Act by putting up a sign outside his house saying considerable press comment, with the Daily Mail lead
it would be sold "to an English family. " (August 1 3 , 1985) fearing the attacks on Asians may lead
48. Daily Telegraph, September 22, 1984. "their own angry young men" to take the law into their
49. Daily Telegraph, November 19, 1983, about the vir­ own hands, and the Evening Standard (August 12, 1985)
tues of WISE (Welsh, Irish, Scots, English), an organiza­ fearing much the same thing. Since the "riots" of
tion which has brought together members of the Tory Party September and October 1 985, the press emphasis shifted to
right and neo-fascist groups. the "racist attacks" perpetrated by Afro-Caribbean against
SO. Ray Honeyford, Times Education Supplement Asian, or by black against white. See "UK commentary" in
�tember 2, 1983). "Multi-ethnic intolerance," Salisbury Race & Class XXVII, 3 (1 986).
. Review (Summer, 1983) and "Education and race-an
lIIIternative view," Salisbury Review (Winter, 1 984).
Nancy Murray is a historian and media resear­
51. Honeyford has written that "their educational 'disad­
vllil!ltage' is now confirmed "-by common sense. Hard
cher who has lived in Britain and Africa for the
. evidence to the contrary has been provided by the Keighley past twenty years. She is a member of the
prim!lIY study, conducted by Geoffrey Pollard (see Times editorial board of Race & Class, and currently
Education Supplement, October 1 1 , 1985). resides in the Boston area.
52; Honeyford, "Education and race-an alternative
¥lew," op. cit.
53. Honeyford, "Multi-ethnic intolerance, " op. cit.
54. Honeyford, "Education and race-an alternative
view," op. cit.
55. Ibid.
56. Ibid.
57. Daily Telegraph, September 20, 1985.
58. The Daily Mail lead of April 3 , 1985 . Scruton and his
colleagues at The Times have rallied around Honeyford.
Andrew Brown defended Honeyford in The Times
(September 3 , 1985) and the Spectator (June 22, 1985) and
is the author of Centre for Policy Studies Pamphlet,
"Trials of Honeyford: problems in multicultural education
(November 1985), one theme of which, according to pre­
publication publicity, is that "the slogan 'no culture is
SUperior to any other' would, if taken seriously, make all
education unthinkable." The Salisbury Review has risen to
the defense of its contributor on several occasions: see
Jonathan Savery, "Anti-racism as Witchcraft " (July 1985),
and Davil Dale, "The new Ideology of Race: (October
l�).
(�. Margaret Thatcher at Cheltenham, July 3, 1982.
.. ,. P. Worsthorne, "End this Silence over race, " Sunday
ON CULTURE AND
(September 29, 1985).
Mail lead of October 8, 1985 . Some members of
YOUTH with articles on "Women in Pop
Right support repatriation, voluntary if possible, Music"; Punk and Hip Hop Subcultures ; Rock
Against Sexism: "Zoot Suits and Style War-
fare. " 89
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