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Clark Atlanta University Panther
November 16, 1990
Editorials
Think Before You Blame
By DWAN PETE
Contributing Writer
What is a “knee-jerk reaction?” It is the act of lashing out at
someone rashly and thoughtlessly. It is an emotional reaction
that is usually unjust, unfair, and unfounded.
Which brings us to last weekend’s tragic death and the
student reaction to it. It is natural to be highly upset and scared
when a classmate is shot to death as was Duane Goodman. The
natural tendency is to immediately start blaming people, in this
case, the administration and Sim’s Security. It’s natural. But
it’s not the proper way to handle things.
Do your research before you blame a death on someone,
especially when the media is around. Why? Because if you
don’t, there will be a media circus as there was at CAU this past
week. The media made it seem as if the majority of CAU
students blamed Duane’s death on Sim’s Security. And maybe
most of the students that they interviewed felt that way. The
tendency can be to get very negative and accusatory when being
interviewed about such an emotional issue.
But there’s another possible reason why the students were
portrayed as feeling that way. It makes forexciting news. You
must realize that though the news media allegedly tries to be
objective, it is often selective in what it chooses to report.
Unfairly selective. So make sure that you know security was to
blame before you tell that to the media because they eat that
kind of information for lunch. Nothing like a little controversy
to beef up ratings.
Now, you may be saying, “This guy doesn’t know what he’s
talking about. Of course it was security’s fault!” But let’s look
at the facts and try to make a rational, not an emotional
judgment. There was no one in the back guard booth in the
E.L. Simon Courts, which is 40 feet from where Duane was
killed. It is possible that if the booth had been manned and lit,
the death would not have taken place.
On the other side of the coin, James Sims, the owner of Sims
Security, said in a press conference Monday that the Courts
area was being patrolled at the time. In this case, the argument
can arise that Duane was, tragically, in the wrong place at the
wrong time; security cannot be everywhere at once.
Another argument is that Vine Street is not part of Sim’s
Security’s jurisdiction; that’s the Atlanta Police Department’s
area. So what was the role of the precinct down that street from
the murder scene?
Still another possibility: bad communication between the
AUC’s different security forces. The day after Duane's death,
Mark Tyler, a senior at CAU, asked a member of another AUC
school’s security force if that school had beefed up its security
as a result of the death. Guess what. Twenty-four hours after
the murder, the guard wasn’t even aware that there had been a
shooting. Mark got mad, and justifiably so. When something
like this happens, all of the AUC security .forces should be
alerted so that they can, in turn, warn students to be extra
careful and so that they can beef up their security if necessary.
So it’s obvious that there are a number of possibilities that
you need to consider before you go making accusations. I
didn’t even get into the possible role that bad street lighting
could have had in the murder. There are many possible causes,
so think about them before you throw accusations around.
PANTHER
November 16, 1990
The articles on the editorial page are the opinions of the
writers. They are not necessarily the opinions of the student
body, faculty, staff or administration.
EditorinChief Paulette V. Walker
Managing Editor Cydney L. Williams
News Editor Tonya Latimer
Editorial Page Editor Nannette L. Wilson
Sports Editor Anthony George III
We welcome our readers’views in theform of letters to the
editor or guest editorials. The Panther office is located in the
Communication Arts Center, room 120. Address all
correspondence to the Panther Newspaper, Clark A tlanta
University, James P. Brawley Drive at Fair Street, S. W., P.
O. Box 329, Atlanta, Ga. 30314. The telephone number is
8808309. The staff meets Tuesdays at 11 a.m. in room 120 of
the Communication A rts Center.
Heal The Sickness In Our Midst
By DR. JANICE LIDDELL
Chair, Department of English
On Sunday, Nov. 11, 1990, an innocent and
good young Black man was dropped by a single
bullet. Another young Black male became a
homocide statistic. We ask the question about
Duane Goodman that has been asked by so
many in our communities. Why!? Yes, these are
troubled times we live in — more troubled,
maybe, than any of our people have ever known.
Ironically, the same weekend our own Duane
was slain near our own Clark Atlanta
University, veterans from the Atlanta University
Center Civil Rights Movement were reuniting
after 30 years in celebration of their myriad
important and historical victories. I remember
afterwards wondering, did they bring us this far
for us to turn on ourselves? Duane did not die
trying to secure a rightful place for us on a
Greyhound bus, at Rich’s lunch counter or in a
University of Georgia. Perhaps we would have
felt better about his dying if we could say it had
been for any such advances. We could have
memoralized him along with the endless list of
martyrs who sacrificed themselves for our
freedom.
But Duane died for nothing, the victim of a
wouldbe robber who himself is already
spiritually and morally dead. Duane was
murdered by one who should have been his
brother, his protector. Duane was a victim of
racial suicide, an epidemic which is killing our
Black men in numbers greater than those of all
the lynch mobs in our history.
If Duane’s death had come at the hands of
some Neo Nazi, Ku Kluxer or racist policemen,
we would have mobilized ourselves immediately
to condemn the act and those who committed it
and we would have galvenized our energies to
attack the problem. We certainly would not
have lain the total blame on the CAU
administration and campus security. While,
indeed, security may be part of the problem, we
all know it is not the problem. Why is it so hard
for us to admit the cause of this atrocity? Short
of hiring a guard for every student, can the safety
of our students ever really be guaranteed? I
think not, because the real problem is the disease
in our own Black communities. The concerns of
disrespect and disregard for Black life and Black
selfhatred are eating us up from the inside.
Duane’s tragic and sensless death is a blatant
manisfistation of these malignancies.
That Duane’s killer did not come from the
campus might give some of us feelings of
separateness from and even superiority over
“those people,” but if we are honest, we know
that no ring around this campus whether
symbolic or real can actually separate us from
Duane’s killer. Duane and his killer are both
Black; they are both males; they are both sons
and brothers and friends of other Black people;
they are both parts of us all. Hence we must
assume responsibility for curing the cancers in
our midst; the disease that has physically slain
Duane and has killed his assailant morally and
spiritually.
Yes, the problems of today are very different
from those of 30 years ago, but no one can tell me
that AUC students and faculty of the 50s and 60s
were any brighter or braver than the AUC
students and faculty of the 90s. We are sitting in
the middle the largest consortium of intelligent
Black people on the entire planet. We, if not
others, must be able to point a direction; must be
able to contribute to the cure for this terminal
disease which is running rampant in our
communities.
We must not allow Duane’s death to be in
vain; we must use his death as a catalyst for the
change so long overdue. We must galvenize our
energies and heal the sickness in our midst. We
can and must organize a movement against
Black on Black crime. I am not sure now of its
strategies or its directions, but 1 know we must
accept our responsibility just as Julian Bond,
Benjamin Brown, Hershelle Sullivan Challenor,
Wylma LongBlanding, Lonnie King and a
myriad other AUC activists accepted theirs.
Such a movement can begin right here at CAU.
Even as such a “movement” is crystallizing we
must also extract the cancer from our personal
lives. We can begin by defining Black on Black
crime in its broadest contextany offense
perpetrated by one African American against
anotherwhether that offense is physical or
verbal; whether it is male vs male, male vs
female, female vs male or female vs female;
whether it is CAU vs Morehouse vs Morris
Brown vs Spelman; whether it is a student vs
student vs staff vs faculty! We must cease to
tolerate abusive and denigrating language and
actions. The healing of our communities can
and must begin with us right here at this time.
We can give meaning to the death of young
Duane Alan Goodman.