#10: Let's Redefine Tolerance

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Gateway to ideas.
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Gateway to ideals. A new series of conversations in which ideas are discussed in
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relation to reading. Today's program. Let's redefine tolerance
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is moderated by Anne Fremantle noted author and critic.
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Our subject today is let's redefine tolerance. And our guests
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are Mrs. neber until recently a professor of religion at Barnard. And they're
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on a book Daniel Patrick Moynihan was an assistant secretary of labor in Washington
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and the co-author was nascent Glazer of beyond the melting pot which was
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widely circulated in magazine form and much read before being
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published as a book it received the arras field Wolf award
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in race relations and has just appeared in paperback. This is
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Niebuhr and the Honorable Daniel Patrick Moynihan are going to discuss. Let's redefine
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tolerance. And I'm going to begin by asking Mrs. Niebuhr if tolerance isn't rather
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nasty thing ever sort of for Marjorie in kind of stuff and smears on
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over one's worst feelings. Do you think the tone of the
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tones is rather an insult to the equality of man as a
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concept.
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Well I think I would be a school straight away and say Are you talking about the word
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or are you talking about the attitude. Because you might say we're all for the
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attitude perhaps particular if we make it the power
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and more positive but perhaps we a little part of the word you know.
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Well that's the idea of this discussion that we must redefine tolerance tolerance perhaps is
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as you just said about patriotism is not enough for the situation today.
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Well if you say it's like I don't know quite about the margarine
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business but shall we say those nasty gooey dressings people used to smear out all over
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decent food fruits and vegetables. But we
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don't like something fish and rob a negative.
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I would like to push our study of the
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attitude in two directions both in terms of the individual's
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attitudes what makes a person free of
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prejudice let's put it in that way or what helps a person to
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grow up learning to shared some of his prejudices because I
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think probably the human individual grows up with what after almost a Freud talked about
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in the news. He's got to extend his
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feelings about his family to people who don't look like him. The
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deviance from the norm of his own kind of person.
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And then we got on the other hand to ask more questions about it in the social situation the social
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political situation.
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That's how I met him comes in I think.
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Mr. Martin would you agree with Mrs. Niebuhr that it's really basically
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a question of not of semantics but of
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going way deep down into the psychological makeup that's rather what your book on the
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melting pot is about isn't it.
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Well no.
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Our book is about is another fact and directly related one
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which is that the there has emerged
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in the United States as there has emerged in the world a situation in which
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no one ethnic or religious or cultural group is
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dominant at a certain.
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It's not a stable situation but a continuing one in which there are
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in fact many different groups competing coexisting
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at any event and happening in acting and at the same time in
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the same social situation. Now the point about tolerance it seems to me as we
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have tended to use it in America and I think as we have received it
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from from England as in the accident toleration is
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it presumes a certain specific social situation that of a
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dominant culture with a dominant ethnic
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religious nationalist group in control of
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most of the main institutions economic religious
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political institutions and into that situation is introduced to a
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minority group a group.
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Either either arrives on the scene as for instance of Polish Jews arriving in
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America or it or it was always there as for instance the English Catholics
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and or or the or the Scots or the Welsh or what you will.
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Now these groups assert their rights too to exist
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and act in some ways differently from the majority they say well you the this is the
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Protestant kingdom but we're Catholics or this is a Protestant nation
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or a Christian nation we're Jews.
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Now you have to let us be and let us have our institutions to the
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degree that they are central to this. And the initial reaction
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through history to majority groups faced with that proposition is to put the people who
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asked such favors in jail and burn them or lock them up or throw them out.
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And over the years this turned out to be a difficult thing to do. It causes trouble
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and it's unpleasant and it's an ethical and over a period of time the
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proposition Rosewell that you this is not this is no way to treat people you must
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you must learn to tolerate their differences. Well at this this
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point I think tolerance has a superior inferior relationship.
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There is implicit The notion of a superior group.
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There is in any event explicit. The fact of superior power.
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I think we moved into an age certainly in the United States and
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in the world clearly where this fact of superior power no longer can
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be asserted and perhaps because of that and perhaps because
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of very different things are the proposition of superior
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value superior worth is no longer very easily defensible
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either in any event.
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It it it becomes difficult for a person looking at the whole
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situation to have much confidence and a factor in the assertions of certain
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superiority which are same simultaneously made by a dozen different groups all referring to
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the same universe.
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That is rather also the point made by we'll have a Protestant Catholic do you remember
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this book. But this is new but you had something to say about your
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experience with the quest for identity among young people of various
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ethnic and religious.
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Well I think it has an individual and a social relevance the concept of identity that's
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why James Baldwin in using the concept I
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think has both presented a very good case and one that's had great
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appeal to many particular perhaps among the young who are finding their
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own identity. I'd like to go back a little bit historically though when you think
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of the history of this country and the first column is and
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Roger Williams and Madeline Lund and you see how this has to be worked out
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almost afresh in every situation. It doesn't carry over
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that even with the historical example of William Penn.
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It was in the expensive suburbs of Philadelphia the mist to go water could speak about
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the ethnic groups the push to Surat and I
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gather from someone who worked in Philadelphia but there was more
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prejudice in the expensive saga about ethnic
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groups or which had expensive meeting houses in the wonderful
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Quaker tradition than you might have got in the free for all of an in big
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industrial town perhaps even in the middle of Philadelphia I don't know enough about it. And I would like to
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ask you as an expert Mr. Marnham whether the free market.
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Competitive interests isn't of sometimes a very good sort of good for the charity of God
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because in the marketplace of ideas and forces some
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precious politically you have to not
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only accept but welcome the contributions of different groups and you've
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got to count them you've got to have a balanced ticket you've got to remember this
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group will want this and if you perhaps go to meet them you'll
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find them on your saw it in an issue.
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Exactly. This is a program about books and
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and and you raise a subject in which books have had some very considerable influence and in
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fact you can you can trace the history of this home to something very much in
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books. The initial our idea which we are sort of
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emerging from I think in this nation was that we would be.
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The term melting pot very popular that somehow or
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other people coming into this nation from all diverse origin are there
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would somehow or other melt down into a sort of uniform product now
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we mistakenly think this notion that emerged in the late
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19th century when the eastern and southern European migrations
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came actually it's an 18th century notion that the people who lived on the American
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continent in 18th century were as much conscious of their difference as one
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from the other as as were the people in New York and 1890s. Those differences
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tend to be kinds which we don't think of as vastly significant today but at
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that moment to be a Quaker in Philadelphia and to be a Presbyterian
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in New York and a Congregationalist in Newhaven looked like a very vast gulf
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Indeed and how indeed would any such nor mostly distinct peoples ever learn to live
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together.
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Well the idea that somehow or other it would melt
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down into some uniform product emerged. The first book to talk
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about this was to quote cool letters of an
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American farmer and it was very interesting that he proposed it would happen
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because gradually religion would fade away and that
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no Americans were not going to be religious people and when they seek to be.
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Quaker or Presbyterian or congregational St. they would cease to have any difficulty
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with one another.
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The Emerson spoke of comes and then came in the
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early turn of the 20th century Mr. Israel Zangwill who wrote
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his play The melting pot in which he he described
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the mixtures of Christian and Jew and
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Russian and German and so forth in Staten Island as it happened
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and it was very interesting this idea was seized on Teddy Roosevelt but it was the most wonderful
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thing in the world. I was going to solve the problems. It was a curious fact is that it was of
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course English. His parents were Polish Jews who had emigrated to
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England and only a very few years after resigning will propose this new world in
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which in which the problem that was going to be solved interesting the problem was solved and his play
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was a problem how do Russian Jews get along with questions that really had much to do with
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Americans and all that was the daughter of the artistic rat whose father had been a
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Zaurus general who killed the father of the young Jewish intellectual they married. So that's
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how it stopped. Well very few years after saying well wrote his book he
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became a Zionist and. He repudiated the proposition that all men
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could ever melt down inside. And he repudiated St. Paul on that that there shall be neither
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Jew nor Gentile. He said On the contrary this will out it's in our blood.
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Well not going to one but to say that this idea that was so important
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to the melting pot so important from Theodore Roosevelt was an idea that assured
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him that in the end most people would look like him. You know in the.
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Sense it was obvious that people who didn't look like him weren't getting much done in this country. And he
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was well this was a reassuring proposition.
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But what has changed in the competition you describe
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what has happened over the past 30 years is something rather profound that is in the
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forest experience of the Depression and then the war.
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The American intel intellectual community
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changed ethnically.
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The books began to be written in the 1930s in the 1940s and 1950s.
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Suddenly ceased to be books which with any sense could be read had a dominant
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old American Protestant tradition and in fact the men who emerged to
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be as the new writers of our time in quite
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disproportionate numbers turned out to be Jews
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Catholics negroes.
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Yes in about that order.
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And they were not only are they not. That was not only their identity but
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it was I was an identity is central to their work you can read Saul Bellow's
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book her dog friends we had we all been there like Norman Mailer. Or
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James Baldwin clearly without saying that this identity is fundamental to them.
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It's what makes them go round and look at themselves look at the world look at it through that
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internet identity and and having asserted this. You have a new
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cultural situation. There is no longer a dominant grow an inferior one.
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There are a number of water lilies competing perhaps and certainly coexisting
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menu but would you say the groups that
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you know and we all know who are writing like these a very strong
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Jewish and and a Catholic I think Catholics started with the
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last hurrah didn't they.
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Well Flannery O'Connor they've got it gone a long way from the last hurrah of its kind I think and
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some of the younger writers. But anyway do you think that these books really make a
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difference for instance Mr. Moynihan and Mr. Glazer's book is I believe used in the University
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of California Los Angeles in the substance of copies and I was
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wondering if these this new awareness of not tolerance but commitment
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to anti prejudice which is happening today in
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these big Western universities is almost an arrested do you think it comes partly from
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reading from from being aware of.
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These books at the top which was theirs in the books are part of
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the cultural thing and the people who read. I think
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everybody. Is aware I've forgotten the title of that new book
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about the wasps written by a wasp. The first thought was that the
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Starbucks Yass told elf for the day off every event is suitably
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again. But those of us who live in a place
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like New York particularly and perhaps inhabit the so-called intellectual world I'm never
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quite sure where it is. All right well the
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wasps are in a minority. That the bright
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young men and maidens who are in Mons classes and getting the wonderful
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fellowships form the most interesting the electric sort of people
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not the same racial stock as you and me Mrs Freemantle aberrational
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stock is down some had poor whites.
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Let's face it long teeth you know along cheap but. But I
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think. The facial types incidental and advertising were changed. They're
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completely different if you look for instance in an English periodical and
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an American periodical facial in me the young man and the young maiden
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unless they're the sort of people who still subscribe to the theory that you sell men's clothes
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better if they've got a bony face structure.
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But on the her I think of women particularly the faces a model much more not
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in a melting pot face but a face that is not characteristically a ladies equivalent of a
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senator Saltonstall which is a perfect boss face I think
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and I think also this reading thing I think that you know when we were young Mrs. neighbor
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I don't know if you were very moved but one of my key things I read was vote
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thing on title and said Mom had made those who light candles in midday agree with
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those who were going yeah it was a night of your son and things like that and I mean voter I meant a
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tremendous amount. And so did people like Jeem
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or do or the people who were
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determined to to to deal with but our own backgrounds were very
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very.
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What should we say restricted.
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Yes but we were converted I think by the way to a better point of view by what we read
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about it in June and I wonder if that's what's happening today in the colleges if there's a good deal of
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of reading yourself into.
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Asay Nanda under better frame of mind I would like to ask a question about the whole
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psychological development of the person because today we live in a world not only where
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there are these problems and whether all the writers but we live in a post for idea as well as a post
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Marxist and Darwinian world.
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I think if we go backstage shall we say to even our generation of
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Oxford that we observe the proper I think
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sequence of development which is to react. Young
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man and young woman does react We hope I mean this is getting rid. Shall we say
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of the tendency toward cultural incest. And
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when we think of socks our Deep South the shame
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and the scandal of places there's a kind of cultural incest going on. And
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it comes out in the facial stalk That's why I'm not altogether being completely
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batty when I talk about the bad teeth and the cheekbones and the narrow
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chests of either the inbred English or the inbred white Southerners.
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Nature doesn't like this sort of thing. Inbreeding isn't a good
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idea. And culturally speaking it isn't a good idea. And you
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not I as people born in England can be by the probable fact that we've been a nation of mongrels
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that all language which is it is. And Nick I'm Barnett's new book
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if you like about in the English language is a beautiful in Mongol language so we can say all sorts of things.
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And in England some of the most lively English is American English because the
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American gift for expressive slang which comes from the West or the negro anywhere
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else is enriching English English.
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Don't you think also with this admirable thing I think Mr. wanting
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to make this point. People are getting more aware of their
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individual allegiances like the French
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Canadians for instance or the Yemenites and the joy of having It's
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an explosive process at the same time as a kind of
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withdrawal into a new kind of ethnic
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sort of data to your awareness.
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I think I just got much more important things to say than I but you see
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this business about the development of the person the child of the young man the adolescent.
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Stay reacting Otherwise we get these perpetual adolescents who have never got part out of their
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system should we say a protracted situation are.
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This is why the CO concept of identity is so useful for our young people. You've
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got to get away from pardon Mon so your wild oats and you spin pad is to mimic an
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intellectual That's again a new situation they don't have to bet is nowadays.
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As the writers of the 20s did. In order to find yourself
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and this business of finding yourself whether it's Paul in the deserts of Arabia
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or in the Paris of the 20s all wherever it is you get a way of course to college
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and get excellence phrase all the modder Torreon college and even military service I
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think gives young men our chance and perhaps the girl a
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couple of years job in the office a kind of model told them of finding
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himself and herself who they are and
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where they are then presumably they get that measure of detachment and a measure of
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self-knowledge to be able to look back upon Maan their cultural background and say
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yes or no.
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That was alright I quite like going home now. I got a few tired of baked
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beans. If you're a capital or large and the card
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I got off a tiny bit of lox and bagels but gosh you know they do taste good
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occasionally and you get that so far from six of
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dialectic a sort of art or something to it
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and I think this business of the identity of our groups.
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When I first came to this country it used to be disposed in the early 30s.
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The Food and Sinclair Lewis wrote a book about the awful food of this country.
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It was over with creampie bad apple Piper song and
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across Juno and settlement cook book came out with good ethnic cooking
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and I think ethnic cooking has been a very potent part of our
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development board.
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Tolerant but a more interested attitude about differences in how good a masculine but I don't this I think is
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becoming very much as you know I greatest home Jim and I agree
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and I think this idea of identity is probably
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the key notion which can take you from the general
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proposition to columns which were evolved out of a
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majority Tarion situation. To some working principles
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about how to behave in a in a situation of what you might call cultural
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stalemate. First let me say that I think that the
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idea of ethnic and religious identity has
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turned out to be more important for our time than we had expected. We have
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even now we're still talking and we still do fall most define world politics if you don't if
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you think about it in terms of of the 19th century
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materialist doctrines about economic production where are you going to
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be a capitalist country or are you going to be a socialist country or a communist country. But
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right under our noses. The way the world has almost just
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never resolved that question has just moved away from it and its questions whether
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Africa is going to be black or white where their candidate is going to be English speaking or
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French speaking. Whether this country will be Jewish or Arab that country
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or Flemish I mean these issues have turned or this country will the self
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be a bi racial community or will it not be. We
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must we must remember that you know there is a certain amount of understanding of the
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Southern white situation is necessary if you're going to do anything with it.
[24:31 - 24:36]
Now what it turns out I think is that the ethnic identity religious
[24:36 - 24:41]
identity has a value in the modern world that we hadn't suspected it's
[24:41 - 24:46]
got to something I suppose like the value of the extended family gives you
[24:46 - 24:50]
an identity that you can hold on in a society which doesn't give you many many
[24:50 - 24:55]
others. And so it's useful. And so it persist in anything it
[24:55 - 25:00]
probably gets more elaborate and people there's a grandfather effect coming in
[25:00 - 25:05]
which is that people who people like the things they're people who are third generation
[25:05 - 25:10]
except perhaps the first generation. Yeah well and so and I think. Kind of a question of
[25:10 - 25:14]
identity how do you get people to work together. I think what you have to face is
[25:14 - 25:20]
the Erick Erickson's concept of higher identities
[25:20 - 25:25]
and that there are one and there are more than just one level of violence really. And for instance one of the
[25:25 - 25:30]
the great single most important fact of race relations in this country the
[25:30 - 25:35]
reason we were have been able to break through in the last four years the reason we passed the Civil Rights
[25:35 - 25:39]
Act is that the Christian churches and the Jewish
[25:39 - 25:45]
organizations entered the fray and made this a religious
[25:45 - 25:50]
question as well as an ethnic one. So it became possible for people
[25:50 - 25:55]
who had quite separate identities on an ethnic level to join at a
[25:55 - 25:59]
higher level identify identity which is a question white black and white quite different
[25:59 - 26:03]
one from the other a Jew from Catholic from Protestant
[26:03 - 26:09]
and not all agreeing on ethnic cooking or does nothing and not wishing to a great you know
[26:09 - 26:14]
wishing to mock me still being quite willing on a level higher up to say we are all
[26:14 - 26:17]
children of God and they're fundamentally equal.
[26:17 - 26:23]
And did you think this was given the accolade this yeah. Honored to Martin Luther
[26:23 - 26:27]
King. I mean that's that's become a word position.
[26:27 - 26:32]
It's not only an American if I may say I was also honored by the by
[26:32 - 26:37]
President Johnson who prevented the Presidential Medal of Freedom which is the highest civil
[26:37 - 26:42]
honor conferred by the president of states in peacetime to Reinhold Niebuhr
[26:42 - 26:47]
by my side has done some magnificent work in his writings over the last 40
[26:47 - 26:52]
years and this was very much because he helped to create this sense of higher
[26:52 - 26:57]
identity very much through the journal questioning crisis and through his writing but you know
[26:57 - 27:02]
we have to see finally to redefine tolerance because we're coming to the
[27:02 - 27:03]
end of our time.
[27:03 - 27:07]
This isn't about what would you say was the in one or two words was the
[27:07 - 27:11]
alternative for what was the definition of tolerance.
[27:11 - 27:17]
Oh dear no to hard to put into a few words I would say that it
[27:17 - 27:22]
but are how I would like to redefine it is to ask
[27:22 - 27:26]
for a positive or examination
[27:26 - 27:31]
of what is involved in the person's attitude
[27:31 - 27:36]
toward his fellow beings and in the social
[27:36 - 27:41]
group an awareness of the free market of the
[27:41 - 27:46]
exchange of types and ideas and contributions.
[27:46 - 27:50]
Yes I know that you know that this is hard to find in a word
[27:50 - 27:55]
acceptance. Even It has a sleepy sound. It's really more on an active recognition
[27:55 - 28:00]
isn't it. I mean active record I think. Ultimately again for the religious
[28:00 - 28:04]
and ethical it ought to be almost the Wellcome of
[28:04 - 28:08]
differences. It's a for their for their own sake.
[28:08 - 28:13]
Thank you very much indeed we've been discussing let's redefine tolerance and
[28:13 - 28:18]
the guests today were Mrs. neber until recently a professor of religion at Barnard and the
[28:18 - 28:23]
Honorable Daniel Patrick Moynihan assistant secretary of labor in Washington and
[28:23 - 28:28]
also from beyond the melting pot. Thank you very much indeed Mr. Monaghan and miss his
[28:28 - 28:29]
new book.
[28:29 - 28:34]
You have been listening to gateway to ideas a new series of conversations in which
[28:34 - 28:39]
ideas are discussed in relation to reading today's program let's redefine
[28:39 - 28:44]
tolerance as presented. Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel P. Moynihan
[28:44 - 28:49]
co-author of Beyond the melting pot and Mrs. Reinhold Niebuhr
[28:49 - 28:54]
until recently Professor of Religion at Barnard College Columbia University.
[28:54 - 28:59]
The moderator was and Fremantle noted author and critic to
[28:59 - 29:04]
extend the dimensions of today's program for you a list of the books mentioned in the discussion as
[29:04 - 29:09]
well as others relevant to the subject has been prepared. You may obtain a copy from your
[29:09 - 29:14]
local library or by writing to gateway to ideas post office
[29:14 - 29:19]
box 6 for 1 Grand Central Station New York.
[29:19 - 29:24]
Please enclose a stamped self-addressed envelope gateway to ideas is
[29:24 - 29:28]
produced for national educational radio under a grant from the National Home Library
[29:28 - 29:33]
Foundation. The programs are prepared by the National Book Committee and the American
[29:33 - 29:37]
Library Association in cooperation with the National Association of educational
[29:37 - 29:42]
broadcasters technical production by Riverside radio w
[29:42 - 29:46]
Avi are in New York City. This is the national
[29:46 - 29:48]
educational radio network.