UF Race Relations Expert Says Racism Is At Its Worst In 30 Years

March 30, 1998

GAINESVILLE — Three decades after the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., racism remains firmly entrenched in American society, and popular culture and the news media are at least partly to blame, a University of Florida racial relations expert says.

“If you’re black, turning on the television is often not a pleasant experience,” said sociology Professor Joe R. Feagin, who has researched racism for more than 30 years and written two dozen books about its effects.

“Turn on the news and most of the crack dealers and criminals are black, and you know that 70 percent of all the cocaine dealers in this country are white,” he said. “They’re college kids, doctors and lawyers at parties in the suburbs, but the cops don’t dare go in there and bust them very often.”

Saturday marks the 30th anniversary of the day King was gunned down at a Memphis motel. As much as King did to further blacks’ rights, Feagin said, the progress he made all but stopped with his death. He said racism in America is a “severe social cancer” ignored by most whites who down play its realities.

Many of the problems also stem from housing and employment discrimination, where millions of blacks are continually denied working and living opportunities, he said. Many white landlords and real estate agents, meanwhile, are aware of the lack of civil rights enforcement, furthering their ability to discriminate against blacks.

Much of King’s later work was directed toward improving the economic conditions for blacks and throughout the poor community. Involved in the union movement in support of better paying jobs, King was killed while helping black and white garbage workers strike for better working conditions.

“Having the right to live in a decent and integrated neighborhood when you couldn’t afford a house was a meaningless right,” Feagin said. “Dr. King was increasingly moving in the direction that society needs a dramatic economic reform to guarantee everyone who wants to work a job, access to housing and other basic necessities.”

He said King and civil rights leader Malcolm X were moving in the same direction in the late 1960s. Known for his more militant views, Malcolm X originally supported the idea that blacks could not deal with whites because of their racist actions. In his later years, Feagin said, Malcolm X changed to a multiracial strategy behind the idea that all races had to work together to end racism.

“Malcolm X was certainly moving in a direction of greater respect for King’s nonviolent movement,” Feagin said. “I am firmly convinced that if both of them had lived, they would have developed a new integrated civil rights movement that would have brought major changes to the society and maybe saved it from the hell that it’s likely going into over the next few decades.”

By the middle of the next century, he said, the United States will have undergone a major social change as blacks, Asians and Latinos will be the majority of the population.

Until then, he said he hopes white people “wise up” and begin change by enforcing the civil rights laws before both sides collide more dramatically in the future.

“The answers are relatively easy,” Feagin said. “But the political leadership in this country, which is mostly white, doesn’t have the guts. You need law and order; enforce the civil rights laws.”