Newspaper Page Text
THE ORGAN OF STUDENT EXPRESSION
Number
Morehouse College, Atlanta, Georgia
April Edition, 1968
THE AMERICAN SCENE
William Styron, a white man, wrote the book The Confes
sions of Nat Turner in which he, Styron, attempts to put his
white mind in the black skin of the nineteenth - century slave
who revolts and kills. Styron writes a book which is a best sell
er, which only means that people buy it. On the one hand
Styron is successful, the other not. He succeeds in doing what
no black writer has attempted—writing a novel about Nat
Turner. Successful he is not in that he cannot represent Nat
the way a black writer would. Any artist works with much
submerged background emotion and materials of experience,
and his art shows this. It is precisely because of this back
ground influence that Styron, instead of becoming a black Nat
Turner, becomes a caricature of a caricature of a Sir Laurence
Olivier playing an Othello—the player far from the one played.
In his book, Styron, as Dr. Vincent Harding aptly stated, omits the essential experi
ences of a real and black Nat Turner. Styron only superficially recounts the religious
heritage of this educated slave who must have had much to do with the black church to
have heard voices urging him to kill white folks in the name of God. Rather than enumer
ate what the author omitted, it is revealing what he emphasizes. We look at Styron and
see that his view of black manhood is distorted and perverted and is only a projection of
the white man’s fondest desires and darkest fears. The image Styron gives us of Nat is
one of the black man drooling after white women, of one who gets baptized because of
guilt over homosexual engagement, of one who longs to rape and kill the whites. We see
in vivid fiction the mind of white men who are possessed by this hate—love vision of
black men. This brings us to the issues of this editorial.
The above images of Styron’s black man are the images that white men must have of
black men whenever they see Rap Brown or Stokely or Dick Gregory and every Afro-
napped head of black men or more simply any black man. These images obsess Klansmen,
George Wallaces, Lester Maddoxes, Congressmen, and National Guardsmen who showed
the measure of that obsession when in Newark they fired 3800 bullets into a dwelling,
killing a black grandmother and several young children. Was she a threat to white man
hood or just didn’t count? The fact that Leroi Jones was speedily and viciously sent to
prison by an almost raving racist judge is aconsequenceof the Styronesque images of the
black man. Anytime a black artist or black man asserts himself for black people he is
labelled “un-American” or “crazy” or “dangerous and nihilistic”. This does not hap
pen for racist Senators Stennis, Eastland and many others who do not simply advocate
and stand for white power but white supremacy and black subservience. What is their
position called? It’s called representing their voters; that is, in other words, white power.
The President of these seldom United States is busily concerned about giving 'free
dom and democracy to the Vietnamese, by napaiming, bombing, and stomping them to
death. This is the American way, just as the Congress and President plans to answer
blacks in the Ghettoes with “RIOT—CONTROL” instead of food, open housing in
Mississippi and Ohio, and racist control so that blacks don’t have to fear for their lives
every minute. The cat is now out of the bag, and he is not what he pretends to be. The
U.S. supports a corrupt and despotic government in South Vietnam and many in Latin
America. It is no accident that the Viet Cong are winning the war: the people of that
country don’t want forced and militaristic takeover of their land by so-called lovers of
fieedom who oppress blacks and Mexican Americans and poor whites with a viciousness
and indifference which approach national sadism, which is the first step to internal col
lapse. The blacks, just as Jean Genet in The Blacks shows, are waking up to the American
lie, and soon not only the blacks but the poor whites and Indians and Mexican—Ameri
cans, too, will see the lie. So-called “riot - control” and Gestapo technology are only
legalized excuses to murder blacks and any others who oppose the Racist control in
America while many still believe it is a democracy. It wasn’t democratic in the begin
ning and surely isn’t now. The Vietnam war proves how undemocratic America is and
shatters the illusion of benevolent intent. One can’t win the minds of yellow people with
napalm dropped by white people who draft black people who were birthed by black
women who are killed in Detroit and Newark and who are guilty of poverty and blackness.
The people of the world see the fires of world domination that the U.S. beams to them
in Southeast Asis.
White students as well as blacks who have lived 18 to 20 years are now asked to go to
give Vietnamese freedom when here in America they cannot in most states legally buy
liquor, and Internal contradictions are ripping the bowels of America and showing what’s
inside the ones who murder our young and teach them to murder the young of another
country. We students are beginning to remove the wool of slogans and patriotic brain-
(Con’d. on Page 8)
A
Dr. Beatty is
Visiting Professor
Robert T. Smith, III.
“Speak to me when you see me and let
me get to know you personally because I
want to feel like a part of the Morehouse
family.” These were the words spoken by Dr.
Shelton L. Beatty, to the freshmen during
one of their chapel exercises. Dr. Beatty, a
visiting professor of English at Morehouse
College and Atlanta University is teaching
the English, American and Continental Novel.
Because of his great interest in humans he
will play an instrumental role in the voca
tional counseling of students.
With the cooperation of Mr. William Nix
and Mr. Samuel Tucker, he will make avail
able the Strong Vocational Interest Inven
tory, that will help a man crystalize himself
to find his interest and make intelligent voca
tional plans for the future. The test when
sincerely taken will show one’s likes, dislikes,
and interests and then compare them to
successful people who have had the same in
terests, likes, and dislikes for vocational guid
ance. For the test to be effective one must
answer the questions truthfully because as
Dr. Beatty puts it, “What’sthe sense of tak
ing a test to find out what you’re not?”
The Strong test, usually given after seven
teen or eighteen years of age, is more accu
rate than the Couter Preference Test, comi
cally known as the punch-board peril that is
usually administered in high school. Not only
does it cover more fields of interest and em
ployment but it takes under consideration
the changes college freshmen may have en
countered their first months of college.
Born in Tennessee, Dr. Shelton Beatty re
ceived his B.A. from the University of Ten
nessee, graduating with Phi Kappa Phi honors
and majors in English and Psychology - Edu
cation. He received his M.A. from Cornell
University in Comparitive Study of Litera
ture and his Ph.D. from Sanford University
in Higher Education.
(Con’d, on Page 8)