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4 • The Red and Black » Tuesday, May 12, 1992
■ QUOTABLE
OPINIONS
“If we put half the energy into women's rights as we do In
Braves games, we could make the country a much better
place."
- James Silvers, sophomore from Birmingham, Ala.
The Red & Black
Established in 1893 - Incorporated 1980
An independent student newspaper not affiliated with the University of Georgia
Lance Helms/Editor in Chief
Angela Hornsby/Managing Editor
Melody Willis/Opinions Editor
■ EDITORIALS
Equalize it
At the same time that candidates for the new 11th
congressional district made history this week by having
more than one black person running for the Republican
primary, blacks in Athens have made scant progress in
improving local minority representation.
Two members of the Athens-Clarke County Black
Caucus have filed suit to halt July elections for Athens-
Clarke Commission seats.
Marvin Nunnally and the Rev. Lewis Logan charge
that the current system of eight single districts and two
super-districts does not adequately represent minori
ties. They want to redraw district lines so that blacks
have more say in local affairs.
Opponents of the plan say redistricting will alter
the current form of government. Logan and Nunnally
say it won’t. The key reasons for filing the injunction
are diluted black representation and unresponsiveness
from the commission.
Why have the commissioners not replied to repeated
requests from the U.S. Department of Justice for de
tails on the current districting plan?
Perhaps it’s the protective air surrounding the com
mission. Many are afraid the unified government is too
fragile to withstand serious legal challenges.
Then again, the commissioners may realize that
the current system does under-represent minorities,
and current commissioners could lose their jobs if their
districts were altered or eliminated.
But the commissioners’ self-interest cannot be al
lowed to outweigh our commitment to real democracy.
Preserving the “new, unified” government at sdl costs
could end up costing minorities the equal representa
tion they deserve.
Glad-handing Gorby
He’s like the Bruce Springsteen of international poli
tics.
- former President Jimmy Carter’s son, Chip
Still the charmer who once spontaneously jumped
out of a limousine on crowded Connecticut Avenue in
Washington, D.C., and shook hands with passersby,
Mikhail Gorbachev was ever the smooth statesman in
Atlanta Monday.
Gorbachev’s visit to Atlanta, part of a two-week U.S.
tour to raise $3 million for his Moscow think tank, al
ternately proved that you can - and you can’t - teach
an old dog new tricks.
Thanks to Gorbachev, gone are the days when su
perpower statesmen viewed each other with mutual dis
trust, bent on proving the superiority of each other’s
ideology.
Indeed, a poignant brand of forgive-and-forgetful-
ness was the order of the day. Meeting Georgia
Secretary of State Max Cleland, Gorbachev drew an
ironic comparison between casualties of the Cold War,
saying the wheelchair-bound Vietnam veteran reminded
him of his “comrades in Afghanistan.”
Cleland’s response: “He’s for real, that guy.”
Later, Gorbachev interrupted Jimmy Carter’s at
tempts to end a press conference by taking one last
question from a Soviet Georgian journalist: “Mr.
President, let me make an exception. This is our press.
And I will answer it.”
Yet Gorbachev shouldn’t be mistaken for a Boris
Yeltsin-style democratic reformer. Although both have
abandoned communism, Gorbachev was careful Sunday
to point out that he still believes in socialism. As he at
tempts to stabilize the peace of the world, Gorbachev’s
commitment to socialism should provide an interesting
foil to our own democratically-inspired efforts.
STAFF
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“I love the smell of executions in the morning ... It smells . . . like VICTORY!”
State flag was
I’m glad the controversy surrounding the
Georgia state flag made it back into the opin
ions page, because one thing I’ve never seen in
letters and columns on the subject was concrete
evidence for one side or the other. (If I am over
looking someone’s printed comments, I apolo
gize.) So what I did for this column was actual
research on the question: Are the pro-Southem
forces for keeping the current flag right about
why the flag was changed?
The answer I found was yes, and no.
Senate Bill 98 cruised through the 1956
Georgia Senate and House in less than two
weeks. It is described in the Senate Journal as
“A bill to provide for changing the description
of the flag of the State of Georgia; and for oth
er purposes.’ I also read the actual bill, and it
did simply describe the new flag. The “other
purposes* included making the Secretary of
State responsible for ensuring that the flag was
distributed and displayed properly. So the offi
cial proceedings of the General Assembly were
not much help. For the record, Sen. Willis
Harden authored the bill, and Sen. Jefferson
Davis helped it along, for obvious reasons.
Having reached a dead end there, I turned
to the Atlanta Journal and Constitution. Their
new flag stories were minor, since bigger prob
lems faced the state’s legislative body.
However, a few people did protest the new flag.
Some people wondered if the state could afford
a new flag, since, by law, the new flag would
have to be put in every public school, highway
patrol office, courtroom, etc. in the state. One
senator was briefly rumored to have a mone
tary interest, but that turned out to be false.
One group did oppose on principle the idea
of including the Stars and Bars in the state
flag: the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
One headline read “UDC Protests; Says
Confederacy Sacred Memory." They said the
created during
David
Hart
Confederate battle flag should not be appropri
ated by a single state. (Atlanta Journal, Feb. 2)
Let us now pause a moment to savor the
irony....
Officially, then, the state flag was not
changed for racist reasons. The Assembly was
more concerned with investigating who posed
as state legislators to shake down pinball ma
chine operators for money to fight non-existent
regulatory legislation. The newspapers were
tracking an “anti-newspaper” bill sponsored by
Gov. Griffin that made it easier to sue papers
for libel. And, of course, everyone was con
cerned about a record high state budget. (Some
things never change.)
I realize that my informal, hasty research
only covered the historical record left by the
white Legislature and the major white news
papers, but at the time, I don’t think too many
blacks were worried about a new state flag.
Oh, there was another little item making
news while the Assembly was in session. One
front page story started this way:
“Gov. Marvin Griffin Monday asked the
Georgia Legislature to declare the U.S.
Supreme Court’s segregation decision ‘null and
void.” During his speech, Griffin “was inter
rupted with rousing applause." The Legislature
eventually passed a resolution that did, in fact,
racist turmoil
call the court’s decision “null and void." It
passed with one dissenting vote.
Georgia was not alone; other states reacted
similarly. Bills were introduced in the U.S.
Congress to legislate around the decision.
Georgia’s legislature passed two bills to pre
serve segregation in the waiting rooms of rail
road and bus stations. Their trick was to have
one room for white intrastate passengers and
one for all interstate passengers and “colored”
intrastate passengers. A plan was also pro
posed to shut down all public schools in the
event that the federal government tried to in
tegrate them. They would be replaced with
“private” schools, and Georgia students would
receive “educational grants” toward the cost of
an appropriate school.
Lastly, one short item caught my eye which
suggested to me that a new flag was not fore
most on the minds of blacks. A small story on
the front page of the Feb. 2 Atlanta
Constitution bore the headline “Ala. Negro’s
Yard Blasted by Bomb.” The Negro in question,
a leader with the NAACP, apparently had the
temerity to ask to attend an all-white gather
ing of the Alabama Democratic party.
So, for those pro-flaggers who may have
missed my point, I’ll spell it out. I suppose it’s
fine to associate the Stars and Bars with
Southern history and culture. But don’t substi
tute some romanticized version of history for
the brutal racist reality in which the current
state flag was bom. People were being killed
when this flag was unfurled, and they weren’t
Civil War veterans. Changing the flag now
would be a small step toward making amends.
If your ideal of old-style Southern gentility and
hospitality means anything, it’s time to live up
to it.
David Hart is a graduate student in journal
ism.
Abortion pros and cons debated
■ FORUM
■ The Red and Black welcomes letters to the editor and prints them in the Forum
column as space permits. All letters are subject to editing for length, style and li
belous material. Letters should be typed and double-spaced, and they must in
clude the name, address and daytime telephone number of the writer. Please also
include student classification, major and other appropriate identification. Names
may be omitted with a valid reason upon request. Send letters by U.S. mail or
bring them in person to The Red and Black's offices at 123 North Jackson Street,
Athens, Georgia 30601.
I would like to praise the April
30th article by Jeffrey Davis. I do
not agree with his position, yet it is
refreshing to see a person attempt
to debate abortion using clear, ra
tional logic rather than using emo
tional attacks and manipulative
word choice.
Davis states that life is defined
as the interval between life and
death. Let me define death from a
purely legal standpoint. It is the
point in time when the brain ceas
es to function and no electric activ
ity exists. The logical flipside to
this statement is that the presence
of electrical brain activity defines
the presence and beginning of a
human being. Electric brain activ
ity is present in an unborn child at
42 days after conception. The argu
ment that the fetus is attached and
totally dependent on the mother
sets a dangerous precedent. Does
this mean that when a human be
comes totally dependent upon an
other that this particular person is
not really a human being?
Morally, the life of a human be
ing begins at conception. A soul is
present there, and to take away
that soul’s right to live is murder.
One day everyone will realize this
fact. But for the here and now, we
must look at the legality of life.
Legally, being a human being
doesn’t depend on viability, the
presence of a heartbeat or breath
ing. Blackmun and other justices
erred in their finding of when life
begins in Roe v. Wade. There is no
precedent for their findings. Davis
is right-everyone has to decide for
themselves. Listen to the facts, to
logic, to precedent, and then de
cide.
Joel McElhannon
Freshman, political science
This is in response to Buck’s let
ter. First of all, I would like to
compliment you and you well-writ-
ten and thought-provoking letter of
April 22. Secondly, I would like to
state that I am not trying to force
morality of any kind on you, I
would just like to ask you to con
sider the issue of abortion from a
slightly different perspective.
In your letter, you made it clear
that you consider abortion to be
murder, no ifs, ands or buts. But
what about the mother? You’re sev
enteen, and you’ve been raised as
daddy’s little girl. You’re starting
college and you can’t wait to expe
rience life. You’ve got your dreams
for the future.
Someone in your dorm invites
you to a keg party. You go. You
drink, possibly for the first time. A
guy you’ve just met kisses you.
You don’t mind, much. He tries to
take your clothes off. You tell him
that you aren’t ready for this, that
you would like to take the time to
get to know him first. He has sex
with you anyway. You don’t see
him again that night.
You don’t tell anyone. You’re
afraid. So you just pretend that it
never happened.
You miss a period. You buy an
EPT and discover that you’re preg
nant. What do you do? Drop out of
school, give up on all of your
dreams and spend the rest of your
life on welfare, raising a child that
was forced on you by some drunk
en jerk whose name you don’t even
remember? Or do you stay in
school as long as you can, hoping
that someone will adopt the child
and ignoring the fact that most
people you meet in the next nine
months will automatically assume
that you’re a cheap and easy slut?
Mr. Buck, I don’t care about an
individual’s ideas on morality. It’s
none of my business. But why
should a girl be forced to give up
her life, trying to provide for a child
that she never asked for? If you re
move the option of abortion, you
put alot of people under the pover
ty line, trying to raise babies that
they are not ready to have.
And face it, Buck. Would you be
willing to date, and eventually
marry, a girl that you knew to have
borne a child? Wouldn’t there al
ways be the thought at the back of
your mind that the rape story was
just a cover, that she wanted it and
ei\joyed it? Would you want to raise
a child that wasn’t yours? Tell me,
Buck, if it was your girlfriend that
was carrying another man’s child,
would you still be anti-abortion?
Mama Johnson
Senior, English
Death penalty is wrong
In a May 5 letter to The Red and
Black, Dana Rawls expressed
strong support for the death penal
ty and called a recent editorial op
posing capital punishment“dis-
gusting".
Rawls wrote, “The savageness
with which some death row in
mates have killed does not qualify
them as human in my eyes, and
they should be exterminated the
way you would any other dysfunc
tional animal.”
She also claimed that the death
penalty fails to deter potential
murderers “merely because is it
not used frequently or immediate
ly enough," and that we must con
tinue to impose the death penalty
until society’s “nonchalant atti
tudes” about violent crimes.
Nothing seems more “noncha
lant" about violence than your ap
parent call for our government to
hurry up, get current death row
inmates killed and taken care of,
and move on to the business of ex
ecuting as many murderers as can
be convicted.
There is a theory about the
death penalty that says would-be
murderers are not deterred by the
threat of execution, because they
do not identify with the person sit
ting in the gas chamber. They iden
tify instead with the official execu
tioner, who seems to gain power by
killing the convict. TTr»e theory rec
ognizes the warped thinking of
people who would murder. The
idea that these people would be de
terred by possibility of death at
tributes rational thinking to people
who are thinking irrationally.
TTiere is always the possibility
of convicting and killing an inno
cent person. The execution of 100
“right" men does not justify the ex
ecution of one person wrongly con
victed.
We should strive to understand
why people commit the crime,
rather than meeting it with the
crime of capital punishment. Yes,
we must punish murderers and
protect ourselves from their ac
tions, but killing then does not
solve our problem at all. The death
penalty is an unjustifiable cop-out.
Rob Shapard
Graduate, accounting
CFS victims are real
In Hutchinson’s May 1 editori
al, he states that Chronic Fatigue
Syndrome has become passe as a
scapegoat disease. It is implied
that those with this illnesa nave
chosen it because it is popular, in
vogue, or worst of all, useful.
A great battle is being waged to
give legitimacy to this illness.
Prior ridicule and suspicion has
been buried under new evidence
which earmarks this disease as
devastating, debilitating, and
based on physiological dysfunction.
At present, no cure or treatment
is available for this illness. Some of
the many symptoms of Chronic
Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) include
overpowering exhaustion, severe
cognitive dysfunction, joint pain,
fever, and sleep disorders. People
often must leave school or work in
definitely.
CFS is not hypochondriasis.
CFS is not depression. Rather, I
have struggled to maintain a satis- \
fying lifestyle in spite of the dis- v
ease.
An estimated 100 people in
Athens alone have CFS. For infor
mation on a support group for CFS
patients and families, contact me
at 546-8096.
Sharon KomflekJ
Graduate, community rmmaaMwg