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VIEWPOINT
Boogie oogie racism
Mick Jagger says Black women like to f— all night in the song “Some
Girls.”
Rev. Jesse Jackson was outraged and tried to muster support in the
Black community. He didn’t get it.
Interestingly, Jagger had the audacity to jump on the stage, make
some gutteral noises and go into convulsions alongside reggae star
Peter Tosh on a recent version of “Saturday Night Live.” He was
supposed to be singing and dancing.
Of course, Jagger is somewhat of an old had of insulting Black
womeii. Remember the song “Brown Sugar” from a few years back?
And Jagger isn’t by himself. Elton John, bless his short, balding self,
performed “Island Girl,” an equally offensive Top 40 hit, a few years
ago and received few complaints.
Why the lack of a fuss?
Well,one possible explanation is that many of us don’t listen to lyrics.
If it has a beat to it we dance to it without giving a second thought to
what the artist is trying to say.
Which may be fortunate, since many of them haven’t been saying a
whole lot lately. And which leads us to our second reason.
Everybody’s in love nowadays. The lyrical militance and activism of
the 60s has been replaced by the sultry sex of the late 70s. It has become
almost common practice of male artists to substitute female moans for
spots in their songs where they couldn’t think of lyrics.
Now, I’ve got nothing against female moans, but enough is enough.
Females moan often enough in black music to make you wonder
whether or not Mick Jagger is right. In just a mere glance of black
music of late, the Blackbyrds, Donna Summer (the princess of
stereophonic orgasm), the Staple Singers, Teddy Pendergrass, Major
Harris, Rufus, Bootsy’s Rubberband, Betty Wright, George Duke,
Isaac Hayes and numerous others have worn the poor old feminine
moan out. If a songwriter can’t convey intimacy and sensuality without
being so heavy-handed, he ought to leave it alone.
Believe it or not. I’m not playing the role of holier than thou moralist.
I have nothing against sex. But somehow, a record laced with moans
gets to be like one of those cheap, X-rated movies. In the movies, they
use a poor excuse for a plot to link togeather sexual scenes.
In the recording industry they use poor excuses for music to link
togeather moans.
A BSM report card
TTie first BSM “Mid-Year Report” appears in this issue of Black Ink.
The two-page spread highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the
current administration and will seek to serve as a report card for the
Central Committee, said Chairperson Allen Johnson in a recent in
terview.’
“I’ve noticed that big corporations give their stockholders periodic
reports on financial progress,” he said. “And even though the BSM is
far from a big corporation, the General Body holds stock in the
organization and needs to know what it’s doing.
“Since I’ve been here as a student, the General Body has often been
completely befuddled as to what the Central Committee has been up to.
We at least hope this is a step in the right direction.”
Tlie BSM has taken other steps to increase accountability as well,
said Johnson. “We’ve conducted surveys and randomly phoned
numbers,” Johnson said. “They’ve both let us know some things that
we didn’t know.” Although Johnson said the “Grip>e Line” call-in
service has not received as much usage as he hoped, the service has
spawned some good ideas and will be continued into the spring. “I just
wish more people would call,” he said.
In a final reference to the Mid-Year Report, Johnson said an
anatomical metaphor he used may get him in trouble. “I compared the
BSM to a woman’s behind,” he said. “Somebody will get me for that.
Still, that comparison gets my point across. What’s more, it’ll cause
some people to read the article who ordinarily wouldn’t.”
E BoNy rm
tBONVTWKS
mor«/
Male drop-outs do better in
job market than degreed women
WASHINGTON, D.C. (CPS)-Who
makes more annually—male drop-outs
from high school, or female college
graduates?
Most people might assume the college
graduate would earn more, but statistics
compiled by the Scientific Manpower
Commission indicates that it isn't so. Male
drop-outs earned an average $9000 in 1976,
while female graduates averaged only
$7000. And the commission’s report
showed that statistics like these are
consistent for almost every profession.
The conunission, a private, non-profit
organization of the country’s major
scientific societies, recently catalogued
the position of women and minorities in all
the professional fields, including the
sciences, engineering, arts, humanities,
and education. In the resultant 288-page
report, they discovered that, while the last
decade of equal opportunity mandates had
contributed to a sharp increase of women
and minorities getting degrees of all kinds,
the laws apparently aren’t that effective in
the job market.
Minority and majority women, the
report finds, are still pass^ over for jobs,
and slighted in salary and promotion. This,
the report says, holds true in the govern
ment, academia, and the private sector.
Specifically, the report found:
—Unemployment rates for the
professionally-trained women continue to
be two-to-five times higher than for men in
the same field with the same level of
training, and the gap increades at higher
degree levels. For example, among all
1977 history doctorates, 2.9 percent of the
men were unemployed and seeking em-
{ioyment, compared with 10.4 percent of
... .,v.«
the women. In the social sciences, the
unemployment rate for male doctors was
one percent, while women’s was four
percent.
—Except for beginning engineers and
new bachelor’s level chemists employed
by industry, professional women’s salaries
were lower than those of men with com
parable training and experience at every
age, every degree level, in every field and
with every type of employer.
—The federal government, a major
employer of professionals, also appears to
discriminate. Women of all races still lag
well behind their male counterparts in
grade level, and thus salary. For example,
the government employes almost 1700
microbiologists, of whom 31 percent are
women and 6.5 percent are Black, with
one-third of blacks being women. The
average grade of the men is 12.17 com
pared to 11.31 for women, translating to
average salaries of $23,260 for men and
$18,550 for women. For Black men, the
average grade is 11.19 and for Black
women 10.21, translating to average
salaries of $19,000 for men and $18,200 for
women.
—While employment of women in higher
education has grown slowly through the
1970’s, their progress up the academic
ladder is still far behii^ that of men.
Among academically employed Ph.D’s in
the sciences and engineering who earned
those Ph.D’s between 1970 and 1974 , 4.4
percent of the men but only two percent of
the women have reached the rank of
professor. Among men, almost 30 percent
are associate professors, but less than 18
percent of the women have reached this