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Hk Augusta News-Review - Aprfl 4, 1981 -
(USPS 887 820)
Mallory K. Millender
Ms. Fannie J!T*SS° r
Rev. R.E. Donaldson • -Region Editor
Ma. Mervy M James Advertising Manager
HarvwHuTistri .' “ .Salesßepresentative
Mn Rhonda Brown .•Administrative Assistant
Mn. Mary Gordan•••• • Administrative
w-. v (llhsnn Church Coordinttor
Mn. Fannie Johnton £iken County
Mrs. Clara West McDuffie County Conesparfen
Roosevelt Green• ■ Columnist
Al IrbyColumnist
Mn. Marian Waring -.Columnist
Philio Warms .Columnist
Grady Abrams • -Editorial Cartoonist, Columnist
Roscoe Williams • • Photographer.
W. Minot bs rosponrible for unsolicited photos, manuscripts, and other materials.
Mailing Address
Box 953 (USPS 887 820) - Augusta, Ga.
Phone (404) 7224555
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ja—X PUMJSNOM, MC.
Affirmative Action:
Black students at Princeton—where the
sons and daughters of the Fortune 500
roam-might disagree with this analysis.
■There students of color have seen “signs
of much greater tension between Blacks
and whites.” Recently, a Black female
student complained of sexist and racist
harassment by four white freshmen. Cross
burnings have been reported at
prestigious Williams College in
Massachusetts. Black student leaders at
Wesleyan--where Senator Edward Ken
nedy's son matriculates-have reported
finding racist letters in their mail boxes.
But it is at Harvard, the mecca of
elitist education, where the ugly head of
racism has been nodding most
prominently. Incidents there have ranged
from anti-Black graffiti and anonymous
terrorizing telephone calls to the
obligatory burning of crosses in front of
Black residences. Late last year, two Ku
Klux Klan messages were scrawled on the
office door of Harvard’s Black Students
Association.
This wave of racist terror, reminiscent
of Mississippi during the darkest days of
the 1960’5, prompted Harvard president
Derek Bok to issue an “Open Letter on
Issues of Race at Harvard,” where he
tried to allay racists’ concerns and assure
Black students that they are not "guests
in a strange
But Bok will have to do more than
pen nice letters if racism at Harvard is to
be beaten back. Fueling the onslaught of
attacks against Blacks there (and keep in
mind that this is the same area that so
brutally resisted elementary and secondary
school desegregation) is the recent at
tempt by Blacks to insure minority
representation on the highly selective
Harvard Law Review, the nation's most
prestigious law school publication;
selection to law review virtually
guarantees high level employment. Blacks
have been pressing for an affirmative
action selection process guaranteeing
Black representation but this reasonable
proposal has been greeted with mass
resignations from the law review staff and
increasingly bitter designation.
Fortunately, the situation at the,
campuses is not totally negative. The!
decision by a lower court in Kansas to
award thousands of dollars in damages to
a white medical school professor at the
University of Kansas Medical Schorl, who
chaiged four students with libel after they
justifiably charged him with racist
practice, has been overturned by the
Kansas Supreme Court. This was due
primarily to the yeoman legal work of the
NAACP and, secondarily, the Affirmative
Action Coordinating Center (AACC), in
the infamous Scarpelli case.
And in California, a lower court
decision to invalidate an affirmative action
■ , program at the University of California-
Davis Law School was reversed by the
California Supreme Court. Again, the
AACC fielded a brief in this all important
Deßonde case.
However, after all is said and done,
the fact remains clear that the Black
position in education is under attack. With
toe advent of robots and computers,
skilled Black hands and brains are in
creasingly becoming--in the eyes of some -
-superfluous. And it will require a her
culean effort to stem this tidal wave of
opposition to Black educational advance.
To Be Equal
By V«ra<m E. Jordan, Jr.
Page 4
Racism And Education
The value of obtaining an education,
has been stressed in the Black community
for quite some time now. Historians of the
slave experience recognize that one factor
impelling Blacks toward the church has
been the fact that at one time, the only
literature Blacks were allowed to read was
the Bible-and this was solely on the
"liberal” plantations. The present day
image of the Black mother sacrificing all
scarred knees from scrubbing floors- to
advance the education of her children is
not far-fetched.
That is why the moves by President
Reagan to slice aid to education and the
current political climate on the campus
and in school has provoked so much
outcry within the Afro-American com
munity of late.
Many Black leaders have little faith in
the Reagan Administration’s commitment
to affirmative action generally, since as
syndicated columnist Alfreda Madison has
noted, the White House staff and Ms.
Reagan’s staff are currently devoid of
Blacks.
This insensitivity is compounded by
one of the most savage attacks on
education in recent history. The Chronic of
Higher Education reports that over
750,000 college students may have to drop
out of if the budget cuts are accept ed >H and
this is seen as a conservative estimate. It
requires no brilliant intuitive sens’d erf
social science to recognize that a
disproportionate number of these less than
affluent “drop-outs” will be Black.
But Reagan’s attack is no more than
a reflection of current battles being waged
over education. Charlotte-Mecklenburg,
North Carolina provided the United States
Supreme Court the opportunity to pen one
of the more significant school
desegregation cases. Today Black parents
are up in arms over a plan of the local
Board of Education to close down yet
another school in the Black community
because of "racial imbalance.” Says PTA
leader Calvin Harris, "Black schods are
singled out for treatment when there is a
problem with racial balance... That
automatic solution is to close the
5ch001....A trend is developing. No schools
in white areas close, but five or six
schools in the Black neighborhoods have
already closed.” This is usually ac
companied by the’ - dismissal of Black
teachers and support staff (janitors,
cafeteria workers, etc.). Further, Black
students then have to travel often in
ordinately long distances to
predominantly white schools, this has led
to a diminishing of parent involvement in
the far distant school, as sometimes Black
parents possess neither a telephone nor a
car. Black parents here and elsewhere are
asking, "Why do we have to carry the
weight of school desegregation when we
didn’t perpetrate the "original sin,” i.e.
school segregation, and, indeed, were its
victims?” School desegregation and
busing are important battles to be fought
and won but resolving the issues at the
further expense of Black rights has been
questioned by many.
Racism in education is not only a
problem of the Deep South but has
managed to cling as well to the ivy walls
of the supposedly “liberal” North. This
'act is striking since many contend that
the prime and most intractable carrier of
the virus of racism is the poor and
working class white.
National Concern Over
Atlanta Killings
The special horror of
child killings is one that all
people can understand, and
the way green ribbons have
sprouted on people’s lapels
all over the nation is a
vivid and meaningful
indication of national
concern and of solidarity
with the people in A’Hnta.
The Reagan
Administration has
recognized that this is more
than a local police issue. It
. has assigned the FBI to the
case. It released almost
$2.5 million to help the city
pursue the investigation
and to help meet the needs
of the city’s black children,
including support services
such as mental health
Going Places
Failure Os Black Conservative
- ■ ■■
By Philip Waring
Prof. Thomas Sowell. Ph.D. the
staunch Black conservative economic
adviser to President Reagan, is now both
disappointed and angry. Why? The
learned professor vowed last December
that he’d organize new civil rights groups
which would soon replace rile NAACP and
similar institutions. After three major
attempts, all resulted in failure, poor
attendance, lack of interest and even
ridicule. Had the scholarly expert been
grounded in Black History he would have
known better. For many long decades
Black Americans have placed their trust,
cooperation and participation in the
NAACP and Urban League (both are over
"0 years old-twice the age of the en
terprising professor) . Our people work
do. ely with the Natonal Council of Negro
Women. SCLC and Operation Push.
The major thrust of today’s column is
a recent editorial from the St. Louis
American newspaper about a close
associate of Prof. Sowell:
Black Conservatives
The election of Ronald Reagan has
provided exposure to a small but in
fluential group of young black intellectuals
who are advising the President on a wide
range of issues affecting the black
community. They are performing the same
function that Black leaders such as U.N.
Ambassador Andrew Young, the Rev.
Jesse Jackson and others have performed
during the times that Democrats have
occupied the White House.
But the difference is that the Black
advisers to Mr. Reagan sound more
conservative than the President himself.
These black intellectuals are against
school busing, affirmative action, public
service employment programs, the
minimum wage and a number of other
programs that have benefitted blacks.
One name stands out among this
band of black conservative scholars. He is
Walter Williams, an economist affiliated
with Temple University. He has every
right to his opinion, but some of the
medicine he is offering the President is
(Bigotry Matriculates At Academia)
....Right-wing bigary is on the march in
South Africa. Two mae persons in
academic life have been targeted by white
extremists. Dynamite was thrown into
one’s home, and the other’s university
office was destroyed by a bomb. A local
official also has been threatened with
death because he proposed opening public
libraries to black people.
Right-Wing Terra Goons
.... There have been hundreds a in
cidents of right-wing terrorism in South
Africa over the past two decades. Lately,
however, they have become mae
frequent-and the South African police
seem singularly ineffective in arresting the
perpetrators. Suspicion centers on the
secret Wit Kommando (Afrikaans for
“white commando”) as the most active of
the rightist groups currently operating in
Johannesburg, and the most violent.
The group which opposes all fams of
racial integration in this white-ruled
country is thought by some to be
responsible fa the blast in December of
‘BO that destroyed the offices of Prof. F.A.
Maritz, a University of South Africa
(UNISA) sociologist. Professor Maritz gave
evidence at the trial of nine Black
members of the African National Congress
recently convicted on various charges
involving violence.
Maritz Sided With Jailed Blacks
....The learned Afrikaner academician,
giving post-conviction testimony to show
mitigating circumstances, argued that the
nine black defendants “did na have
criminal intentions, but tried to serve a
cause which, in their opinion is ethnically
justifiable.”
He said their actions were the result
of the South African system of social
control. The subsequent blast virtually
destroyed Professa Maritz’s office in the
massive UNISA building, although no one
was injured.
Earlier, three lighted sticks of
dynamite were \hrown into the home of
another sociologist, Jacklyn Cock of
Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South
Africa. Ms. Cock is the autha cf a
controversial book, “Maids and Madams,”
programs.
The visit made to
Atlanta by Vice President
Bush did more than
symbolize the
Administration’s concern; it
reflected the nation’s in
terest in ending the terror.
The ultimate solution
to the plague of fear in
Atlanta is to capture the
killer or killers. The
massive police investigation
now taking place may be
the most concentrated such
effort ever made.
But, as professional
crime fighters know, cat
ching the kind of crazed
person that commit crimes
Walking With Dignity
By Al Irby
a scathing repat on the plight of domestic
wakers in the eastern portion of Cape
Province. The study found that almost
three-quarters of "the- 225 servants in
terviewed earned less than S4O monthly fa
working an average of 59 hours of work.
The dynamite sticks were hurled
♦through the window of Ms. Cock’s catage
in Grahamstown during a dinner party.
They did not explode, however, and no
one was injured. “That dynamite business
in Grahamstown was terrible, wasn’t it?”
Was the sarcastic message delivered a
few days later to Pat Elizabeth City
Councilor Terry Herbst. “Well,” the
message continued, "you're next.”
The Far-Right Wing is Still Reactionary
....“On your last birthday,” it said, and
the wad “last” was underlined. The
card bore the inscription of the hated Wit
Kommando. The aganization apparently
was infuriated at Mr. Herbst’s proposal to
open Pat Elizabeth’s City libraries to all
,races.
The Wit Kommando also claimed
responsibility fa the August bombing of
the University cf Pretaia offices of Prof.
Jan Lombard. Professor Lombard is the
autha a a plan to drop many racial
barriers in the South African province a
Natal. His comer office in a high-rise
concrete building at the university was
gutted by the blast. The Wit Kommando
has threatened to kill Anglican Bishop
Desmond Tutu, the general secretary of
the South African Council a Churches
and one of the most outspoken critics of
the South African's racial policies. Other
political figures some blacks, some white -
- have also received death threats from
the bad racist aganization. Bishop Tutu is
black, and is currently preaching in New
Yak City.
The Police Look the Other Way, Where
Blacks Are Concern
.. ..Right-wing goonism has a long history
in South Africa. In the 1940 s a militant
group of Nazi sympathizers—known as the
Ossewa Brandwag (Oxwagom Sentinel)
used sabaage to oppose South African
involvement cm the Allied side in Wold
War D.
like mass child-killing is
> extraordinarily difficult,
t With few dues and with
i little evidence to link
victims and killers, police
t are often in a bind.
Even considering such
difficulties, it is important
i to keep up the pressure
i and to solve these terrible
• murders. The safety of
■ Atlanta’s black children is
i at stake, and so too is the
fragile state of race
i relations.
The longer the case
I drags on, the more it will
become a flash point for
I people’s worst fears and
i imaginings. It has already
far worse than the diseases he seeks to
cure.
Mr. Williams, for instance, claims
that the minimum wage is partly
responsible for the extremely high rate of
black teenage unemployment. His cure:
Establish a subminimum wage for
teenagers, thereby allowing private in
dustry to hire more youths. We think that
such a policy could lead to the
displacement of unskilled adult workers
who are now earning the minimum wage.
What would stop a employer from laying
off an adult worker in favor of a teenager
who could be hired to do the same job fa
less money?
Mr. Williams is also accustomed to
arguing that racial discrimination is not
the only reason that blacks remain in
poverty. In that regard, he reminds us of
a sociologist who stumbles upon thousands
of blacks trapped in a deep, deep hole.
Instead of extending a ladder of op
portunity to help blacks climb out of the
pit. the sociologist stands around debating
how the poor souls ga trapped in the
first place.
Mr. Williams is also accustomed to
citing the "progress” that blacks have
made in the organized spats as proof that
they need no special programs in order to
compete with whites. He overlooks the
fact that for every Jackie Robinson, there
are thousands of blacks who are denied
the opportunity to become professionals
athletes. Obviously, Mr. Williams has not
taken a look at the front office of the
nation's professional baseball, basketball
and football teams. There he would find
few if any black faces. That, Mr.
Williams, is why affirmative action
•programs are necessary.
We share the frustrations that many
scholars encounter in trying to find
workable solutions to the problem of
poverty facing the black community. But
we expect more from intellectuals than
warmed-over Republican proposals that do
more harm than the Democratic inspired
programs they would replace.
been said that had the
victims been white, or even
middle dass blacks, the
authorities would have
moved sooner and would
have conduded that the
killings were linked -at an 1
earlier date.
I can understand the
frustration behind such
claims, but the evidence
does not point in that
direction.' The dty ad
ministration and its police
leadership are highly
competent and committed
black people.
Factors in the in
dividual cases of the ■
earliest murders suggested
The Final
America’s Educationaii
System: | I m
By Acddent Or Design L I
■jT* v
Whites have fed into ■
this educational system a
slow-acting poison tha| :
instead of turning the
student onto higher ;
maivation fa learning, I
they have turned our i
children off to education. ’
Those young Blacks males i
may have started off in
school brilliant, but by the 1
time that child reaches the i
fourth grade he starts I
regressing, as the female i
child steadily moves ahead.
Upon graduating the young
16 year old high school girl i
is much more advanced I
intellectually, I
psychologically, and i
emaionally then the male <
child. The dilemna facing ■
that young girl is the need
to find a suitable mate, fa
the young boys her age i
have nahing to offer. So in
selecting a mate she is
faced to seek out older <
men. Is this by accident a
design?
A youngster upon
entering school starts off in
the kindergarten. Kin
dergarten is a German ■
word, kinder is the wad •
for children, garten :
meaning the fertile soil, i
What kind of seeds were 1
sowed in our minds 30 a i
40 years ago in the kin- )
dergarten? If you can’t’ i
recognize the seed then j
look at the full grown tree, i
What fruit has it beared? 1
Grown men and women
sitting idle waiting on the ,
white man. This if an
indictment against the
American educational
system. Let’s go back to i
those early stages of 1
childhood development.
When you go to kin- i
dergarten you are taught <
nursery rhymes that have i
no place in the wald of
reality. They begin to feed i
young minds with unreal i
thoughts; lions & cats
talking; mice thinking and
planning. It becomes only
natural that you would
grow up believing in the
Bible that a serpant spoke
to Eve. You have been fed
unrealities since the time
that you have come on the ,
planet. So what is a little
mae unreality now fa you
believe that when you die
you are going to heaven.
You have been trained to
be a foci since the time you
have been in school-trying
to learn the golden rule.
Mary had a little lamb,
her fleece was white as
snow. Jack and Jill went up
the hill to fetch a pail erf
A rabbi spoke with the Lord about Heaven and Hell.
“I will show you Hell,” said the Lad and they went
Into a room which had a large p6t of stew in the
middle. The smell was delicious and around the pa
sat people who were fambhed and desperate. AB
were holding spoons with very long handles which
reached to the pa, bnt because the handle of the
spoon was longer than their am, it was impossible to
get the stew back into their mouths. Thefc suffering
was terrible.
....“Now 1 wll show you lieaven,” said the Lad,
and they went into an identical room. There was the
same pa of stew and the people had the same
identical spoons, but they were well-nourished, talking
and happy. At first the rabbi did na understand. “It
is simple,” said the Lord. “You see, they have
learned to feed each other.”
no common origins. When
linkages were made a
special investigatory unit
was set up. In fact, it was
many months before the
pace of the murders
quickened to the point
where it could be
reasonably assumed that,
they were linked.
It appears then, that
the relatively slow pace of
the early disappearances
and the factors in each
case, not the race of the
victims, were the reasons
for the delayed recognition
that the murders were
finked. Even now, it seems
that several killers may be
water. Goldielocks and
Snow White. Check the
seed out Black Maher and
Black Father. Why is it that
your black child is made to
feel ashamed of her black
skin? Knowing they are na'
white, they see Snow White
and Goldielocks, they
wonder due to genetics if
God had made a mistake by
making them Black. By the
time we have grown to
reading in the 3rd grade,
we become aware of the
wald around us. We feel
that our blackness is what,
has caused us to feel in--
ferior. You are na Dick
neither are we Jane, but
everytime you look into the
school book you see a white
wald-everything is white.!
J ust where do you fit in, in
all this whiteness now you
are ready to be fed the
Santa myth, he comes
every December 24th
bringing gifts and toys. All
year long Black mahers
and fathers struggle to
survive pinching off every
welfare roll so that they can
give the child a Merry
Christmas, then the credit
is given to that white man,
dressed up in a red and
black suit. This reinfaces
in the black child’s mind
that you don’t ask Black
mama a daddy, but go to
the white man- he has '
everything.
' I began this article
with a statement a in
dictment against the
American Educational
system. This is not meant
to over shadow those
dedicated Black teachers,
but it is a call fa alarm,
saying to you and I it is
time to be about caring fa
our own. You see then
everyday of your life as
they were raped in
tellectually and mentally,
unable to find a job.no way
a suppating themselves
except through crime. Yes,
it is America’s educational
system that has destroyed
our children. As a people
we canna have culture and
customs, until we liberate
ourselves and build our
. own Nation, which, will
allow us to educate our
selves. Now is the time.
Think Reflect! Then
get up and da The time of
this wald is at hand. This
is the Final Call! If you
would like to help in
restaation of the Black
Nation write:
Minister Louis Farrakhan
Pat Office Bax 8154
Chicago, nitaoh 60680
involved, including one
responsible for most of the
deaths.
It should be remem
bered that there have been
other mass killings that
took the police years to
solve, and the victims in
those cases were whites.
New York’s “Son of Sam”
terrorized the dty for years
before he was caught.
Other dties took years to
capture mass killers. Police
in England only recently
arrested a man charged
with killing many women,
who was dubbed the
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