Generation O: The Paradox of Post-racial America
Photo by Greg Barrett
The election of the first African-American president may have ushered in a new era of hope in the U.S.’ black communities. According to a New York Times poll conducted 100 days into Obama’s presidency, 70 percent of blacks thought the country was moving in the right direction compared to 12 years ago when only 30 percent believed that blacks and whites had an equal opportunity of getting ahead, according to another New York Times poll. Are these new feelings realistic? Despite Obama’s election and the widespread optimism, surveys conducted by Pew, Gallup, CNN, the New York Times and others all show that discrimination persists and colorblindness is still a ways off.
Ellis Cose wondered about the reasons behind black America’s newfound optimism. Cose, a veteran journalist with a special interest in race, wondered whether the dissatisfaction he chronicled 20 years ago in his book, “The Rage of a Privileged Class,” had in fact disappeared. In his new book, “The End of Anger: A New Generation’s Take on Race and Rage,” Cose argues that today’s blacks are no longer in a rage, that the anger has ended and been replaced by widespread optimism; changes that he attributes to a generation divide.
Frida Café, a cozy Mexican restaurant in Cose’s Upper West Side neighborhood, is a dimly lit place on Amsterdam Avenue, with a large bar and superb fish tacos. When I meet him, Cose is sitting on a bar stool in a fitted shirt, slacks and floppy hat. He seems at home here, and with good reason. The waiter jokes that he sees Cose weekly. Cose spoke only Spanish to the familiar staff. He is one of those people that you quickly and easily fall into comfortable conversation with, whether you’re critically discussing his work or which movies he’s seen recently. His calm demeanor and booming yet soothing voice seem able to coax any conversation along. It is this same affable voice that draws reader after reader into his books.
During the conversation, Cose asks me the year I was born. This is because believes that age is the most significant determinant of one’s attitudes towards race. He classifies people according to three categories based on the years they were born: there are Generation 1 Fighters (people born before 1944, who took on society and demanded that blacks be recognized as “full and complete human beings”), Generation 2 Dreamers (those born between 1945 and 1969, who were old enough to witness the Civil Rights Movement but too young to actively participate), and Generation 3 Believers like me: people of color born between 1970 and 1995, who came of age in an era when Jim Crow was “ancient history and explicit expressions of racism were universally condemned.”) We Believers recognize that racism and discrimination still exist, but don’t think we are significantly affected by them.
In “End of Anger,” Cose sums up a common theme that is present, with varying significance, throughout much of his work: the idea that discrimination is inevitable. “The numbers paint a picture that is stunningly clear: blacks, no matter how well-educated and well-positioned professionally, are overwhelmingly likely at some point, during random encounters on the streets and in shops, to be treated with gross disrespect, to be objects of contempt, fear, or both—and this is particularly true for black males,” he writes. In the book, Cose surveys two groups of accomplished African Americans: a group of Harvard MBA’s and a group of alumni from A Better Chance, a New-York based organization that provides young Americans—mostly minorities—the opportunity to some of the country’s most elite prep schools.
Through these surveys and subsequent interviews, Cose discovers how simultaneously limiting and liberating America still is. Time after time, respondents testify that race relations have vastly improved in recent years, but still have a long way to go. Believers in particular believe that obstacles still exist, but they are more than capable of overcoming them in pursuit of their dreams. But that isn’t without concessions. For example, Amara Baillie, a Harvard MBA, said that as long as someone is willing to assimilate and “talk like a white guy,” they will be successful. James Howard, a Dreamer, believes that Americans are preoccupied with race and colorblindness is impossible; however, he also said that people of color in the U.S. shouldn’t allow themselves to be defined by race. Varying testimonials like these are sprinkled throughout the book; but what they all have in common is the belief that America is moving in the right direction, that people of all races are dismissing the racist assumptions that have been held for generations in favor of a future that promises more equality for everyone.
Cose is a Generation 2 Dreamer. Growing up in the sixties in the Henry Horner Homes, a housing project on the west side of Chicago, Cose was painfully aware of race relations. “I lived in a neighborhood that, when I was a child, was in large measure destroyed by the riots. So in my formative years, issues of race, issues of equality were very much in the air,” he says.
It was those issues of race and equality that spawned his interest in writing. Cose remembers huddling on the floor with his family for fear of being hit by stray bullets during the riots of 1966, which erupted after Martin Luther King led a march through an all-white neighborhood. Two years later, even larger riots erupted around the country after King was assassinated. “I remember in ’68, as a kid, walking along the main thoroughfare, the main street, which is Madison Street, and seeing store after store that was burned out and, even a day or two after the riot had ended, you could still feel the heat emanating from the store,” he said.
Scenes like these fueled the 100-plus-page manuscript about the riots and their aftermath that Cose wrote when he was just in high school. After giving him an A in the course, Cose’s English teacher suggested he meet with a professional writer, someone who could better evaluate that kind of writing.
“She was drawing pictures and I noticed she had colored the faces of some of the people purple. I asked her, ‘Why is it that you have people with purple faces?” She looked at me as if I was asking this really silly question and said: ‘Well daddy, don’t you know people come in all colors?’”
That writer was Gwendolyn Brooks, then Poet Laureate for Illinois. Brooks, whose first work was published when she was a teenager, had won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and was later named the Library of Congress‘s Poet Laureate. “Gwendolyn Brooks basically told me: ‘You ought to be a writer,’” Cose said. “For a kid who didn’t know anybody important, and who hadn’t heard that, it had a huge impact. My whole future began to change. If it hadn’t been for the riots, and it hadn’t been for that teacher and hadn’t been for the kinds of things I read, I probably would have gone into a much more technical direction.” In fact, before Brooks’ advice, Cose planned to become a physicist, as math and the sciences were always his strongest subjects in school.
In 1970, while pursuing a degree in psychology at University of Illinois at Chicago, Cose was hired as an editorial columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, one of the newspapers he had poured over as a teenager to help him better understand the riots. During his career with the Chicago Sun-Times, Cose found himself in a fortunate, if daunting, position. He was now able to cover topics of interest to his community without the inherent bias of an outsider, but was also looked to as a spokesperson for Chicago’s black population. In addition to completing his bachelor’s degree, Cose also earned a master’s degree in science, technology, and public policy from George Washington University while working at the paper.
Then editor in chief of the Chicago Sun-Times, James Hoge recalls that Cose always had an air of “coolness” and maturity. “He was a natural commentator,” Hoge said. “Frankly I moved him along faster than most people. He didn’t pull his punches but kept his sense of balance. The range of his endeavors from [books] to very well-documented investigations of shortcomings in our society and our politics, I think, is really unusual.” After leaving the Chicago Sun-Times, Cose went on to work for a number of publications: Time, Newsweek, USA Today and the New York Daily News, where he was chairman of the editorial board and editorial page editor.
At the Daily News, Cose had some pretty big shoes to fill, according to Terry Teachout, who worked under Cose for about six months. “He was a top-notch editor, one who came to the editorial page under difficult circumstances — his predecessor, Michael Pakenham, had been extremely popular with the staff,” Teachout said. Surprisingly, what Teachout remembers most about Cose was his sense of style, the “coolness” to which Hoge eluded. “He wore the best ties I’ve ever seen on a journalist,” Teachout said. “I actually bought a couple of ties during the time that I knew him solely because they looked like the sort of thing he might wear!”
What’s next in the realm of race relations is perhaps of even more interest to Cose these days, as he is raising a biracial, 8-year-old daughter, Elisa — Cose’s wife, Special Assistant District Attorney for Community Affairs Lee Llambelis, is Puerto Rican. Unlike some other, more optimistic voices in his book, Cose doesn’t believe that race will be a non-issue for his daughter’s generation, although her world will be “one in which blatant discrimination is simply not accepted.”
In navigating the topic of race with a small child, Cose has come to see just how silly our preconceptions of race really are. The notion of equality that is viewed as tremendous optimism in Gen 3 believers could very well be the norm for Elisa’s generation. “She was drawing pictures and I noticed she had colored the faces of some of the people purple. I asked her, ‘Why is it that you have people with purple faces?” She looked at me as if I was asking this really silly question and said: ‘Well daddy, don’t you know people come in all colors?’”
