Page A4-The Chronicle, Thursday, June 14, 1984 Winston-Salem Chronicle h (funded IV "4 ERNEST H. PITT, NDUBISI EGEMONYE ALLEN JOHNSON < ' / t'Utuli ' t \t\ Utt\f f till"* ELAINE L. PITT MICHAEL PITT JOHN SLAOE Wu'iuo' ( iti nluh*>n \wtsivni / iht*n A new home "You know, that's gonna be a real nice eatin' place," a pedestrian said a week or so ago while passing the Chronicle's new offices on North Liberty Street. Come to think of it, the red building with the beige awnings and modest courtyard would make a pleasant cafe, but we're also hoping it'll make a fairly decent headquarters for our weekly newspaper. As the contractor puts the finishing touches on our new brtsy stuffing pads aTTcl boxes and discovering where we put things we lost six months ago. We're also still trying to get out a newspaper, and looking forward to offices with roofs on them, air conditioning that's quiet enough so we can hear one another talk and windows that will allow those of us who work in the newsroom to know whether it's raining or snowing before quitting time. More importantly, we hope the building will allow us to produce a better product and serve our customers more quickly and efficiently when they come to visit. Our reception area and production facilities will be larger and more comfortable, our conference room big enough to accommodate the community meetings and workshops we hope to organize and our location still convenient enough for you to come by when you run errands downtown. As was the case when we vacated our cubbyhole on Patterson Avenue eight years ago, then moved from the Pepper Building to our Trade Street location in 1979, our readers are the reason we've come this far ? and we don't ever intend to forget it. Another statement we hope our move will make is that we believe in downtown Winston-Salem and are excited to be a part of the renaissance to come. We won't challenge RJR, Wachovia, Integon or Winston Plaza for a place on the Winston-Salem skyline, to be sure, but we hope our presence on Liberty Street will make it a nicer place to visit and encourage other small and minority firms to follow suit. We also believe* our move from Trade Street to Liberty Street serves notice to both our advertisers and readers, as we approach our tenth anniversary, that we are here to stay. Effective Monday, June 18, our mailing address will remain the same, but our street address will change to 617 N. I ihortu C t roof L^iL/VI I Jf Jll VWl. Our expanded phone numbers, also effective June 18, will include the following: For general information, call our business office at 722-8624. For information concerning advertising or circulation, call 722-8628. If you have story or picture ideas, or questions about an article that has appeared in the paper, call our news department at 723-8428 or 723-8448. Finally, the Black College Sports Review, our fledgling sorts magazine, can be reached at 723-9026. We'll acquaint our readers firsthand with our new building with an open house later this summer. Watch for details in future editions of the Chronicle. And thanks again for your continued support. Black family acquitted ** From the Portland Observer. The Center for the Study of Social Policy recently concluded that the reasons for the rise in black female-headed households were not social trends or welfare but the inability or reluctance of employers to hire btack~rrrerr: "Without * men ate unlikely w'inert'"ftrmBhw.'1" * - The black family was indicted by white America by Daniel P. Moynihan who, in 1965, said, "the deterioration of the fabric of Negro society is the deterioration of the Negro family." Moynihan vindicated white America for having any responsibility for the social oooression of black neonle. He i m r I * said the matriarchial structure (black women and mothers) emasculates the black male. Although the Moynthan theory has been refuted-manytimes, it is still used as a rationale by mis-informed critics to interpret the crisis in black family. What makes the Moynihan report so detrimental to the survival of black people is that it is based on misinterpretation and maneuvering of statistic, dialectic reasoning and white mythology. It influences many welfare programs, both public and private, and the effects on the lives of black children are farreaching. The social policy study stated what many in the black community have lived. Black men have been unable to give their families the economic foundation desirable for family stability. In 1982, 54 percent of all working-aged black men had jobs, while 78 percent of all working-aged white men were employed. In addition, 1.2 million black men were unemployed, 1.8 million had dropped out of the labor force, 186,000 were in prison and 925,000 were classified as missing. Please see page A12 < \fc/70U ?t>0R NM\OUS I \JDKHS, HfcRfc'S \NHM \Ne W AND AN END TO " SUBSIDIZED CWSUm\0\J \ r\ \ fN* ? 3^2- i!? KF Our daddies By CLIFTON GRAVES Chronicle Columnist (Editor's note: The following column IP xi P/imvi'MI ? f1 _ - I - j u rcfsnni kjj un turner ^ainer s uay tribute by the author.) Dedicated to the memory of my maternal and paternal grandfathers, Oscar Factory and Ed Craves; my daddy, Clifton Sr. and to all those men in history, my family and my ''extended" family, who have served as role models for this young father. Black men in America have historically had a hard way to go. It is a matter of record that white society's fear of the black man was. the root cause for the untold number of lynchings, castrations, shootings and beatings of our forefathers. Furthermore, it is a matter of record (as Judge A. Leon Higginbotham ably points out in "A Matter Of Color") that many of the racist laws enacted by the early Americans^were aimed primarily at the black man -- laws de nying him the rights to vote, own property, marry whomever he chose, etc. Interestingly enough, many feel that same societal attitude is prevalent today. Statistics indicating the grossly disproportionate number of black men incarcerated and on Death Row, umemployed, on drugs, killed in Vietnam, killed on Saturday Justice Vepi By JOHN JACOB Syndicated Columnist The folks over at the Department of Justice have been busy these days. Given their obligation to fight discrimination, you'd think their activity would be directed toward that end. Unfortunately, that's not the case. The department's long-simmering guerilla war on civil rights measures, especially affirmative action, has blossomed into a renewed offensive. And it is offensive in every sense of the word. The department recently mt- joinad. m kvim nvajii* < MimT \ ? ( : I^Jri i and their m; night, victimized by police brutality, victimized by job discrimination, etc., etc., lend credence to that perception. Now, some of you may argue that past or present societal wrongs do not justify today's black man stealing from his brother, or deserting his family. I agree. But until we fundamentally comprehend the problem, we can hardly begin to formulate a - ~~i.n ? 3UIUIIUII. beaters, there N"'^? I is an underly- CHftoa Gimm ing frustration with a society that continually represses their anibitions -- a society that even today demands that they be Mboys.'** It is for this reason, as snother Father's Day approaches, that we need to pay tribute to black -victims of, yet victors over America's racism. Men who, despite the obstacles, built banks and founded colleges, raised churches and reared children, excelled in academics and athletics . . war a gains, works contracts were set aside for minority businesses. Other cities, too, have taken similar steps to reserve a portion of local contracts for minority businesses. Dade County was trying to open the system to all, and in the process gave temporary preferences to qualified black businesses until those businesses had a share of county business proportional to tne black population. But the Justice Department says "Black businesses have um preferences given molarity enter ?^ -peeeent *of couttty w lion," local governments can't do that; only Congress can. And it claims that only firms that can prove they've been discriminated against in the past _1_ 1 J f - . snuuia quainy ior me set-aside. That's Alice-in-Wonderland thinking. Black businesses have uniformly been victimized by preferences given majority enterprises. You don't wind up with 1 percent of county contracts without a pattern of discrimination. There's no need to force individual proprietors into the expensive and time-consuming process of proving specific instances of past discrimination. Anyway, the issue is irrelevant since the set-aside programs serve the ttSY, THIS AW Vf/EUSTOP BOAB\N6r YOVfc CAPITAL CE OF Tt ZNX: ?WUBR\UVA, ( JSRFNCY KDJUSMEVTCS,.. ^ . dT^, f ) t ig'&O m *a? i, o q ll ^ SH'Mi WW any virtues . men who looked America squarely in the eye and asserted boldly, "Here 1 stand, For I Am a Man!" For African Americans, Father's Day is a time to honor "father figures," as well as blood relatives in our history -- men like Nat Turner and Benjamin Banneker, W.E.B. DuBois and James Weldon Johnson, Marcus Garvey and Adam Clayton Powell, Duke Ellington and Langston Hughes, Dr. Charles Drew and Judge William Hastle, A. Philip Randolph and Paul Robeson, Dr. Benjamin Mays and Dr. Carter Woodson, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X just a few of the many who dared to be Men. And then, of course, we must look to our own families. I, for one, am proud of the legacy of my greatgrandfather, Neely Factory, one of the first black deputy United States marshals, appointed by President Taft in the early 1900s to serve in the Oklahoma Territory. I also bask in the pride of having known and loved my grandfathers, Ed Graves and Oscar Factory, two kind-hearted men who not only provided for their families, but who also took no mess from any man, black or white. Then, there is my father ? my namesake - to whom I owe so much. Please see page A5 t civil rights public purpose of integrating local economies and increasing the numbersof black-owned businesses and the employment of black workers. A similar public purpose is served in the other case the department has chosen to contest. Birmingham, Ala., agreed in 1981 to a consent decree mandating affirmative action in hiring and promoting minorities and women in its police and fire departments. That formly been victimized by ;prises. You don't wind up* with, submita decree was ordered by a federal court at the urging of the Justice Department, which now is trying to overturn it. The department is joining a suit filed by white male policemen and _firemen charging they are being discriminated against. That is an incredible reversal of federal policy, since it involves a city whose history of discrimination was so blatant, something virtually everyone agrees about. The city's affirmation-action effort is designed to remedy its past illegal discrimination. The white males fighting the consent decree trot out the old line about Please see page A5 hey europe n40 *mer\ca-look act this" '( Chronicle Letters Not the way to catch a thief To The Editor: Entrapment, whether its code name is ABSCAM, COLCOR or BOOSTER 2, remains. a questionable technique in the apprehension of criminals or those assumed to be. The question is whether the taxpayers' interest is best served through this insidous method of trying to catch criminals. Do the means justify the ends, particularly when many suspects in crime have of law but, in the meantime, have suffered the pangs of character assassination through adverse publicity. Wherein the free press utilizes copious space in reporting incidents of prominent citizens suspected of crime following their arrest, the same press employs just a few lines to report their verdict of acquittance. However, the damage to the innocent has been done already N through innuendoes and the reporting of non-relative information by the press. The second issue evolves around the question, 4'Is it ethically or morally permissible for a law enforcement officer to become a coconspirator in crime? As most will agree, it is difficult enough for the average citizen to remain inside the law without being induced to break it. Regarding stolen property, there is a world of difference between receiving stolen merchandise and purchasing it for one's own use. The former suggests that one purchases illicit goods cheaply for the purpose of selling them later at a profit. Most people who purchase from petty thieves do so because they feel they ace getting a bargain, paying less than they would have to pay from a legitimate store. The idea of "something for nothing" appeals to the average person. In that respect, a peddler with a valid license,Jn not revealing his authorization, could unload his merchandise with relative ease because the consumer would feel that he would be buying "hot" goods at a reduced price. Law enforcement officials already know that the average petty thief is a drug addict who steals to feed his habit. They also know the places he disposes of his merchandise, and also realize that if ' half the people who bought his goods were annrehenH*?H would not be enough jails to house them. The thief is not looking for a fence because he has ready customers. The third issue is a concern shared by many in the community, which is the concern that law enforcement officers are searching for a kingpin, a big fence operator, and, in the absence of one locally, will manufacture one who is wellknown. It appears that they have gone, to the gxcaw length* in* thaw, rega?cL ??tv there in a great deal of more"" investigative work wKlcfT" would justify their use of the taxpayers' money. What about that still unsolved bizzare murder which occurred a couple of months ago? How about using their techniques to apprehend the heads of of organized crime, who are responsible for get ting illicit drugs into the community? Effective law enforcement officers are not concerned about favorable statistics of their results, but rather the quality of their efforts. Altharanzo L. Thompson Winston-Salem 3H, THMS VfcS, rtE'SLWBNW&To ! HIC6 661 AlONfr WTN HIS J \ A N6I&HB0CS Mm