Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the second edition
- Preface to the first edition
- 1 Introduction to the second edition
- 2 Prejudiced people are not the only racists in America
- 3 From theory to research and back again – a methodological discussion
- 4 “I favor anything that doesn't affect me personally.”
- 5 “The trouble is all this suspicion between us.”
- 6 “If I could do it, why can't they do it?”
- 7 “Convincing people that this is a racist country is like selling soap – if agitators say it enough times people will believe it.”
- 8 “There wouldn't be any problems if people's heads were in the right place.”
- 9 Toward a sociology of white racism
- Epilogue: From Bensonhurst to Berkeley
- Appendix: Interview guide
- References
- Index
8 - “There wouldn't be any problems if people's heads were in the right place.”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the second edition
- Preface to the first edition
- 1 Introduction to the second edition
- 2 Prejudiced people are not the only racists in America
- 3 From theory to research and back again – a methodological discussion
- 4 “I favor anything that doesn't affect me personally.”
- 5 “The trouble is all this suspicion between us.”
- 6 “If I could do it, why can't they do it?”
- 7 “Convincing people that this is a racist country is like selling soap – if agitators say it enough times people will believe it.”
- 8 “There wouldn't be any problems if people's heads were in the right place.”
- 9 Toward a sociology of white racism
- Epilogue: From Bensonhurst to Berkeley
- Appendix: Interview guide
- References
- Index
Summary
PROLOGUE
Finding “hip” young residents of San Francisco's Haight- Ashbury district, who are willing to speak with sociologists, is not an easy task. The community is quite suspicious of and hostile toward university-based social scientists. In the eyes of these young people, sociologists are not only members of the “straight” community – they are “spies” for it as well.
Lincoln Bergman, who conducted a series of interviews in the Haight, was able to partially break through this barrier. He was able to do this through the good offices of his sister and brother, who lived in the community. All three were raised in the district; Lincoln's brother and sister still lived there. Lincoln has a number of qualities that evoke confidence in him. He is a quiet, thoughtful person and a good listener. He is someone who apparently evokes the confidence of the people he interviews.
Lincoln had other qualities as well. He was raised in San Francisco and was quite familiar with the city – its politics, diversity, and temperament. He had been a civil rights activist in San Francisco during the early 1960s and had a feeling for the difficulties hip young people were experiencing in the closing moments of the decade. But Lincoln did not participate in the various struggles that gripped the Haight. He was now a graduate student in the school of journalism at the University of California at Berkeley, across the Bay.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Portraits of White Racism , pp. 188 - 205Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1993