Fade the Butcher
04-05-2006, 01:49 PM
"The outlets for mass communication promulgated the ideology of democracy. In 1938 and 1939, the American media had begun to show greater sensitivity to racial minorities. Life magazine, created by Henry Luce and the Time interests, began publication in 1936 with references to African Americans as "darkies" or even "bad niggers" who manifested "barbaric" behavior. But in 1938 such bigotry largely disappeared, and emphasis instead was placed on black achievements, especially artistic ones. The Saturday Evening Post, long the home of racist short fiction, began about 1937 to tone down the illustrations that accompanied "darky" literature, and then in the early 1940s it abandoned racist fiction in favor of nonfiction pieces that empathized with the experience of American minority groups. Reader's Digest, the most widely read magazine in the United States, had regularly run "darky" stories in dialect, but after April 1943 such entries suddenly stopped.
Just as important, magazines that previously had little to say about race relations began running articles encouraging racial and ethnic tolerance. In 1942, Ladies' Home Journal for the first time gave an intimate profile of a black family. Look, Collier's, Life, Time, and Fortune featured stories that emphasized the democratic responsibility for fairness to blacks, Jews, and other minority groups. Glamour, Mademoiselle, Harper's Bazaar, and Seventeen all ran articles promoting racial tolerance. Margaret Mead told Mademoiselle's young readers that in the past people had upheld their status by discriminating against those of different color, religion, or nationality. "To believe that a man's character was somehow related to the color of his skin or the way his hair was laid on his head was not an evil belief as long as there was no knowledge to refute it," Mead wrote. "But these beliefs were tested and found false -- to still cherish them is to close one's eyes to the truth." In 1945, Look admonished its readers: "Nail the lies. Refute the moth-eaten labels, libels and wornout club-car jokes about members of minority groups . . . The Negro's achievement in the arts and science, in industry and on the fighting front, blast that myth that he 'can't do skilled work." . . .
By the end of the war, American public opinion about race had already shifted significantly. A 1946 poll found that on the question of intelligence, 53 percent of whites now said that blacks were as smart as whites, up from 42 percent in 1942. For the first time in American history, most whites professed to believe in blacks' equal potential. Clearly, many white Americans were thinking in new ways."
Robert J. Norrell, The House I Live In: Race in the American Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp.134-136
Just as important, magazines that previously had little to say about race relations began running articles encouraging racial and ethnic tolerance. In 1942, Ladies' Home Journal for the first time gave an intimate profile of a black family. Look, Collier's, Life, Time, and Fortune featured stories that emphasized the democratic responsibility for fairness to blacks, Jews, and other minority groups. Glamour, Mademoiselle, Harper's Bazaar, and Seventeen all ran articles promoting racial tolerance. Margaret Mead told Mademoiselle's young readers that in the past people had upheld their status by discriminating against those of different color, religion, or nationality. "To believe that a man's character was somehow related to the color of his skin or the way his hair was laid on his head was not an evil belief as long as there was no knowledge to refute it," Mead wrote. "But these beliefs were tested and found false -- to still cherish them is to close one's eyes to the truth." In 1945, Look admonished its readers: "Nail the lies. Refute the moth-eaten labels, libels and wornout club-car jokes about members of minority groups . . . The Negro's achievement in the arts and science, in industry and on the fighting front, blast that myth that he 'can't do skilled work." . . .
By the end of the war, American public opinion about race had already shifted significantly. A 1946 poll found that on the question of intelligence, 53 percent of whites now said that blacks were as smart as whites, up from 42 percent in 1942. For the first time in American history, most whites professed to believe in blacks' equal potential. Clearly, many white Americans were thinking in new ways."
Robert J. Norrell, The House I Live In: Race in the American Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp.134-136