Word: pettigrew
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Negro Revolution and civil rights in general have been so exhaustively discussed and analyzed during the past year that many people will greet yet another book on the Negro with little interest. But Thomas Pettigrew's short work is quite different from most of the recent civil-rights literature...
...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...
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...
...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...
...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...