White "blacklash," the reaction by Northern whites against the demands of American Negroes, does not really exist in America, Thomas F. Pettigrew, associate professor of Social Relations, said yesterday.
The term, Pettigrew said, is the product of false interpretation by journalists of certain election results and public opinion polls. He said the confusion is caused by the failure of newsmen to use adequate control situations in interpreting the data. As a result, unwarranted importance is ascribed to such events as the political showing of Alabama Governor George Wallace in Northern primaries this year or the Boston school committee elections of November, 1963.
"Rocks" Phenomenon
What really happened in these and other situations, Pettigrew maintained, can better be described as an "our-from-under-the-rocks" phenomenon. Anti-Negro candidates for political office in the North often succeed, at least for a time, is attracting to the polls many otherwise "apathetic, alienated, authoritarian, or uninformed" citizens who ordinarily do not vote. This phenomenon is a polarization of existing attitudes, rather than a sudden change as is implied by the term "backlash."
In the Democratic primaries in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Maryland, Pettigrew points out, the news media emphasized the percentage of the Wallace vote without studying the size of the total vote. Actually, the votes in the primaries were considerably larger than is normal in Democratic primaries in those states. The "blacklash" then, was apparently caused by people voting who do not normally go to the polls. To call this vote a major shifting of opinion, Pettigrew said, is a "blatant fallacy."
At the same time that Wallace was running in the primaries, polls conducted by Lou Harris showed a growing majority in favor of the Civil Rights Act then under consideration. While an estimated 63 per cent of Americans favored the bill in November, 1963, 65 per cent favored it in February and 70 per cent were for it by May, Pettigrew said.
The Boston school committee elections of 1961 and 1963 provide a still better example since the first election serves as a control for the second. An anti-Negro candidate, Mrs. Louise Day Hicks, won both elections, the second time by a much larger percentage than the first while a Negro candidate; Melvin King, lost both of the contests. This vote was widely called a white "backlash," though the "rocks" phenomenon was probably working.
The number of voters in 1963 was about double that of two years before and the new voted probably accounted for the percentage difference. King, the Negro candidate, run as well or better in total votes in the second election
