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The Augusta News-Review - February 16, 1980 -
‘Stye (Augusta
Mallory K. Millender Editor-Publisher
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- Politics and the Olympics
By Bayard Rustin
Across the United States
hundreds of young athletes,
many of them black youngsters,
have invested an enormous
amount ot time, energy and
spirit in preparing for the 1980
Summer Olympics. For many of
these young people, a good
performance in Moscow offers
the best possiblity of recognition,
financial reward, and an in
comparable sense of personal
achievement. If America
boycotts the Olympics as now
seems likely, dreams will be
shattered, and opportunities may
be lost forever. But I think that
the sacrifices required of our
athletes will, I believe, prove to
be more than worthwhile in the
long run. By their conspicuous
absence, our athletes will be
demonstrating their solidarity
not only with the people of
Afghanistan, but also with the
principles of human decency,
principles which mean so little to
Soviet authorities.
Long before the Soviet in
vasion of Afghanistan, the idea
of holding the Olympics in
Moscow disturbed me. I could
not blot oqt of my mind the old
film clips of the 1936 Olympics
held in Berlin under the Hitler
regime. Like the Soviet
government of today, the Nazis
used the international sports
festival to exalt and to win
world v c acceptance of their
own mu. derous regime. Hilter,
who treated black athletes like
Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe
with utter disdain, hoped to
demonstrate to the world that
white "Arayans" were indeed
superior in physical mental and
cultural terms when compared
with "sub-humans" like blacks,
Orientals, and any other human
type differing from the Nazi
ideal of the superman.
Although the Soivets are not
using the Olympics to prove
their racial superiority, they are
nevertheless using the games to
achieve a key political objective:
worldwide recognition of the
Communist regime as a humane,
modern society where the
Olympic ideals or sport
smanship, human fellowship,
and free competition are
respected and promoted. But it
is difficult to understand how
these traditional Olumpic ideals
can be showcased in a host
country whose leaders suppress
human rights, organize massive
Invasions of small countries like
Afghanistan, and support the
International starvation of
Cambodia's hopeless people.
While the Soviet move into
Afghanistan is by itself enough
justification for an Olympic
Teacher salary raises
It has come to my attention that the
State Superintendent of Schools, Dr.
Charles McDaniel, has and is making
telephone calls to local school
superintendents, urging them to oppose,
and to have their state senators oppose
that section of the appropriations bill
that is designed to give teachers, state
employes, university systems personnel,
and bus drivers a respectable salary raise.
I find it inconceivable and
incomprehensible that one charged with
the responsibility of improving the
quality of education in this state, is
urging school officials and legislators to
oppose a bill that would grant a salary
increase, especially when this increase in
salary could mean the difference between
experienced teachers remaining in the
classroom or quitting the teaching
profession altogether.
The state school superintendent has
made speeches around the state for the
last six to eight months, telling his
audiences that he favored a $1,594 salary
increase for the educators who are in the
classrooms. Yet, he puts forth no plan
i. . <
Boycott, the stepped up cam
paign against political
dissidents, is another powerful
illustration of the basic in
compatibility of the Soviet
political environment with the
kind of free and open at
mosphere needed for the
Olympics. How can athletes
from the United States and other
democratic countries participate
in the summer games while a
fine man like Andrei Sakharov is
arrested without warning and
hustled off to Gorky, a city
completely sealed off from
foreigners? And how can in
ternational friendship, un
derwtanding and goodwill be
promoted in the Soviet Union
when its government fears and
blocks human contact even
among some of its own citizens?
Os course, I have no illusions
about the ultimate effectiveness
of an Olympic boycott. Surely,
the Soviets will not opt for
American athletes in place of 1
strategic advantages of an w
copied Afghanistan. But as
someone who learned about the
power of nonviolent witness
through the American civil
rights movement, I feel con
fident thaf the absence of our
athletes will produce son ning
worthwhile. First, it will remind
the Soviet leaders, as well as
other governments which violate
human rights, that Americans
will hot become unwitting ac
complices in efforts to distract
world attention from injustice
and human misery. And second,
President Brezhnev and his
friends will be forced to explain
to their own people why the
Americans are absent from the
Moscow Olympic parade, the
tracks, the pools, the basketball
courts and the indoor arenas. As
the Soviets offer their ex
planation perhaps at least a few
morsels of truth about
Afghanistan will reach the Soivet
people. That in itself would be
an accomplishment.
Finally, we should not lose
sight of the youi y men and
women who have the most to
lose ! n *his unfortunate situation.
We h«ve an obligation to treat
our young Olympians as true
heroes. We must make it clear,
to them and to the world that we
value their unselfish and prin
cipled defense of human decency
even more than we value their
speed, strength, agility, or
orowness. Whereas a gold
medal won in a race dr game is
forgotten quickly, we will
remember the courage, sacrifice
and solidarity of our Olympic
team forever. They are standing
up for justice and decency; they
deserve our support and ad
miration.
By State Sen. Horace Tate
whereby the salaries could be raised to
this $1,594 level. Now the State Senate
has moved to propose a plan whereby
110 million dollars have been freed to the
extent that school teachers, state
employes, university personnel and bus
drivers might receive an 11.4 percent
increase in salary from the 110 million
dollars if, in fact, the Senate plan is
approved by the House, and is ultimately
signed into law by the Governor.
The State School Superintendent has
the responsibility for improving the
quality of education in the state. It is his
task to devise plans to keep the morale of
teachers as high as possible, and a major
method of improving teachers morale is
to pay salaries that are in keeping with
their training, experience and, at this
time, in line with inflationary rates.
It is deplorable that one who stands at
the helm of education in this state would
oppose a sound method of granting
teachers a commendable salary increase.
Educators should very well take note
of the position which their state school
superintendent now harbors,
Page 4
jBBF * E HAVE
aWF A TWIN 6 FOR
W. ? F —W YOU.' HAVE YOU
tried the army
/ \ J k RECRUITIN®
/ I STATION?
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©1960 BLACK ResouaccS IMC -U2.
REFERRAL
w,
Walk into any large or well stocked
bookstore and simply say, “Give me the
latest hate book or poem on black man
written by a black woman.” The likely
response, without any further inquiry,
will be, “Coming right up.”
That scenario is a graphic example of
the systematic societal rape of the black
male. Yes, rape.
Since racism went into the closet,
whites who still needed their primary
pathology resorted to more covert -- and
often more pernicious - delivery systems.
What they’ve learned to use rather well is
the “hit-woman,” the black female who
disguises white racism as feminist
ideology.
In turn, it sounds and feels so good to
white men - who have been saying the
same thing all along - that they hail the
latest “work” portraying black males as
shiftless, immature and emotionally
crippled as “the most important book on
blacks in the 70’s” or “since Roots.” The
racist aspects are also so titilating and
normal to the white feminists that the
only element that stands out is the
chauvinism.
The case for a suspected genetic
predisposition towards character
pathology is reinforced by using examples
like Eldridge Cleaver whose
rationalization for raping a white woman
was as sick as the act. The “colored girl
syndrome” goes on to select 19 street
hardened Northern ghetto males who
haven’t had a normal emotional response
since the umbilical cord was cut.
One female Eldridge Cleaver and 19
lower-class, street-hardened ghetto broads
would give you the same perverted result.
The marketing and merchandising of
black male inferiority as seen through the
eyes of racism doesn’t work because the
scheme is brilliant, it works because so
many whites are racially comfortable
with that version of black males and so
many black females are so uncomfortable
with it.
The latter is driven out of frustration
and anxiety. Frustration and anxiety put
there in the first place by society - white
men and women to be specific. White
men get the cream, white women line up
next, black women arrive at a distant
third and black men inherit 70 percent of
the casualties in combat units in Vietnam,
the majority jail population, suicides, etc.
When society’s systemic treatment
manifests itself in aberrant behavior by
black men, the white men, white women
and the frustrated middle-class, well
educated colored girls rush downtown for
sl7 tickets to see the stuck pig on display
in the theatre or read about his dendse
between the pages of the latest $7.95
hardback,book written by the newest
“hit-woman.”
If you’re genuinely interested in the
subject of black sexual relationships and
you’re tired of the “hit-woman” whose
primary contribution to their essays is
anger, there is an awfully good piece in
the March/April issue of “The Black
Scholar” by Dr. Robert Staples.
"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination or the
dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." John Adams
Black women debase
black men in books
By Tony Brown
In “The Myth of Black Macho: A
Response to Angry Black Feminists,” he
says of the one hit-woman, “she does not
mention compassion for misguided black
men or a love of child, family, and
community. It all seems so strange,
exhorting black women to "go it alone.
They, many of them, are already alone.
That is their main complaint: black men
have deserted them. The issue here is
what is often defined as sexist behavior is
nothing more than men acting in ways
which they have been socialized to
behave.”
But to move away from a reaction to
these hit-women and placing them at
center stage, where they clearly don’t
belong, the thoughtful can now move
toward a thorough study of the topic in a
new magainze, “Black Male/Female
Relationships.” It is published by Black
Think Tank, Inc., 1360 Turk-St., San
Francisco, and the publisher is Julia Hare
and Dr. Nathan Hare, former publisher of
“The Black Scholar,” psychologist and
former professor at Howard University.
He also coordinated the first black studies
program.
Hare and Hare write, “If we had to
name the most tragic failure of black
people historically in the United States,
we’d have to point to the relations
between black males and black females.
Our confusion, our negligence, in this
area is both curious and shocking,
because the relations between male and
female are the most intimate and basic of
all human entaglements and the most
crucial for the subjugation of a people.
“Meanwhile, we are left with an
agonizing duality of racism and sexism,
which combine to confuse us and to
control and defeat our collective thrust.
Almost anybody will acknowledge these
days that ate live in a society that is both
sexist (or patriarchial) and racist. In such
a society, it was historically the black
male who, in the white man’s mind,
passed the crucial threat to his power and
status, who conceivably could take his,
the white male’s place.
“However, at the same time as they
endeavored to emasculate the black male,
they also sought to defeminize the black
female. Her beauty was denied, her
femininity and her virtues denigrated, and
she was robbed of the chance to nestle
comfortably on a pedestal of protected
womanhood or otherwise to enjoy the
privileges of a woman as defined by the
white slavemaster society and her own,
the slave society. She was not to be a
woman any more than a black man could
be a man.”
Article after article leaves the reader
with gems such as: “The black macho is
not the oppressor of the black woman
just as the black matriarch was not the
oppressor of the black man,” and “The
black woman is getting raped while the
white woman is doing the screaming.”
Editor’s Note: TONY BROWN’S
JOURNAL, the television series, is
shown, Sunday, Feb. 17,1980 on WRDW
TVI2 at 1:00 pan.
To be equal
■ Affirmative action
decision due
1 By Vernon E. Jordan
The Supreme Court will rule on the
constitutionality of an important federal
affirmative action program.
The case, Fullilove vs. Kreps, deals
with a provision of the 1977 Public
Works Employment Act that set aside ten
percent of the $4 billion in the Act for
minority businesses. That provision made
good sense at the time, and similar
setaside programs make sense today.
The Act was designed to get the
sluggish economy moving again by
infusing federal works projects into
communities suffering high
unemployment. Because previous federal
efforts resulted in a freezeout of minority
contractors and had little effect on high
black jobless figures, it was wise to ensure
full minority participation.
As in the Bakke and Weber cases, many
peojlle are fighting affirmative action.
They’re trotting out a lot of the
arguments we’ve heard so often.
But, as the brief filed in the Fullilove
case by several civil rights and black
business and professional groups makes
clear, those old arguments are the same
ones we heard back in Reconstruction
days.
When the Congress set up the
Freedman’s Bureau in 1865, and passed
other post-war measures aimed
specifically at blacks, it came under
criticism for racial favoritism.
Opponents charged that Congress
didn’t pass comparable aid for whites,
that it was “unfair,” and that it gave
blacks a competitive advantage over
whites. Those arguments were ridiculous
in the context of the 1860 s, when blacks
were fresh from centuries of slavery,
without a decent chance to make their
way in a hostile society.
And they are ridiculous today, when
the black community is comparably
disadvantaged in relation to the white
majority.
Blacks lag far behind whites in every
category or measurement of well-being.
The only advantages blacks have are
negative ones - they are “favored” by
being more likely to be poor, to be
jobless, to be in bad heal tit, or to be
poorly educated.
In fact, affirmative action today is
Walking with dignity
■llk tOb Uganda’s destiny
■Bt ivwl
By Al Irby ■
The ousting of “Big Daddy” Idi Amin
has not solved the many problems of
Uganda. But, believe it or not, the
absence of the so-called “Bad Boy” Amin
has rekindled old ethnic hatred and
animosities, and started new factions.
This, along with rampant inflation and a
strong black market in the capital city,
Kampala, ironically has led many
Ugandans to long for the return of Amin.
Others worry about the number of
weapons now in civilian hands and the
rattle of gunfire at night.
ETHNIC TROUBLE
Idi Amin, president for eight years, was
overthrown in April of last year by an
invasion force of Tanzanian soldiers and
Ugandan exiles. Westerners and Ugandans
alike believed that his removal would
solve that country’s problems. But it has
not. The country that Winston Churchill
called ‘ the Peral of Africa” is still
agonizing. Whether one is optimistic or
pessimistic about Uganda’s immediate
future, several points are apparent. First,
the overthrow of “Big Daddy” Amin was
not a panacea for the country’s ills.
Secondly, one ethnic animosities, new
factions, and split between exiles and
nonexiles have emerged with the removal
of the former common foe. Thirdly, it
will require both decisive and conciliatory
action by any Ugandan government to
solve the country’s factionalism and crisis
of confidence.
BAGANDANS WANT OUT
Uganda’s age-old ethnic animosities are
still very much alive. Northerners vs.
southerners, Baganda vs. other Ugandans
- these rivalries go back long before the
first Europeans arrived. The colonial
alliance between British and Baganda
increased feeling? of superiority on the
part of the Bagandans and fueled the
smoldering anti-Baganda feelings of
Uganda’s other ethnic groups.
POWER SHIFT IS PONDERED
Will the country now be able to settle
down under the leadership of its new
President, Godrey Binaisa, who heads an
almost entirely new government? This is
designed to complete the unfinished job
of the Reconstruction, to bring parity
between the races.
Both Congress and the Courts have
consistently made the distinction
between “invidious discrirtiination” and
“benign discrimination.” The aim of the
latter is to make up for past
discrimination, to eliminate its continuing
effects, and to help its victims catch up
with other Americans who never had to
compete with blacks in a discriminatory
society.
Just as contemporary opponents of
affirmative action claim such programs
will actually harm blacks, Reconstruction
era critics charged that it would hurt
blacks by making them dependent or by
arousing white resentment.
In other words, blacks were being
advised to starve quietly rather than take
advantage of affirmative programs or risk
angering whites
Such concern for black people is
touching, but then as now, it was
motivated by the desire to retain white
advantage and to supress black
competition.
The century since those old
Reconstruction debates have been
marked by significant black gains that
came along in fits and starts. But the
overwhelming record of the past hundred
years demonstrates persistent black
disadvantage. We were late getting to the
starting gate an<s'we’re far behind today.
That’s why affirmative action in all
fields is so important -- it’s a means of
making the race.a fair one. Itaccelerates
black participation jn the mainstream.
And one of the -most important areas
in which affirmative action is needed is in
business. Minority businesses account for
only about three perdent of all businesses,
and for less than one percent of business’
total gross receipts. t '
The result of that situation is the lack
of capital formation in the minority
community, and higher unemployment
than would otherwise be. the case.
Expanded minority economic
development is a necessity and federal
setaside programs are one workable way
of supporting that important national
goal. That’s what the Fullilove case is all
about.
the basic question behind the surprise
shift of men at the top, which once again
has disturbed this war-ravaged and restive
East African nation. The newest change
of leadership in Uganda may eve have
brought a smile to the face of ousted “Big
Daddy” Idi Amin, now said to be living in
Libya. The internal power struggle came,
moreover, only 214 months after the fall
of Mr. Amin because the new successor
could commence the massive job of
reconstruction, he was kicked out.
Mr. Lule, the person that took Amin’s
place, received the support and
acclaimation of most of the world’s
countries, but was hurled out of office by
a Mr. Godrey Binaisa, who has identified
himself as being left of center, in favor of
a mixed economy with a measure of
government control over the means of
production, like many other third-world
countries.
THE GHOST OF MILTON OBOTE
President Binaisa proposes to seek aid
from both West and East, “providing aid
does not prejudice Uganda’s
independence. But people in Uganda who
know him well, and those who knew him
in London where he practiced as an
advocate, say he is as conservative as his
predecessor, Mr. LUle. But he is much
tougher than Mr. Lule.
A better politician, he may be able to
keep the young radicals in the party in
check. However, President Binaisa may
well be confronted with the same
problems as Mr. Lule, namely, having the
big bad NCC breathing down his neck.
The NCC is the radical National
Consultative Council. Only last week the
chairman of the NCC, Edward
Rugamayo, was insisting that the council
is the supreme authority in policy making
and in the appointment of Cabinet
ministers. Mr. Lule was fired because he
insisted on his perrogatives in these
matters. Over the whole crisis hangs the
shadow of Milton Obote, the ex-president
who was overthrown by Idi Amin in
1971. It is argued that the progressive
UNLF party supports Milton Obote. He
returned to Uganda in a position of high
office, and he is busy organizing a
political platform to support his
candidacy.