Returning to his car after casually window-shopping in Beverly Hills, Robert C. Smith, a 23-year-old graduate student at UCLA, and his wife were stopped by police, who began illegally searching their car for drugs. Coming up empty-handed, the police ran a check on Smith and then arrested him for murder.
"My wife panicked because she had only been married to me for a little while and she didn't know if it was true or not," Smith said.
After spending nine hours in jail, the police realized they had the wrong Robert Smith and then released him -- without an apology.
"Clearly their notion was that any black person wandering around Beverly Hills was probably a criminal," Smith said.
Smith, now 48 and a professor of political science at SF State, said he promised himself that he would analyze what has happened to racism over the past two decades -- and he did.
In his new book released in July -- "Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era: Now You See It, Now You Don't," -- Smith documents the extent of racism following passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination in voting, employment and the differential treatment of people on the basis of race or ethnicity.
Smith said the hardest thing about writing this book was that the evidence of racism is never clear.
"Virtually all the cases I looked at, housing, health and employment, when you see these stark disparities and then you go and talk to the people they say no, it looks like racism, but it's not," Smith said. "Which is why I came up with now you see it now you don't, because even when the government seems very, very clear there is still a demur by persons in law that say it's not racism."
Smith, who spent 10 years researching and writing the book, said he monitored the press and examined a variety of data including surveys, court cases, academic literature, statistical reports and studies, as well as his own personal experiences.
"It is very difficult to get unambiguous data on racism, compared to what it would have been 25 years ago when people were racist quite openly," Smith said.
In the book, Smith gives the following examples as evidence of " institutional racism," which he said occurs when the institutionalists of society -- medical, educational, judicial and political -- operate in such a way to discriminate against black people.
"I never would have thought that would occur when purchasing a car," said Smith in response to his research.
Another topic that Smith writes about is the ideology of white supremacy, which he said is a regime to justify the enslavement of blacks from the beginning of time. He said that for a variety of reasons -- historical, cultural and psychological -- white Americans have this sense of profound group superiority.
"Subconsciously, three quarters of all the American population thinks that as a generality that white people are superior to black people," Smith said. "This ideology even goes back to the Bible and in Jewish writing on this, and goes back to the notion that blacks were savages in jungles."
Mordechai Pelta, 23, a history and political science major who took Smith's class, "Racial Politics and American Democracy," said he did not agree with the usage of Jewish folklore from his religion.
"Even though it (the book) sensitized me to what a lot of black people go through, it doesn't offer a valid view of Judaism," said Pelta, who read the book as a requirement. "The Jewish people are not responsible for racism. This book takes the suffering that African Americans have gone through and makes it a joke by blaming it on the Jews."
Another student of Smith's disagrees.
"I liked the book because it gives a lot of insight about racism and white supremacy," said Sekou Franklin, 23, a graduate student at SF State. "He gives evidence of racism throughout his book and shows that it is evident. I identified with the whole book."
Smith said he does not know if racism is on the rise, but said there is less racism in 1995 than in 1965. He also said the ideology of white supremacy is climbing.
Smith believes that black leadership has failed and that black America should mobilize to help bring about social change -- which is the subject of his next book, "We Have No Leaders," due out next year.
"The question is, 'what way can blacks lessen the effects of racism?'" said Smith. "Blacks have to be conscious of their existence, and there is nothing they can do about racism but develop defenses. Racism is always going to be there."
Robert C. Smith has written six books, including "Race, Class, and Culture: A Study in Afro-American Mass Opinion," which he co-authored with Richard Seltzer.
[ Golden Gater Online October 3, 1995 ]
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