Attitudes Toward Negro Changing, Reporter States

Ten years ago Southern Negroes were afraid to talk to Northern reporters, but now it is the Southern white who is hostile to the "white Yankee" correspondent Dan Wakefield, a free lance writer, told the Dunster House Forum last night.

Wakefield, a Nieman Fellow, said that the period from 1955-60 brought "the end of innocence" on racial problems.

He said that self-deception on racial issues was characteristic of the North as well as of the South but that "the self-deception in the South is more flagrant because there is more contact between races."

There is always a tendency to "romanticize" the Negro, said Wakefield. He described the evolution of Jim-Crowism--"All Negroes are lazy, stupid, and have rhythm"--into "Crow Jimism"--"All Negroes are intelligent, industrious, artistic, and have rhythm."

Both images, he said, are "produces of wish-fulfillment" and he quoted James Baldwin's reaction to Negrophilia: "I'd like you to feel free not to have to marry my sister."

Wakefield said that Southern papers were now sending reporters northward to racially-troubled Northern cities, and reporting Northern problems as justification for their own situation.

Segregation in the North is much more "intricate and irrational," Wakefield said. Commenting on the proposed boycott of Christmas shopping, he said that it would be bad "if the integration movement were to become more segregated."

Wakefield said that his position as a reporter did not allow elaboration of the "deeper aspects" of the racial problem. The most important thing, he said, was "by personal experience to get out of the stereotype."