New Dimension
Hart, Senator Philip A.
New Dimension The Other Side of Jordan, by Harry Ashmore. Norton. 155 pp. 13.50. Discrimination—U.S.A., by Senator Jacob Javits. Harcourt, Brace. 310 pp. $4.95. Reviewed by Senator Philip A....
...his reviews and articles have appeared in Commentary, The Progressive, and other publications...
...Such contradictions and confusions are many...
...Harry Ashmore set himself a more narrow limitation...
...In 1920, for example, half of our population lived in rural areas...
...Not only did this Act introduce the "national origins quota" concept, it practically dried up the sources of this country's external labor supply so essential to our national growth...
...Thus, not only have many historic ethnic groupings within our population not been replenished, but industrial and commercial growth has sought new sources of labor nearer at hand—from Puerto Rico and from Mexico, for example...
...It is quite another for a Southern white man on a tour not too different from what used to be called "slumming" to try...
...I make no claim to scientific method...
...I think readers will agree that Ashmore has succeeded in making his efforts a demonstration of integrity, not daring...
...Begun by the Northern industrial "pull" of war production around 1915, encouraged by the "push" of crop failures, pestilence, and the general inefficiency of Southern agriculture, continued by the "pull" again of Northern and Western World War II production, this migration reached its crescendo in the decade of the Forties...
...They are worth comparing not so much for their differences as for their similarities of concept...
...Because he is more interested in understanding than in argument, his efforts make sense...
...Charles Johnson formulated the origins of this movement in terms of what he called "push-pull" influences...
...Both The Other Side of Jordan by Harry Ashmore and Discrimination—U.S.A...
...Today, there are fewer than twenty million persons living on farms—less than a third of our population live in rural areas...
...Harry Ashmore, taking advantage of his journalist's license, has included several chapters that make his book worth reading for them alone—"The Edge of Bitterness," "The New Islam," "The Changing Guard," and "The Uncertain Future...
...But they can stand the test of discussion because their perspective is not paternalistic nor condescending...
...Reviewed by Senator Philip A. Hart In the half-century since World War I, race relations in the United States have been transformed from a regional to a national problem...
...He writes of his material: "It is, unabashedly, jcurnalism...
...Northerners delude themselves that racial and religious discrimination is confined to the "backward" South while at the same time aiding and abetting the growth of restrictive racial covenants in property deeds—a phenomenon practically unknown in the South...
...MELVIN J. FRIEDMAN teaches modern literature at the University of Wisconsin...
...Senator Javits' chapter on changes that have occurred in recent years in the District of Columbia is especially valuable, not only because so much distortion has surrounded these events but because the progress they represent is still little appreciated in the nation at large...
...For this, along with the chapter on the international implications of domestic discrimination practices, Senator Javits is to be commended...
...Senator Javits, who acknowledges in his book the assistance rendered him by some of the country's leading authorities on inter-group relations, documents objectively the history, scope, current status, and the direction which each of these problems of discrimination is taking...
...Both Ashmore and Javits fully understand the nature and the impact of the changes that have occurred in the years spanned by their own lives...
...Southerners resent the concern of anyone in the North with denials of voting rights in the South on the ground that Northerners do not understand the Southern "population" problem...
...These are rare occurrences in both journalism and politics where too many of us seem willing to respond to the deceptive slogan, "You've got to give the people what they want...
...While united in their perspective on the contemporary setting, these books are as different from each other as the backgrounds of their authors...
...His estimation of the essence and configuration of these problems is a tribute not only to his skill as a journalist, but to his wisdom in sorting out what he has seen and heard...
...One is blessed with the style, insight, and humanity of a Southern journalist who turns his wisdom and his trained observer's eye on New York City...
...Both authors have included excellent chapters on problems related to discrimination in employment, housing, schools, law, and politics...
...You will find no glossing over and no finger pointing in these books...
...I am confident that the Sixties will be a decade of continuing progress, and these two books are steps in that direction...
...As one far less conversant with these problems than these two authors, I do share one thing with both of them—optimism...
...While many older ethnic groups may not have completely lost their identity, they have at least been joined, if not displaced, in the city's slums by more recent newcomers...
...It is one thing for a James Baldwin to delve THE REVIEWERS PHILIP A. HART is a Democratic Senator from Michigan...
...Our city population today is greater than was our national total in 1930...
...No other fact on the American scene is surrounded with more importance or less understanding...
...We have become a nation of "big cities" with about sixty per cent of our population living in 168 standard metropolitan areas...
...into the processes of mind and motive, to make evaluations of the leadership and the social values which make up the internal structure of what is called the Negro community...
...The late Dr...
...Readers will not find two more complementary books nor two books that have a greater concern for the truth or for social understanding...
...That is not to say that I anticipate agreement with all of his observations...
...by Senator Jacob Javits are especially pertinent to our understanding of the new national dimension of these problems...
...The other is an erudite, clear, and forceful analysis of racial and religious discrimination by a New York politician who happens also to be one of the Senate's most able lawyer-statesmen...
...SUSAN BRADY is on the editorial staff of a national magazine...
...NATHAN CLICK works in Washington, D.C., as an editor and writer...
...His chapter on social discrimination is similarly valuable because we have seemingly not yet realized the need for action on this front, at least to the same degree that has developed on the issue of fair employment and housing opportunities...
...During those ten years alone, the Census Bureau reported the movement of nearly two and a half million Negroes from the South to the North and West...
...Our Northeastern and Southwestern coasts have witnessed the entry of nearly three million Spanish-speaking newcomers since World War II...
...For better or for worse, therefore, this trilogy of influences affecting the distribution and characteristics of our population has combined to create a new national condition within which we must resolve problems arising from our racial, religious, and ethnic differences...
...Today there are almost as many Negroes living in the ten largest Northern industrial states as there are in the eleven states of the dead Confederacy...
...I simply went and looked and listened in the places Negroes of all conditions live in our biggest city, and talked before and after these visitations with some of those, white and colored, in New York and elsewhere, who have had long experience with the urban problem...
...To round out the dimensions of our new national setting, perhaps a third major influence should be added—the Immigration Act of 1924...
...A concomitant of both this movement and the earlier influx of foreign born workers for the mills of our growing industry was the increasing urbanization of our population...
...The present character of race and intergroup problems began to take shape with the mass migration of Negro families from the Old South to the industrial North and West shortly after the turn of the century...
...RALPH K. HUITT, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, has served on the Senatorial staffs of Lyndon Johnson and William Proxmire...
...Two recently published books on race relations and intergroup problems are healthy antidotes to this thinking...
Vol. 25 • May 1961 • No. 5
