{"id":2966,"date":"2009-04-12T13:42:37","date_gmt":"2009-04-12T04:42:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=2966"},"modified":"2009-04-12T13:42:37","modified_gmt":"2009-04-12T04:42:37","slug":"sunday-tangent-npr-interview-with-late-scholar-john-hope-franklin-feel-the-parallels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=2966","title":{"rendered":"Sunday Tangent: NPR interview with late scholar John Hope Franklin: feel the parallels"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Handbook<\/a>\"\\\"<\/a>\"Foreign<\/a>\"\\\"<\/a>\"\u300c\u30b8\u30e3\u30d1\u30cb\u30fc\u30ba\u30fb\u30aa\u30f3\u30ea\u30fc\u3000\u5c0f\u6a3d\u5165\u6d74\u62d2\u5426\u554f\u984c\u3068\u4eba\u7a2e\u5dee\u5225\u300d\uff08\u660e\u77f3\u66f8\u5e97\uff09\"<\/a>\"JAPANESE<\/a>\"sourstrawberriesavatar\"<\/a>
\nHi Blog. \u00a0Here’s Sunday’s tangent. \u00a0On March 27, 2009, NPR replayed a 1990 interview with the late \u00a0John Hope Franklin, historian of racism within the United States. \u00a0He died at age 94 on March 25. \u00a0The Economist ran this as part of their obituary on April 2:<\/p>\n

\"<\/p>\n

…Academia offered no shelter. He excelled from high school onwards, eventually earning a doctorate at Harvard and becoming, in 1956, the first black head of an all-white history department at a mostly white university, Brooklyn College. Later, the University of Chicago recruited him. But in Montgomery, Louisiana, the archivist called him a \u201cHarvard nigger\u201d to his face. In the state archives in Raleigh, North Carolina, he was confined to a tiny separate room and allowed free run of the stacks because the white assistants would not serve him. At Duke in 1943, a university to which he returned 40 years later as a teaching professor, he could not use the library cafeteria or the washrooms.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Whites, he noted, had no qualms about \u201cundervaluing an entire race\u201d. Blacks were excluded both from their histories, and from their understanding of how America had been made. Mr Franklin\u2019s intention was to weave the black experience back into the national story. Unlike many after him, he did not see \u201cblack history\u201d as an independent discipline, and never taught a formal course in it. What he was doing was revising American history as a whole. His books, especially \u201cFrom Slavery to Freedom\u201d (1947), offered Americans their first complete view of themselves…<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

http:\/\/www.economist.com\/obituary\/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13403067<\/a><\/p>\n

Now read this excerpt from the NPR interview, which I transcribed, and see if you get what I did from it:<\/p>\n

Terry Gross<\/strong>: \u00a0In some of your essays in your new book, you talk about some of the obstacles that you faced as a Black scholar, and you wrote that you faced discrimination that goes beyond any discrimination you faced in the field itself. \u00a0For example, when you were chairman of history at Brooklyn College [New York City, in 1956], one of the problems you had was finding an apartment you wanted to live in, because a lot of neighborhoods refused to sell to you. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

JHF<\/strong>: \u00a0That’s right. \u00a0I spent more than a year trying to find a place I wanted to purchase. \u00a0 My appointment was so spectacular that news of it with my picture was on the front page of the New York Times. \u00a0But when I set out to find a house near my college — I hoped to be able to walk to work — almost none of the real estate dealers in the area would show me any of the houses that they were widely advertising. \u00a0And when I finally found one being sold by the owner, I then had the problem of trying to find the money so I could purchase the house. \u00a0And that was another round of excruciating experiences. \u00a0I finally found it, but I could have spent this time so much better.<\/em><\/p>\n

TG<\/strong>: \u00a0Let me ask you kind of a stupid question. \u00a0Did you ever take that New York Times article around to the real estate agents and say to them, “Look, don’t you know who I am?”<\/em><\/p>\n

JHF<\/strong>: \u00a0No, I don’t believe in that. \u00a0I’m a human being, and that ought to be enough. \u00a0I’m well-mannered, I think I’m well-dressed, and I think that my conduct is above reproach. \u00a0I think that that should commend me. \u00a0And if it doesn’t, well, then I think they’re not interested in hearing anything about who I am. \u00a0I have no doubt that many of these people knew who I was. \u00a0And yet, I was still rejected.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

COMMENT<\/strong>: \u00a0These sorts of things are mostly seen nowadays as unpleasant historical anachronisms, approached \u00a0and reflected upon with the attitude of “How could people do this sort of thing? \u00a0What were we thinking back then?” \u00a0And rightly so.<\/p>\n

However, just try to rent as a foreigner in Japan, and get credit as a foreigner in Japan. \u00a0Bonne chance. \u00a0You simply are not going to resolve these situations until you make what happened to JHF illegal.<\/p>\n

Arudou Debito in Sapporo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sunday Tangent: An interview with the late John Hope Franklin, historian of the Negro experience in North America. I excerpt a section where he’s trying to buy a house in Brooklyn. Should ring some bells with any NJ trying to rent a place and\/or get credit in Japan. One more historical template for why we need a law against racial discrimination here too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,19,34,20,5,26,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anti-discrimination-templates","category-education","category-exclusionism","category-history","category-human-rights","category-ironies-hypocrisies","category-tangents"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2966\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}