Bigotry was not just a Southern problem. A national survey in the 1940s asked whether “Ne-groes should have as good a chance as white people to get any kind of job.” A majority of whites said that “white people should have the first chance at any kind of job.”
19. Such a question would not even be asked today. Except for a lunatic fringe18, no whites would sign on to such a notion.19
20. In 1964 less than one in five whites reported having a black friend. By 1989 more than two out of three did. And more than eight often African -Americans had a white friend.
21. What about the last taboo?20 In 1963 ten percent of whites approved of black-white dating; by 1994 it was 65 percent. Interracial marriages? Four percent of whites said it was okay in 1958; by 1994 the figure had climbed more than elevenfold, to 45 percent. These surveys measure opinion, but behavior has also changed. In 1963 less than one percent of marriages by African- Americans were racially mixed. By 1993, 12 percent were.
22. Today black Americans can climb the ladder to the top.21 Ann M. Fudge is already there; she s in charge of manufacturing, promotion and sales at the $2.7-billion Maxwell House Coffee and Post Cereals divisions of Kraft Foods.22 So are Kenneth Chenault, president and chief operating officer at American Express23 and Richard D. Parsons, president of Time Warner, Inc.24 After the 1988 Demo-cratic Convention25, the Rev. Jesse Jackson26 talked about his chances of making it to the White House. “I may not get there,” he said “But it is possible for our children to get there now.”
23. Even that seems too pessimistic. Consider how things have improved since Colin and Alma Powell27 packed their belongings into a Volkswagen28 and left Fort Devens, Mass., for Fort Bragg, N. C. “I remember passing Woodbridgc, Va.,” General Powell wrote in his autobiography, “and not finding even a gas-station bathroom that we were allowed to use.” That was in 1962. In 1996 reliable polls suggest he could have been elected President.
24. Progress over the last half-century has been dramatic. As Corctta Scott King wrote not long ago, the ideals for which her husband Martin Luther King Jr. died, have become “deeply embedded in the very fabric of America29.”
From Reader s Digest, March, 1998
V. Analysis of Content
1. According to the author, ___________
A. racism has disappeared in America
B. little progress has been made in race relations
