tv Oral Histories CSPAN January 31, 2016 2:00pm-4:01pm EST
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40 years for "the washington post" before retiring in 2005. mr. rasberry, who died in 2012, remembers his childhood in mississippi and discusses his commitment to education, and the importance of education to the african-american community. this program is about two hours. julian: welcome to "expirations of black leadership." thank you for being here. william: it is a pleasure and a joy to be here. julian: i want to start with a question about brown versus board of education. do you remember what it meant to you when you heard about it? william: i do. seemed, it seems utterly impossible. i was in small-town mississippi at the time. i thought, that's all very nice, but it ain't ever going to happen here. [laughter] whites in theew south, and i thought, this just
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ain't going to happen. and slowly, i started to believe, maybe it could. now, i have reached the point where i still believe maybe it could. it has not yet. julian: i guess that leads into the next question. at the time, he thought it would not mean what it has promised to mean. what you think it has turned out to mean, 52 years later? toliam: it turns out, establish something that i thought, i'm still think is very important, that is that the government has no business, at all of its levels, has no making separations of people based on race and other irrelevancies. that was an important thing to
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establish. important to drive home the fact that it was damaging, quite apart from the legal indications, it is damaging psychologically to children to be told that you may not attend the school because of the color of your skin. toortunately, we went on damagingher, also said byon when we implication, and i mean we the black community, said by implication, and to some extent so say -- still say, that what is wrong with this school is that there are too many kids that look like you. that is also psychologically damaging and destructive.
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i am awfully glad brown happened. it wasn't enough. we stillrtunately, not a century later have figured out what enough would look like. we don't know what to do about the education of our children, especially poor black kids in the city's. julian: you wrote in a 1982 post: that black -- post column that black americans have a choice between being educated or integrated, and made being integrated a top priority. areresults, you wrote, socially questionable and educationally disastrous. what did you mean by that? william: what i meant by that was a series of things.
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for middle-class black children already interviewed with the values of their thele-class parents, education part had already happened. and integration was the next logical step for them. did was to make this a general prescription, not as a logical next step for people who were already, who already made a substantial step, but as a curative step for those who have not. it doesn't work as a remedy. and what i meant in that column was that when you devote major effort and major financial,
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economic, and political capital to getting the integrations to happen, you don't have very much left to make education have been. we went for a good while without, without the necessary attention to making education happen. it's one of the things that accounts for the situation we are in today. where we have neither education nor integration. julian: in 1987, and you must get tired of having your words quoted, asked about things in the past -- or maybe not. you said, civil rights tense as to think in terms of distribution and enforcement when we out to be thinking of discipline and exertion. talk about that. william: the words to come back, don't they? i guess i can't say i was taken out of context. i really do believe that.
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let me say what i mean about that. done were things that were during that time that we remember as the civil rights movement that were absolutely future.r our laws were enacted. practices were installed, or stopped. we called on america to change, white america, and it changed. it made possible some things that we could not have accomplished without that change, no matter how virtuous we were as individuals. exemplar we used to use as a description of segregation, even ralph bond, our: powell in those
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powell inr colin those days, even he could not buy a house in a white neighborhood. and he was a symbol of virtue. we were asserting that are virtue was not a problem. it was racism that was the problem that needed to be overcome. and we have made some significant strides in doing that. but what i remember, and was seems to me important, is that there were always both internal and external barriers to our progress. in those days during the movement, the external barriers were critical. no matter what we did internally, it would not matter much as long as those barriers were in place. so it is a good, noble fight,
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and i am awfully glad we did it. i'm glad we won. have it figured out what to do with that victory, though. in my own view, we have reached the point, and it is the landmark point, where the internal barriers are now more significant to our progress than the external ones. the external ones are not gone. but they are less of an impediment. the external barriers are less of an impediment now than the internal habits we have accrued, and we have not quite gotten our minds around that. change thecould not culture in the 1960's, we could , thatake righteous demand
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piece says that we formed the habit of believing that righteous demand was enough to address all our issues. some of the issues, including i think those that predominate now among many of our population, don't lend themselves to righteous demand. you cannot righteously demand that your children be educated. you can demand a place in school . we got a place in school. but commitment to learning, to things that really do make education pay off, don't lend themselves to righteous demand. you can demand a new school, or a new traffic light, or knew anything. while you slept, the government if you made enough noise might deliver it.
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you might look out your window in the morning and see a shiny with three light, kids had been killed in years before. you won't wake up in the morning and see a truck unloading education for your children on your front lawn. the children have to go out there and get it. it has to be there. made sure during the days of the movement that it was there. we now have to make sure that our children are prepared to go out and grasped it -- grasp it. otherwise, it won't matter that it is there. julian: this is another quote from a column. the researcher who put this together summarized it. and its session of finding examples of persistent racism without in his this problems from within. is that what you are talking about? william: i don't know what that means, but it's almost -- i
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think, it's very difficult to multitask on racial disadvantage. about the necessity for what he called a rhythmic alternation between dealing with causes and curing conditions. it is so easy to achieve a position of leadership if you, if you hand the people who are in trouble a scapegoat for their condition. this is the villain. cheer, because it is always right, it is always correct. but it is not always helpful. and if you, if you attempt to
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lead by saying, they have been , but what needs to be done next is up to you, and we need to forget them for a little while, or perhaps let some deal steel with their sins and we need to deal with our own shortcoming -- that does not catapult you to leadership. no matter how well-intentioned they may be, people find it difficult to exist -- resist what i consider the applause lines of blaming the enemy for our shortcomings. the reverse of blaming the victim. it is a matter of getting the analysis right, or at least write enough so that you can make some progress.
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because that, to me, is the name of the game. moving from the condition we are or -- to the condition we hope to achieve. if blaming makes that happen, then blame. but it doesn't make it happen anymore. it is finally necessary, i think, to change some of the things we do and some of the things we teach our children, thatse we have reached unprecedented place in african-american history where, for the first time, what we do matters more than what is done to us. it does not say, and somebody will always say this, it does
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not mean that what is done to us is not significant, but what we do now matters more. howan: going back to brown, does the brown decision in 1954 affect your life today, and in the intervening years? i know you went to an integrated college, so brown had an impact on that. but you had a preoccupation, some would say, with education. now you are engaged in a project in your own home town. what has brown meant to you in that sense over many years, professionally? william: brown has meant a lot to me. some psychological, some practical. to have the nation's highest court saying what we already knew is still profoundly important, i think. that we are full-fledged human
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americans. no subcategories. we are full-fledged americans. complete.ty is that's a reassuring notion to internalize, and to have other humanityo doubted our to internalize. so it has meant that. it has meant the opportunity for vastly improved education for a huge segment of the black middle class. it has meant a number of things. it meant school improvement in a lot of cases. though,did not mean, what it did not accomplish is a significantly improved education for the poorest and most damaged
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of african-americans, in rural areas and in big cities. it was not that anybody made a decision not to help. thought that if we helped the ones who were least damaged, then the help will eventually trickle down to those who are most damaged. and it hasn't. effort i havethe been making in my hometown in mississippi. one significant fact about that schools, 52 the years after brown, are officially desegregated. in fact, about 99%
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african-american. there's no point in talking lona'ssolving oko education problem to some racial tinkering or racial accusation, or some racial guilt. you have to deal with the kids we have got, with the resources we have. also clear to me that there are things that our children suffer that we try to address, but we almost always try to address them by giving the schools one more thing to do. and the schools can hardly do what they are primarily charged with doing, which is to teach our children. i started thinking about the children in my hometown. hadmetown that by the way
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given me a good start in life back before brown v. board. looking at those youngsters thinking, there are some more potential among them that if we're not careful will go unrealized. what can we do? so thought occurred to me, many of our children begin school, begin kindergarten already behind. how does this happen? to get they fail kind of start that is best for learning. not because their parents are wicked, but because their parents don't always know what to do. so i undertook, three years ago,
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two teach -- to teach the parents of preschoolers in my hometown what they can do at home to get their children ready for learning and for life. julian: what are those things? what do they learn? william: first they are relearning what we used to know, that education is magical, that it is life-transforming if you let it be. we are talking about a generation of parents, talking now about young parents, including many school dropouts, who no longer believe that education is magical. it did not work for them. that's why they dropped out and
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had little stephanie when they were 17, 16, 18. they want their children to do while. they love them. ony spend precious money dressing them to make them look h cute. and we say to them, we know you love your kids. but suppose we said we could give you something that will matter more for their lives long-term than those cute reeboks you have on their feet, which will be too small in a few months anyway. suppose we give you something that will change their life down the road, make it better. would you be interested? of course they would be interested. we say, i know what you are thinking. we are talking about education, and you think there's nothing
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you can do to help your child be successful academically, because you are not. what do you know? you are your child's first teacher, like it or not. and every single day you get up in the morning, you are teaching your kids. we're not talking about whether you should teacher child. we are talking about what you should teacher child. you can teacher child that his life for her life will be pretty much the same as yours. child --ill teacher teach your child that he or she has the prospect of a vastly changed life trajectory, that something wonderful can happen if we start now and prepare to make it happen. julian: surely, people buy into
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this and say, sure, sign me up, i will do it. have you thought about the people who say no, it is not for me? or, i don't have the time? william: nobody says, i don't want it. they signal they don't want it by not showing up. they are the early adapters who show up. every time you say, life will be better for my kids, i want some of that. then there's a second ring of people who will come in kind of reluctantly. and there's a third ring that will say, let me see how this goes, and then i might step up. we are affecting the third ring. there is a fourth ring that, you know, i'm not smart enough to reach. but if we can reach a critical mass of parents of young children, i think we will begin
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to transform what happens in schools. birth committed to doing to five, parents of children from birth to five. it is already clear to me that when the five-year-old become six or seven and enters the public schools, we can't walk away from this parents. the things we have tried to teach, the attitudes we have tried to instill in them, will still be important. ways will have to find the and means of following them into schools. but you know, you ask what we do, what we teach them. re among the things that i think are critical. the beginning of a new belief in themselves as parents, in their
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own efficacy. but there are specific things that they can be taught to do. talk to your kids. talk to your children. it can be quite astounding to watch how little conversation happens between parent and child at some of the lower income levels. studies have been done on this, that as you come down the social economic ladder, there is less conversation between parent and child. all parents, according to one says that all parents do pretty much the same amount of what he calls business talk. bring me my shoes, hang your coat up, stop. [laughter] we all do about the same amount of that.
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economicowest socio spot, that's all that happens. and if you spend time with a middle-class mom or dad and their toddlers, there is this incessant chatter going on, both ways. this is language formation. it promotes reading readiness, although that is not what it is meant to do. it is a bond. it is what they do. trying to teach taciturn parents to be chatter ers. it is important. it is fun for them. we are not taking them to the woodshed. we are saying, these are things you can talk about. reading to their kids, every night, is something they can do.
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using stuff that is around the kids to teach initial letter sounds is something they can do and enjoy learning to do. talking to them about health choices, a little trickier. moms are often making poor health choices themselves. but if you can help people to believe that what they do will make a difference for their you can's life chances, get their attention. julian: i would think that would be the initial hardest barrier, to convince parents that their children's outcomes can be different than theirs, because of the interaction or intervention of the parent. once you're over that hurdle, i would think it would be easy. william: it is not easy, but it
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becomes possible. you are exactly right. that is the critical barrier. you don't have to convince parents to love their children. they do that automatically, naturally. but they don't have much basis for believing in their own efficacy as parents. they haven't been reinforced. the have-nots in good come of it. -- they have not seen good come of it. so our task is to do some modeling and make that happen. william: after three years, is it too early to say that this has been successful, or this did not work too well? julian: you sound of funder. [laughter] early. is too woman in mississippi assessment,lty is
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who is doing the stress. numbers.ave some she has already been talking to the parents, parents and children in the baby steps program -- that is will be call -- we talked to people in baby steps, and we try to assess pre-literacy competencies, and so on. that is a pay grade higher than mine. it is something we need to do, so we keep doing it. julian: as an aside, in 1964 in the freedom summer of mississippi we had freedom schools for kids. about 3000 schools went to these kids. only anecdotal evidence will tell you that some of them flowered and flourished.
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at the 25th anniversary, we had a reunion. the teacher went to hattiesburg and matt three girls who are now -- met three girls were no women who had been freedom school students. children of single mothers, with all the demographics that you would say mean failure for these women. two of them were doctors. one of them was a lawyer. i have always been curious why some graduate students, and i try to get my graduate students to do it, to go back and capture this cohort. we have the names. compare them with those who did not have this experience, and see what a single summer of a broad and educational experience might not have had a large effect. but let's not get distracted by this. i don't even know if they were in your county in 1964. but at any rate, maybe some of the mothers of these children are kids who were in those
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schools all those years ago. but let me move on. this is pertinent to what you were just talking about. in your personal life, who are the people who were most helpful to you, developing your talents and developing who you are today? i notice you made a distinction between mentors and role models. a bit.out that bi william: the smartest thing i did early on was to say, to choose my parents very wisely. i had two terrific parents. i still have one of them. ago,m, who i saw four days is 100 years old. williamand a lovely woman. she is still living in our old house. through i father,
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don't know what means, managed to acquire some child-rearing skills that were phenomenal. they did not manage to acquire much money ever. they were both teachers. we were never hungry clothed,han properly but the clothing was not always the good stuff that some of the kids were wearing. we did not feel poor. because they was, loved learning so much themselves, they, we absorbed that. all five of us. things.forever reading my sister used to read in the
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shower. [laughter] kept thatldren have habit going, which makes me appreciate the power of observation. but somehow they were able to instill in us first a love of learning. okolonae able also, in mississippi, segregated and awful for us, it'll to make us -- able to make us feel that we were ok. -- valuableople people, and the center of their lives. they were able to make us believe that no matter what happened around us, and to us, we were to behave.
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like raspberry kids. that meant something in those days, you know? that other people's mistreatment of us did not relieve us of the responsibility of behaving decently to the world. they never quite said it that way. they would chide us for things, but more importantly they modeled what they believed. julian: where did they get this? william: i don't know. reflectede attitudes maternal andh my paternal grandparents, especially the grandfathers. and i suppose some of it came from there. i am sure that if you ask them,
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they could not tell you where it came from. this is the part of it that strikes me as powerful. when it happens, however it you can recognize its power and how it makes you feel. and, it makes you want to pass it along. once you get infected with this, with this gene, whatever it is, it can, with a little help, replicate itself down the generations. if yousame token, get infected with an attitude that says that nothing you do , and that vengeance is a
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proper response, that getting even is more important than getting ahead, that is heritable, too. i used to see kids on the playground who would fight because their parents had instructed them, you don't take nothing off nobody, and if anybody does anything to you, you had them with a rock or you stab them with a pencil. and they thought they were teaching their kids to take care of themselves. ir kids.they loved the k my own experience, both at my house, and i do mean it when i say my parents were sort of incredible, there's another that about my early years
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is also extremely important, i think. i was born on the campus of what was then okolona college. a little two-year college with a four-year high school attached. it was a campus setting. dormitories, the whole thing. that's where i was born. that's where my dad taught building trades. was at that time the only four-year high school for blacks in chickasaw county. school,s that little supported by the episcopal that saw as its mission preparing young black kids to
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succeed in a hostile environment. the people there, i think i timeber one phd the whole the college existed. these were people who were not extraordinary scholars, or particularly gifted teachers. but they were so committed to rescuing, saving a generation of us in the heat of segregation that they really did transform our lives. the talking about surprising number of people who came through that little high school and college, who went on to do well. the presence of that little school helped to transform our town into what these days we verdant community.
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at least for the black half of the town. we had some effect on the other, but principally what happened to black kids in that town in those days. it was really quite extraordinary, in ways i did not realize until i left the place. of that experience, observing it firsthand, what a few committed people can do to of people whos did not have much previous reason for lifting their eyes, that's also part of what drives the baby steps effort. i don't want to retrieve the college. there's no point in doing that. understand, and i understand more every day as i look back, the importance of
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changing the culture, the cultural attitudes towards learning. learning is in disrepute in some parts of our country. it is that to the -- thought to be an effete kind of thing, and acting is more important than merely learning. our own little way, baby steps helps to get people thinking about creating once again a learning community in our town. to transform the town, racially as well. the town is almost equally divided between black and white, yetwe have not figured out
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except at the edges how to live together. that people don't want to do it, or try, at both sides. but it occurred to me once again, we argue about politics and religion and whether to put the park here or the school there. but one thing we are all agreed on is that we want our children to do well. you ask for a short hands of those opposed to children, and you don't get anybody waiting their hands -- waving their hands about. it's the only thing i can think of where we all agree. waiting for somebody to give us something to do, to act on that agreement. julian: besides -- besides these academics and your own parent and teacher's, are
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there other figures in your early life that had an impact on you? are such people. i will miss some of them. but let me name one, by way of illustrating a point that i think is important. we talk to our youngsters today, as early as junior high, and we tell them the importance of studying and staying in making good grades. because a college graduate earns this much, and a high school graduate only earns this much. a high school dropout only earns this much. so you see how important it is that you stay in school and do well. i go back to my childhood, i not study a single hour or write a single paper or
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study a single examination with an eye on my economics 20 years down the road. it was just not a part of my thought process. for kids, long-term is the weekend after next. i worked hard in school to please adults who cared about me. but mr.ts, of course, --dner was my math teacher he was a wonderful man. was sod me, and it important for me to have him think well of me, i wanted to ace his algebra course. i did so well, my first major when i went away to college was math.
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gardner.to be like mr. there were other people on campus, one man who taught me agriculture. i didn't learn that much about covering crops and that kind of thing, but he was the only teacher i remember who would take us high school boys aside and talk to us about life, which , and it wasbout sex profoundly important to us. we were not getting anywhere else. them, not god bless getting it for my parents at home. my parents never i think uttered the word "sex" to any of their five children. we never had the talk. i thought i was the only one who missed it. s.talked to my sister
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they would find little tracts and books and magazines and leave them lying around in the living room, confident that we would find them. but they never uttered the word. julian: let me ask you. do you remember any significant local or national historic events that were regularly discussed in your home around the dinner table? if so, how did these events shake your consciousness -- shake your consciousness? william: that's a hard question, because i had not thought of it. look, i was born in 1935, so my first memories of important national events were world war ii. on whatimpact of that we did, what we ate, what happened to cousins who went out to fight in the war and all that. julian: did you have a victory
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garden? william: we had a survival garden. we always had a garden, and always a few chickens running around the yard. we did have blackout curtains. one phase of my life, we were living in a house that did not have electricity. we had kerosene lamps. they were so game, you had -- dim, you had to do a double take to see if anybody was home. and yet we bought these thick blackout shades. and when the air raid warning siren went off, we would dutifully lower the blinds. the japanese could not have found okolona if we set the town on fire. [laughter] let alone turning out the lights. dutifulere truthful --
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and patriotic. thatd not resent the fact she was and sugar and -- shoes and sugar and meet, candy bars were rationed. our little contribution to the war effort. julian: do you remember the war? '-- war's end? william: i remember the celebratory mood. i did not understand what any of this was about. i do remember wondering, what will the headlines in the paper be about? because every day, they were about the war. i could not imagine what they used to be that. t -- be about.
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overhear as many dinnertable conversations about politics as we would now. we were shut out of state and local politics. vaguely who was running our lives, if there was something we could do about it. my mother, by the way -- i was in college when my mother became the first black woman in chickasaw county to register to vote. julian: really? william: i was already gone. i have a vague, vague recollection of their interest in politics, but not strong. they used to talk a lot about .ow people behaved
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one of the things that i that in thisell is little, i almost want to say poverty-stricken home, for most of my childhood there was at least one other person, not a family member, living with us to go to this little school, this campus where we left. it became almost second nature that a spare bed would be put somewhere, another cup of water in the soup. this is what families did, if they had a little to share and spare. what sort't realize of impact this had on me
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irsonally until my wife and found ourselves taking eighth taking-old foster son -- a 13-year-old foster son into our home. it seemed like a decent thing to do. a kid who needed a home, needed some parents. thatnk what i'm saying is wayse seeds get planted in you don't even suspect, and they will sprout at times and places that surprise you. you don't know. and i am almost glad i didn't know this early on. i think it would make you crazy as a parent, if you really understood the influence of what your ordinary day-to-day behavior has on your children. it is scary.
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but it can be quite profound. julian: moving ahead, how did you choose your career? you have multiple majors in college. what were your majors? william: i started out as a math major, partly to please mr. gardner, my math teacher, and partly because my father, who taught building trades, would in a fairer world have been an engineer, i am sure. i thought maybe i could be the engineer that dad could not become. here was my disease. they had filled me with confidence that i was smart enough to do whatever i set my mind about in doing. and i really believed that. i was half way college before i found out it was not true.
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i ran into organic chemistry, and discovered i could not do everything i wanted to do. at any rate, i thought i could do whatever i put my mind to, but i did not know what i wanted to do. reacting to what people i cared about and who cared about me said i should do. you are good in math. you should be a math major. you're really good with english. you can spot a chair and or a participial phrase across the campus, you know? you want to be any with major. so i was an english major for a time. at 1.i was a history major, because -- at one point i was a history major, because somebody said something else. at one point, people came around
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to say that the visible church needed priest -- episcopal church needed priests. they invited a bunch of us males to visit the theological seminary in alexandria, virginia. my first time in washington, in fact. they told us, if we thought we could be a doctor or lawyer or engineer, but also thought we could be a priest, we ought to give that consideration. so i became a seminarian, and i was going to become an episcopal i was running out of money for school. scholarships were not as prevalent then as they are now. i had to work my way through college. this particular summer, between my junior and senior years, i had trouble finding a job. my reentry into school around
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september was in doubt. it was july already, and i was sweating it. that july, a friend of mine who worked for the "indianapolis recorder" called and said, the sports editor just quit. if you are willing to pass yourself off as a sportswriter, i think i can get you hired. --ent to the reporter recorder and said i was a sportswriter. julian: were you a sportswriter? william: i did not know anything about sports. -- it, i like sports, but took them about a week to discover i really was not there next sports editor. good withby then very subject verb agreement. i had been an english major for a little while. i had one other quality
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absolutely adored. my willingness to work for the minimum wage. so he put me on. and when september came around, it was time to go back to school. he said, find what you're school schedule is, and any hours you are not working you can work here. a leica 35mm camera and said, go learn how to take pictures. he just sort of gave me my head and let me learn to be a journalist. i spent four years at that place. i would back to school that follow, and then -- and that all, then worked at the recorder.
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then i stayed there until i got drafted into the army. the indianapolis recorder was my fifth major, my journalism major, although i never took a journalism course in school. julian: you learn things he might have learned had you gone lede --ool, writing a william: how to write ledes, how to write headlines, how to structure a story. i learned something i'm not sure i would have learned in journalism school. been writing papers for my college professors, and they were, you know, good in the sense that they tended to be grammatically correct. i learned little tricks about sticking in short sentences after a series of longer ones, but they were not -- i am glad i
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cannot find any of them now. i was writing for an audience of one, who had to read my work. whenirst thing that hit me i went to the indianapolis at nobody has to read what i'm writing. nobody has to read it. that was a worrisome thing to me. i learned, not because of the taught me about ledes, that because i was afraid that i would do all this work and nobody would read it. they would let us write our own headlines. i would write a headline that i thought was catchy. then i would try to write a first sentence that was attractive. then i would put my mind to thinking, if i got them this far, can i write the second sentence that will keep their attention?
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imagine howtry to easy it was for them to stop reading, and have a little contest with myself to see how long i could hold them. i would hide the statistical material i had to use, because it was usually boring, hide it in some subordinate clause somewhere and see if i can hang on to them a little longer. i ran into copy editors later in my life who would want to break me of the habit i formed in those days. i like to start sentences, paragraphs even, with "and" or "but." that's a conjunction. you can't start sentences with a conjunction. the reason i had that habit, being in the middle of a long passage, i'm going to lose them -- but if i start the next sentence with "and" or "but,"
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it's like i signaled, this is a continuing thought. it is rude to let go. you can't stop now. i would really work at seeing how long i could hold the reader. it made my writing much, much better, i think. i have never seen that directly taught in journalism class. but it made my columns, when i later on became a columnist, made those work much better. to this day, one of the great compliments for me is to have a reader say, i like what you had to say yesterday, and i particularly liked the way you ended it. you talk about the chool, but whats other parts of education besides
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this rounding in grammar led to this career? is at the multiplicity? i have heard you talk about your multiplicity of interest, and how that made you a good reporter because you are interested in so many things. william: i was never consciously aware of all of these things. and maybe i'm a little bit surprised that everybody does not have a similar multiplicity of interest. for some people, it is sufficient to describe my work for 40 years as that of a black columnist. it is most assuredly that. i am a black american. a southern-born american. i don't doubt that influences who i am, how i think, and how i feel.
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male.am that matters and how you see things. i am a son and a parent. that matters in how you see life, the things that strike you as important. the father of a son and daughters, that matters. i could not begin to parcel out the things -- the pieces of me that go into the work i do and have done. after all these years, it is seamless. you are who you are. i don't know where your political views come from. you can't say they come from experience because people left the same experience reach very different notions about politics.
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i don't know what combinations of things lead me to believe that certain values are better for me than for others. that certain things seem more interesting than others. i don't know. reason i cannot write my life story. i cannot figure all this out. julian: you go from the small town in mississippi to the big city of indianapolis. in another conversation you described the difference is not being that much. but there had to be some differences for you. william: there were differences. crossing first time the state line, leaving mississippi. i had never left mississippi before i got in the car to drive to indianapolis. time i was for the first in the big city.
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i did not know how cities worked. i did not know anything. i remember getting on a trolley car to go downtown because there was a parade or something. i was bored. i was living with my sister and her husband. notice the number on the bus. i looked at the words on the front of the destination marker and did not know enough about big city transportation to know it would have a different name on the return. i did not know what number it was. i got downtown and did not know how to get back. i don't know if i ever told anybody that. i bumbled around and found how to get back, and felt a little smarter for having figured that out. but indianapolis at that time
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a very confusing city racially. there were a few places in town where a black person, a few restaurants where a black person, a black couple could eat. and there were several where this was not possible. julian: how did you know which was which? william: that is what was so confusing. you did not know except by experience or word-of-mouth. it did not come up that often for me because i did not have a lot of eating out money. but i do remember there was one le," acalled "the po drive-in theater that would not serve you in your own car. during my early years there, when i am in school and working had majorecorder," ticket lines and things to desegregate the grocery stores,
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to get them to hire black checkout clerks. there had been a major impact. this was john birch society territory. indiana had three old black schools that were black from inception. they were designed as black schools. this was up north. these were black high schools. the locals used to speak of going up north to kentucky because that was the bordering state on the south, but in some
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ways they thought kentucky was more progressive than indiana was. indiana has made significant wasdes since then, but it -- there was more racial integration than i had ever experienced in mississippi of course. but just enough to be confusing. thisn: and you go from all-black educational system to an integrated college. william: scared to death because thought i i guess i was about as smart as the white kids. but these kids are not only white, but they are northern. i'm going to have to really work to keep up. julian: did that turn out to be true? william: i worked my buns off that first year to prove i
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could. really, i lost a lot of interest in school. i went to school my freshman year and then laid out and work for 15 months to get more money and then went back to school. i am thinking i bout of had a adolescent angst at about that time. i had my 17th birthday as a college freshman. i was quite young. i did not know what was going on .
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and i did not -- things were very unsettled for me. i was going through some of the same things people say junior high school kids go through now, but i did not know that and there was nobody to talk to about it. a while aor a wild -- rather indifferent student. i do remember being shocked and asked that two professors to see me, and i went to see them. they started to talk to me as though they were my uncles or something and wanted to know what was going on and if they could be helpful. i thought, this is really quite amazing. in college they do this?
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i talked about seeds getting planted. i find myself doing that now with students i teach if they seem to have some important distractions. come by, let's talk. probably not supposed to do it, but i remember it was beneficial to me when somebody did it. like the thing grown-ups ought to do for children, you know. julian: what was the racial composition of the school? william: overwhelmingly white. i think my first year, there were probably 12 black kids. we all knew each other. careful not to all sit together in the cafeteria. four, but if ato fifth one came, he had to go and start his own table. we don't want them to think --
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funny thinking. julian: it is a funny thing about today. when you look back over your life, there has got to be a point where you say if not in these words at least you have conceptualized at this,, i am a leader, people listen to me." do you remember when that happened? i'm sure it happened. don't say it did not happen. william: if you had ever asked i wouldyou a leader, have given you a quick and resounding no. but i take your question seriously and literally, and i include underou the rubric of leadership not just people who had organizations. julian: exactly, yes. not exclusively people like that. i don't i suppose remember an incident or a day.
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slowly learning that people, some people, depended on me to help them sort out a lot of stuff that was going on. julian: this was happening after you become a columnist or before? william: after i had become a columnist. 6.his was 1960' i was 30. julian: this was when you were influencing people remotely. you don't know them personally. they read in the paper. what about earlier in college or high school? any leadership position to help? were you ever in a position of formal leadership in these occasions?
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or even in the military? william: in the military, no. i was a grunt who learned to avoid work pretty much. this will sound strange to you. indianapolis at the time i was a wheret there was a town -- i don't think this is exaggeration. virtually all the african american kids who were in college new each other when you about each other. the numbers were not that large. context, there were some of us who sort of , we would agendas
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have run from the idea of leadership, but we formed youth chapters of the naacp. and we formed intercollegiate clubs. we formed picket lines. we did the things we thought we were called upon by our age and station to do. us who tookome of some pride in making some of these things happen. but i tended not to run for office or for leadership. formal leadership. julian: but you are displaying in formal leadership. you are not the head, but you are one of the agenda setters, is that true? william: i was not consciously aware of it of course. i would say it is probably more accurate to say that i was in my
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various settings part of a small agenda setting country -- cadre. there were two or three of us in this organization who would set an agenda, and maybe a different configuration in another. but i liked being one of that leadership cadre. that was important to me. at my church also, in the youth part of the church, i was always pleased to be among those who could be counted on. thingas the important about leadership at that stage of my life, knowing i could become -- be counted on. julian: you are conscious people are saying, again not in these words, what does raspberry think we ought to do? william: i was aware of that in various contexts.
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constant, but as a recurring theme. you may want to do this more sequentially, bigger question reminded me of something that happened to me. off someplace north making a speech once as a newspaper columnist. a man came up to me and said i want to tell you something. i hope it is not embarrass you. and he is a leader in something in his hometown. and he said, somebody asked me the other day what i thought about whatever this current i don'ts, and i said know yet, i have not read raspberry. i thought what a scary thing to say, but obviously very
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gratifying. i mean the fact that people really do pay attention to your views on things. that takes some getting used to. julian: i'd that -- i bet. william: you won't believe this now, but it is possible to be wrong. and what do you do when you are wrong and people are following what you say? or could.ou skittish from being asd me much of a smartass as i'm sometimes inclined to be. sometimes, i would like to take shots. it is fun to take shots. but the discovery that at least a few people out there will take this seriously and literally takes the fun out of the game for me. julian: what kind of adjustment
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do you make from being a daily and i understand the formats are very different from writing a column -- but what kind of intellectual adjustments do you have to make from reporting what has happened? you get kudos for your work on the watts riot. that to writing essentially opinion. even though there may be opinion in the other stories, it is subtle and hidden and not intentional i guess. what kind of mental jumps do you make to go from one to the other? william: that is a fascinating question. if you are a human being, you have opinions. but you learn as a reporter to put the opinions on the lips of other people. you go and find somebody who will say what you need saying. julian: i used to do a man in
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the street interview for the local black paper in atlanta. we would have a question of the week. i would find people and ask them the question. if i did not have enough people, i would find people and say, wouldn't you say that? that answer. william: you're not supposed to admit stuff like that. julian: yeah. i am past that now. william: i recall instances where not only would i ask people, would you say the following thing is true? yeah, i would say that. i remember one person in particular i would call for opinions about stuff, and he was a constituted leader. go ahead, say something. i will stand behind it. [laughter] william: that is not good journalism. i will deny that later on i guess.
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but i have personally found it freeing to be able to say this is what i believe, but also here is why i believe it. it was never much fun saying this is what i believe, take it or leave it. in takingr me was people where i imagined them to be. walking them inch by inch to where i thought they ought to be or to where i was. and again, with the same technique i learned at the "indianapolis recorder," seeing if i could write an opening sentence that they would not take issue with. and then seeing where i could take that thought and how long before they would jump off the train.
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and i was trying quite consciously to deny them a place to disembark. sometimes you could take them quite a long way. sometimes they would jump as soon as they figured out where you were going. all of that helps technique. i have had a number of colleagues in the journalism who are very good at what they do, excellent reporters, who would not dream of writing an opinion column. mean, they tell me it takes a certain arrogance to imagine people care what you think about stuff. they are confident in their judgment that says this is an important story and this is an important piece of information. here it is and here is the context for it. but what i think? julian: there's a difference
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between arrogance and confidence. x is so and you think they think it is not so, you don't have to be arrogant, just confident you can persuade them. you can put the facts out and persuade them to your point of view. william: this is the thing that makes it so hard for me to understand what is happening in our politics a lot these days. if you really believe you are right and you have considered important factors in a thing, why wouldn't you want to talk about it in a way that makes your truth accessible to those who have not seen it yet? tendet in our politics, we to shout at other people, not to show them the error of their ways but to paint scary faces on them. if i have reached a conclusion
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somehow that is not the orthodox fun to see if we can find a premise that we can both agree on and try to track where it is that we part company. why everybody does not enjoy that. it just seems most recreational. julian: i would think so. let me move on. let me ask you about your leadership philosophy. again, using leader in the same sense you agreed to discuss it, not necessarily the head of an organization. what do you see as the difference between vision, philosophy, and style? how, if at all, do these interact for you? vision, philosophy, and style?
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william: vision may be the thing that drives the rest of it. i think it is not likely that you do anything that could be called leadership if you don't road.me outcome down the and whether the outcome is just getting a traffic light installed or transforming a whatnity, the vision is makes it all start to happen. the vision may not be the thing you talk about, except in small pieces. may not be talked
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about at all because and startslized philosophy to seem such a bedrock, ordinary thing that it is almost like talking about the weather. if you really embrace the philosophy, which is to say a view of the world, your view of guides what you do and how you think and the visions you have. but you seldom state the philosophies to anybody. but the combination of the underlying philosophy and the combine to make you think it would be a good us, if a lot of
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us, moved from where we are to where i see down the road. question ofces the style. style is incredibly individual. the smart people who aspire to any kind of leadership do a sort of inventory of what there is about them, what they have in their personality arsenal that will help them move people from here to there. for some, it is humor. for some, it is anger. is what you have got. it is what ever you have got. successful at the leadership game learn to figure out what works for them in
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various situations. julian: when i read your columns in "the post," i am gathering a philosophy from what i read even though it is not evident. you don't have "this is my philosophy" written there. gathering some vision of you, and i very much like the style in which the argument is presented to me. who are you writing for? are you writing for all of the people who read the "washington post"? are you writing for people who are bill raspberry fans? are you writing for people who open the op-ed page and see a headline that grabs them? who is your audience? william: that is good. the audience probably is slightly different with each piece depending on what you're trying to do with it.
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i even find it useful from time to time to have a picture in my personaybe of an actual that i am writing this thing to. i find that useful because i this person who has not reached the conclusion i am about to reach -- julian: you are not preaching to the converted. don't you think there are some people who share exactly your ideas who want some reinforcement? william: and there are columns i have written that i think are sayulated to reinforce, to you are taking a lot of heat on this thing but what you did is a good thing. guess i would have in mind those people who think it was not a good thing.
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i am trying -- julian: i interrupted you. you were talking about the ideal audience, the person you visualize. who is that person? william: it is a different person probably every time. it may be the person i really had a hammer and tongs argument with, an actual person, maybe an actual person wit. it may be somebody i have read, never met, it makes a strong case for a view that is not my view. and without specifically referring to that piece of writing and dismantling it point meet the i may try to objections i think the person would make as i go through.
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always a possibility that there is more than one way of looking at anything. it is one of the "tricks" i have learned about persuasive argument. any smidgen of intelligence to the person you are trying to convert, you won't convert anybody. those crossfire, point-counterpoint, battling, talking heads things you see on television really don't persuade anybody. they are almost entirely two preachers preaching to their own choirs. they are not calculated to convert. i like to think any one of those people i could talk to.
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i agree with the following things you said, in fact i have never heard anyone say it quite so well before. would you agree this is also true? and you can start to exchange some ideas and not just brickbats. and that is a lot more fun to me. julian: what is the vision that guides your life? has that vision changed? is it different now than it would have been some years in the past? it changes in subtle ways i think. vision asuide the is -- let meing call it a conceit. citizen ofhat i am a an increasingly large community.
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you know, my community was my parents house. and then it was my street. and my town and my race and my country. i would like to think as i the entity in which i claim citizenship grows to and of aore people more diverse notion. i count it a failure somehow if i find some people not fitting into what i consider my community. sometimes, their failure. but very often my own. that i have insufficient understanding of how they see the world, what their philosophy is, what their vision is. i usually make myself believe if
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we can exchange visions, we can then talk about philosophy. and if we can do both those things, we might find ourselves actually agreeing on some things. julian: there may be an occasion when someone else's vision and your vision at least appear to be the same, yet they have come to different conclusions than you have about some issue or question. how do you balance that? here is someone who seems compatible in every way, but ends up a different place. william: it does not happen as much as it used to. i don't know quite why that is so. my way of thinking about this is if you want to know what goes on in this building, you may look through that window from the here recordede us an interview.
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that is aconclude studio of some sort or at least some studio-like thing. you go and look through another window or so many else looks through another window, and they see a heating and cooling system and say that is some kind of a plant in there. somebody else looks in and sees and says it is some kind of big restaurant. nobody will be wrong. they may be describing quite accurately what they see, and yet they are not wrong yet they are all incomplete. like the blind man and the elephant, exactly so. response to that insight is to try to look at the world i
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occupy through as many windows as i can make available, including the windows of people who reach a different conclusion than mine. and i don't want to necessarily beat up on them and say you have come to the wrong conclusion, but tell me what you see when you look through your window. real,me what you see is so tell me about it. i will tell you what i see when i look through line, and maybe we will both get a better sense of what is inside this building. do you ever think you are looking at a mirror and i am looking at a window, whether we are both looking and you are just not seeing anything? that is, do you have a certainty view?r view being "z" conclusions may be different, that your view is the view?
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what i have is a belief, maybe misguided to some degree, but it is a belief i carry that i am smart enough to be honest about what i see when i look in the window. and i get a little impatient with people who simply will not see what is pointed out to them. not because they have a blind spot, but because they fear that to acknowledge they see this thing will be to acknowledge that they see something else and they will be salami sliced into changing their view. tried to have a velocity philosophy that says if he change my mind by giving me new information, new
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facts, and new ways of looking at things, this is not a disaster. this is gross. -- this is growth. this is what education is. i try not to be wed to a conclusion just because it is comfortable. that, i find i can be reasonably genuine in wanting an exchange of views rather than pretending to want an exchange when all i want to do is open your head and poor my view into your head. julian: let me ask you a question about how leaders are made. most people talk about it in three ways. great people cause great events. movements make leaders. or the confluence of unpredictable events creates
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leaders appropriate for the time. which of these fits you? william: oh, boy. probably all those things are working. i would guess the last one -- julian: unpredictable events, leaders appropriate to the times? william: leaders appropriate to the times. there are those who really do i,ieve, and very often so do but the times create the leaders -- that the times create the leaders the times demand. there's plenty of historic evidence for that. there are alsoay times it seems to me that demand a kind of leadership that in fact does not present itself. there are people -- this is why
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it is difficult to talk about. there are people i think are destined for leadership almost from infancy. and such people will lead wherever they find themselves, in whatever circumstances they will be in, whether they are in the military or the university or the cotton fields. they will lead. there are other people who don't consider themselves as at all but who for leadership become increasingly uncomfortable with a wrong that is like a pebble in the shoe. tot some point, they have take the shoe off and get rid of the pebble. thinking theyot are leaders. but they discover when they talk
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about this irritant that they are the only ones who have experienced it and want to be rid of it. and they start something that andr people will follow they are leaders almost accidentally. -- iimes leaders are those mean if you can imagine somebody showing up at the scene of an accident or a natural disaster and sort of setting things in motion. julian: taking control. william: taking control. there are people who show up at the scenes of political disasters or racial disasters or civic disasters and take control. not because they want to get blood on their hands or risk
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cuts and injury, but because from their point of view it is so clear that something has to be done. else is going to do it? come on, let's do it. julian: is there something about you tomes that enabled have the influence you had as a "post" columnist, leaving aside race, that could not have happened in an earlier period? i don't mean that the "post" opened up and hired more black writers. but say 100 years earlier, could you have occupied the same position? things: those are the
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that send you to sleep frustrated and talking to yourself because you can never to be born 30 years drastically change your life trajectory. or to be born 30 years later. -- could imagine my being what? journalistyear-old at a major city newspaper in 2006. what would i be doing? what would i be doing if i were 20 or 25 and a fledgling journalist now at "the post" or the "new york times"? and what would i aspire to? what opportunities would be available to meet? -- to me?
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i think you just can't know. julian: probably an unfair question. william: i think it is impossible to avoid thinking about. you know, boy, what if i had the brakes my kids have or what if my kids had the harsh lessons i had? we don't know. we have to deal with the times we are given. for you, is your ability as a leader grounded in your ability to persuade people to follow your vision or is it in your ability to articulate an agenda? are these the same thing? william: they are not the same thing. .f i hear you correctly sounds like the
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president of the united states. the other sounds like the press secretary. at least in ideal circumstances ought to have a bit of the vision thing. he ought to be able to see and vision ore some philosophy. it is very helpful if you have a press secretary who can articulate that for journalists who come yapping around. but these are very different skill sets. people who are ideas,nt at taking your teasing out what your ideas are, and then making them articulate. but i would not call such people leaders.
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they may often be indispensable to leaders, but they are not leadership. the quality of leadership that is terribly important is the ability to step back a little bit from the fray and see a larger picture. see whatever the activity or the problem is in a larger context and try to deal with it in terms of that context. with some outcome in mind. and probably the outcome ought to be something that the leader could articulate and share. because if a leader has a goal that is not the goal of the people he is asking to follow
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him, that is a species of deception and i don't like it much. julian: let me ask you a question you have answered in an interview. how does race consciousness affect your work? do you see yourself as a leader who advances issues of race or society or both of these? is there a distinction between them? is there such a thing as a race transcending leader? you said i never take into account when a black columnist or black man would say about an issue. how does race consciousness come into your work? william: i think race consciousness is a part of who you are. it is not a switch you flip and say i'm now going to do my race consciousness thing. if you can imagine looking at being in as a human
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world that includes a lot of animals that are not human, you don't have to say i think i will look at this from a humanistic point of view. pointll look at it from a of view of a human being because that is what you are. issueslook at political and many social issues from the point of view of the person my experience has forged me into being. i will look at it as a man would wouldt it, as a short man look at it, as a married man would look at it, as a black man would look at it, and as an american black man would look at it. it is what i am. it is what i have. i don't have to flick on these
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various switches or turn them off to get a clearer picture. it is what i meant when i say i try to look at my world through as many windows as i can find that give onto the subject i am discussing. race is one of those windows, and i would not ever counsel anybody that what you see through the window of race is false or misleading. it is just not all. julian: when you yourself are looking out for appearing before a group of people, your students, or a speech audience, are you different? do you have a different style when you are talking with an all-black or mixed group or a predominantly white group or all-white group? are you different on these occasions? william: yeah, probably.
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maybe unavoidable. i'm different when i talk to young people, college people, and when i talk to guys i go to football games with. yeah. frustration is when you try persona of one of these as the real you, and the others must be some phony you. they are not artificial. they are all aspects of you. it is one of the fascinating things. one of the most fascinating things you can do is invite lots of people you know from various aspects of your life to a party at your house where you are the only thing they have in common. and you find yourself when you are trying to work the room and float around, talking not only about different things that in different styles -- but in
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different styles to the various people. that is a form of multilingualism. julian: it is. i have never heard it put quite that way. if we talk about black leadership, is this divisive? are we playing into some kind of divisiveness if we are separating people in these categories? william: i don't think so. the term is certainly vague enough. that part of my vision is , there may a time come a time when we will have with theho are black
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experience of being black, the express of being american, being whatever they are. but leaders who are black who are not necessarily black leaders. we are having this interview of 2006.e elections we have a black man running for governor of massachusetts and a black man running for the senate in tennessee. julian: my student. happens as theat aspirational sealants -- ceilings of various subgroups of americans are lifted? they won't become members of a different category. they will still be members of their own category, but their leadership won't necessarily be limited to that category in the same way we never think of white
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.eaders it is perfectly reasonable for me that there could come a time when we will think about political leaders of various sorts, military leaders of various sorts, who are black or female but who are not "black leaders." but until that happens, i'm not uncomfortable with the idea that there is a cadre of people who claim or at least try to speak on behalf of people who are otherwise largely voiceless. that is ok. julian: do black leaders have an obligation to help other african americans? will there be a point where that obligation ends? you mean blacks who are
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leaders in other areas? julian: yes. he has risen to the top of american business. he is black. does he have an obligation to help other black people that is distinct or just an obligation to help people generally? william: that is a profound question. think whatever the philosophical answer is, i think the practical answer is that those african americans who achieve great success, especially in mainstream sometions, assume leastsibility for at knowng their co-ethnics
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how they got where they are. and it is a different responsibility than letting people know how i achieved greatness. there are people who can be inspired in useful ways by withg a conversation somebody who looks like them. and i think that is not much of a price to pay for success. should you deny it to others? of course not. .ou are a professor the form of a question that comes to a university professor is excruciatingly difficult. there was an important exchange
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fewhe "atlantic monthly" a years ago. a university professor, a law professor, says one of the highlights of his year is the christmas dessert he and his wife give for the law students at his university. he invites the black law students over to his home, and they just sort of talk and kick. says, what ansor awful thing. here is a professor who is supposed to be modeling fairness , making aspects of himself available to one group of students based on some imagined racial kinship, and by
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implication denying this to other students. how unfair can one be? think how you wrestle with that kind of question says an awful lot about you and about what you think the state of our progress to be. julian: what do you think is your greatest contribution as an african american leader? william: it has not happened yet. watch baby steps. which may be my last contribution to making life better for people i care about. thatps showing the way small towns can make themselves, can will themselves, into becoming communities. maybe showing how big towns, downs can break themselves
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into manageable communities. julian: i was going to ask, is this likely to be successful? memphis -- it happens in oklahoma and is not happening in memphis. william: it will happen in small towns more easily. we may learn how to break large towns down into smaller communities. we could build a community perhaps around an elementary school in washington, d.c. but if we learn how to do this, if we learn how to transform our towns and neighborhoods into communities, this will be as profoundly important as any three dozen columns i have written in 40 years in the business. stay tuned. julian: in the future, for which we are staying tuned, what kind of leaders will contemporary or future society demand?
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do we need different sorts of people today, tomorrow morning, or next year than we would have a year ago, tenures ago, or 20? backam: i guess i harken to an obstacle you laid out for me before. i think it is almost always the that problems become pressing enough that they demand solutions. set of facts demands and creates the leadership necessary to deliver those solutions. whether we are talking about racial progress or global warming, somebody or we justes will say
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cannot let things drift on the way they are drifting. we must do something. i have no idea what qualities those people will have. i would not have printed out a whoh nader as a leader would make certain things happen among consumers, on behalf of consumers, 30 years ago, but there he was. guy to take be the us -- to do the thing today. maybe we are all sufficiently different. i don't know. a huge part of the fun of living is to watch leadership step on the stage. who would have considered barack obama five years ago? and you and i knew something about politics five years ago. julian: he was not on my radar screen. william: he was not on our
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radar, and there he is. julian: what do we do in the future to foster leadership? is there some way we can ready people so that when these crises or new challenges arise they are ready? i think a lot of people have been struggling with this question of whether it is possible to sort of hothouse generic leaders. rightafrica has a program now supported by a foundation where they are trying to take likely young africans and sort them the skills of leadership. the jury is out on that one. recognize can
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fledgling leadership when it raises its head. just are people who will sort of be interested in making good things happen, and we can support them by listening. and if they seem amenable to it, we can help them with resources of various sorts. and the very fact that leaders, that fledgling leaders get the support of important people can encourage more leaders to step forward. whether one can a hot house breed full of leaders or not. me circumstances
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help to make this happen. there are some people that will step up for one thing and not another. but it is the stepping up that we need to learn how to see, to with ourd to support gratitude and our resources. people who step up in times of valuablesis are unbelievably to every group and culture on the face of the earth. i think that how we treat those who do step up will determine the quality of those who subsequently step up. >> thank you so much for being with us. my pleasure. thank you. you are watching "american history tv." all weekend, every weekend
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