Programs, Correspondence, 1968, January-July (1968)

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2 must attempt to get back to some very rudimentary steps. The most essential need, as I see it, is simple, direct contact between Negroes and whites. All Americans tend to stereotype others out of ignorance and instinct. There's a pervasive pattern now in which many Negroes generalize excessively about the attitudes and callousness of white Americans. Perhaps more intensely, there is an excessive tendency by white Americans to regard the Negro as a figure of either listless subservience or one of criminal vio¬ lence. Fear permeates black-white relationships today. Iam convinced that most white Americans in the North, in particular, do not have the remotest grasp of the problems, attitudes, frus¬ trations and aspiration of American Negroes. I suggest simply that when a black man and a white man, or a Negro women and a white woman, or a Negro family and a white family spend any time at all together they Learn, and the fear is at least a bit diminished. I am reasonably convinced that more Americans have traveled great distances to make contact with and learn about individuals in opposite regions of the country or overseas than to make con¬ tact with or learn about individuals "on the other side of town. " I suspect that more Americans have read Fielding's Guide to Europe than Baldwin's guide to the American ghetto. What I sug¬ gest here is that educational television stations should seek as much as possible to give attention to the more normal life and attitudes of ghetto dwellers and Negro citizens. I think it would be immensely valuable if educational television stations sponsored, editorialized for, or in any other way encouraged simple, direct contact between black and white, rich and poor. This can be done dozens of different ways and through dozens of different channels: churches, clubs, organizations, etc. This may all sound vague, but the suggestion is instrinsically simple. What I'm talking about here is a simple need for Negroes and whites to sit down once in awhile in informal situations and settings to talk, to eat together, to work together, to be together. The best application of such a general suggestion must, of course, in specifics, be developed locally. 3. The educational television stations can give some balance and perspective on race relations in America and