Talking About the Untalkable

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In Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution of the United States, the Founding Fathers decided to count three-fifths of a state's slaves toward its representation in Congress. Put another way, most blacks in America were, at one time, considered to be only three-fifths of a person.

This national birth defect went uncorrected until the Civil Rights Act of 1866 established "that all persons born in the United States . . . are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States." Passed during the most exhilarating days of Reconstruction, the act was greeted with officious optimism. "If there is anything by which the American people are troubled, and if there is anything with which the American statesman is perplexed and vexed, it is what to do with the negro," said one Yankee Senator. "Now, as a definition, this amendment settles it."

Not according to Studs Terkel and the dissonant multiracial chorus in his newest book, Race: How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About the American Obsession (New Press; 403 pages; $24.95). Even the liberal whites in its pages admit to deepening fears and animosity toward the growing urban black underclass. Most of the blacks who talked into Terkel's tape recorder do not think they will ever be five-fifths American. Joseph Lattimore, 50, a Chicago insurance broker, describes himself as typical. "Being black in America is like being forced to wear ill-fitting shoes," he says. "Some people can bear the uncomfort more than others. Some people can block it from their mind, some can't. When you see some acting docile and some acting militant, they have one thing in common: the shoe is uncomfortable. It always has been and always will be."

Terkel, 79, put oral history on the best-seller lists. History may be too strong a word. What Terkel does is refine and package the radio call-in show between hard covers. It is a natural step for the man who for 35 years has been the host of his own talk show on Chicago's WFMT. In his checked shirts, and suits that look like they are sent out to be cleaned and rumpled, Terkel is the city's most recognizable author. The dapper Saul Bellow would be a close second. Scott Turow's commuter camouflage renders him nearly invisible.

Can someone who transcribes other people's words truly be called a writer? In Terkel's case the question seems irrelevant. His books may not have the scope of literature or the authority of social science, but they do pack the wallop of theater -- particularly the declamatory, political theater of the 1930s as exemplified by Clifford Odets' Waiting for Lefty.