4A EDITORIALS/The Charlotte Post January 16,1997' Clje Cljarlotte ^osft Published weekly by the Charlotte Post Publishing Co. 1531 Camden Road Charlotte, N.C. 28203 Gerald O. Johnson CEO/PUBLISHER Robert Johnson CO-PUBLISHER/ GENERAL MANAGER Herbert L. White EDITOR IN CfflEF Exploiting America’s working poor Corporations get rich through the spiteful treatment of labor By Carol Driscoll SPECIAL TO THE POST When I learned that the courageous workers at the Tyson Chicken plant in Cleveland, Miss., voted to be represented by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Workers Union — despite a fero cious anti-union campaign - I felt this was a great ethical victory. The conditions at the Cleveland plant are revolting: workers get only one seven minute bathroom break a day; injured and bleeding work ers are forced to return to the processing line, and earned sick pay is denied to people. Fm a union member and I'm proud that some years ago, after learn ing about the brutality lyson workers are subjected to, I stopped buy ing their chickens. As an Aesthetic Realism consultant, I passionately want the people of Charlotte, including workers at TVson’s plant in Monroe, to know what I am so grateful to have learned about the economy from Aesthetic Realism, the education founded in 1941 by the great American educator and economist, Eli Siegel, and taught today at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, a not-for-profit education al foundation in New York City. In 1970, Mr. Siegel explained this tremendous fact: that a way of economics that had gone on for centuries - the profit system - had failed because its basis is contempt for people. Contempt, “the lessen ing of what is different finm oneself as a means or self-increase as one sees it,” is, I learned, as ordinary as not listening to a person, or mak ing fun of the way someone dresses. It is also the cause of aU econom ic injustice, including working conditions that are dehumanizing and dangerous; that exist to make profit or Tyson stockholders who do not work f9r j:heir dividend checks and never give a thought to the per sons who are doing the work. ; -rt- The brutal exploitation of workers in America today, including the attempt to destroy unions, is happening because compemies can no longer make the profit they once did. Mr. Siegel stated: “There will be no economic recovery in the world until economics itself, the making of money, the having of jobs, becomes ethical; is based on good will rather than on the iU will that lias been predominant for centuries.” And in the international journal, “The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known,” EUen Reiss, the Class Chairman of Aesthetic Realism, explained compassionately: ‘T'lever before in American histoiy was there such iU nature and just plain anger in the workplaces of this land. The iU nature and anger are about ethics. A person at a computer in Salt Lake City; a man cutting metal in a Pennsylvania factory; a woman packaging chicken parts in a South Carolina plant, working on an assembly line, at a freezing temperature, with dangerous equipment, for little pay, with her body aching - these people are desperate for the pay- check they get, but also feel humiliated, outraged, profoundly kicked aroimd...The American people are furious—more overtly, flaifingly, permeatingly furious than ever before-at being treated unethically. They want, with American blood beating in their veins, an ethical economy!” The ethical economy the American people want and have a com plete right to; where people are seen with respect, are paid weU, and treated with dignity, wUl occur when persons throughout our nation- including government officials, economists and labor leaders, are ask ing emd honestly emswering the emergent and kind question Mr. Siegel asked: “What does a person deserve by being a person?” CAROL DRISCOLL is a consultant at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation in New York City. Pertinent facts about Ebonics By Joe Madison NATIONAL NEWSPAPER PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION Give a gold star to whoever first sounded the warning that you should never believe every thing you hear or read. That saying has been put to the test with the media’s coverage of the Oakland, Calif., school board's resolution seeking recognition of Ebonics as an effective tool to teach black yoimgsters standard English. But if you let the media teU it, the Oakland school officials voted to proclaim “Black English” as an official, separate language and would seek gov ernment funds to help instruc tors teach this foreign tongue to our children. Wrong. In fact, the media left such a thick, con fused doud over this story that many of us easily drew the wrong conclusions. What the school board actual ly said was that by recognizing Ebonics- a word derived by the combination of Ebony (black) and phonics (sound) - as a legit imate teaching technique, more Black students could learn to speak and write standard English at levels greater than they are now. And they have the proof to support their contentions. A few years ago, the same Oakland school district carried out a trial program with about 100 teach ers who used language exercises to smooth over the transition from “Black English” to stan dard English. School officials there said the program worked so well that it troosted language test scores. So, instead of lobbing insults at the Oakland school board when this story broke, I invit ed Professor Robert Williams of Washington University in St. Louis to come on my radio show to field questions on this issue. Professor Williams, who first coined the term “Ebonics” close to 30 ye£us £igo, was one of my teachers at Washington University. He was an early advocate of using Ebonics as a method to help our children better understand the differ ences in how they may nor mally speak among family and fidends, as opposed to how they should speak in a more public setting. He said that the mere use of “Black English” has always been seen by the rest of society as a knock against the black communify. He also said that the self-esteem of black children has suffered from years of being put down by teachers who scold our kids, sometimes in a most humiliat ing fashion. “Ebonics is a bridge finm the language that is familiar and already spoken by the child to one that is unfamiliar,” Professor Williams said. You can even draw a parallel from this controversy that would remind us of our whole experience as Afiican descen dants. When our ancestors were snatched from Afidca into slavery, they were forced to forget their familiar language and learn English, Spanish, French, or whatever tongue the slave owners spoke. Then, we had the Boer invasion of South Africa and part of their domination strategy was to cram the Afrikaans language down the throats of the black South African school children, vmtil they could take no more. Tha’'s what the grisly Soweto Massacre was about. But what is amazing to me in this controversy is the rapid response of Richard W. Riley, the secretary of Education. Look how fast he came out to say that “elevating Black English” to the, status of a language is not the' way to raise standards of achievement. He even shot down the notion of the Ebonics program receiving federal dol lars even before the Education Department received an official request, which incidentally it didn’t get anyway, because it was never the intention of the Oakland resolution to do so. And Kweisi Mfume of the NAACP, Jesse Jackson and oth ers quickly denounced the Oakland vote, without even reading the resolution. But we haven’t heard from Riley about what he's going to do about the outdated textbooks being used in black school dis tricts, or the appalling lack of computers in the classrooms. Mfume and Jackson have been awfully silent while there is a scary increase in the number of violent attacks in public schools, especially in Washington, D.C. Aren’t these bigger threats to the welfare of our children? Ebonics is no different finm the dialects used by southern whites, or whites in the North for that matter. Lately we’ve seen explained in the media that one characteris tic of Ebonics in the dropping of the “ing” on words. But how many whites who speak with a Southern accent drop their “ings” too? It all boils down to patterns of speech that are com monly spoken by groups of peo ple. And wherever you turn. you’ll find someone stra3dng from the rules of strict, standard English. I am a true believer that black youth are more than capable of. mastering the “King’s English.’^ As it turns out, the Oakland school board deserves the biggest gold star for its bold step forward teaching black students with an even hand of sensitivity and respect. In case you missed it, the Dallas Morning News, a few weeks ago, confirmed the charges made by Celerind Castillo, a former Drug Enforcement Administration- agent, that our government ha4 knowledge that cocaine was. being flown into the U. S. dur ing the mid-’80s, but did noth ing about it. A team of Morning News reporters went to El Salvador, where Castillo was stationed at that time, and interviewed several informants who reported their findings to Castillo. Castillo sent that information — which tied the cocaine ship ments to Oliver North and the effort to finance the Nicaraguan Contra rebels, who were orga nized by the CIA - to DEA headquarters in Washington. Today, his records remain clas sified and the DEA refuses to release the information. Jan. 1, 1997, was the 76th day of my hunger strike to get Congress to pass a Records Act that would force the DEA, CIA and the rest of the government to come clean. Stay tuned. JOE MADISON is a radio talk show host in Washington; D. C. Visit his Internet site at; http: II WWW. paltech: comimadison) Genocide and African Americans’ right for redress By Conrad Worrill SPECIAL TO THE POST Since our Oct. 25 announce ment of a campaign charging the United States government with genocide, the National Black United FVont has circulat ed petitions throughout the coimtry and thousands of people are beginning to sign them. It is our goal to obtain 1 mil lion signatures in our petition drive declaring that for over 400 years, the United States govern ment has committed innumer able acts of genocide against black pyeople. These petitions will be formal ly submitted to the United Nations on May 6, as part of the annual African Liberation Day activities celebrated throughout the African world community. NBUF chapters are beginning to hold forums on the issue of genocide in various cities around the country. On Dec. 6, over 200 people attended a forum, sponsored by the NBUF, Chicago Chapter, on the CIA, Crack Cocaine and genocide. The following day, I flew to New York City and participated in a similar forum sponsored by the Metropolitan New York Chapter of NBUF. It was a very good fonun and the word of our campaign is spreading in New York and on the Eastern Seaboard. Before I left New York, Jitu Weusi, one of the major archi tects of NBUF and a longtime activist and organizer, and I attended church service at the renowned House of The Lord Church in Brookljm where the Rev Herbert Daughtry is the pastor. Rev. Daughtiy was the founding Chairman of NBUF and served in that capacity frnm 1980 to 1985. For over 30 years he has also distinguished him self as one of the leading activist ministers in the country. Rev. Daughtry gave both Brother Jitu and I an opportimi- ty to speak to the congregation, which responded enthusiastical ly to our genocide campaign and petition drive. According to Funk and Wagnalls Dictionary “Genocide (is) the systematic extermina tion of racial and national groups. [The] term [was] first used in [the] indictment of German criminals after World War n. The term was coinpd by Raphael Lemkin in 1944.” Brother Olomenji, one of the foimders of the Chicago Chapter of NBUF, wrote a book in 1984 titled, “White Genocide, Black Obsolescence? The Question of Black Survival in White America.” This book was an out growth of NBUF's first National Unity Genocide Campaign. Brother Olomenji pointed out that “Genocide is a relatively recent addition to the vocabu lary of the West. It was invent ed to describe the government sanctioned mass murders of European Jews during World War II. Although a term origi nally applied to Jews, genocide may accurately be applied to the deliberate and systematic destruction of black people by white American socio-economic and cultural forces.” Continuing, Brother Olomenji explained that “Black people in the United States are caught in a genocidal system comparable to the Jews of Nazi Germany. The situations are not identical, however. Each rises out of a unique seedbed of historical fact and crdtural nuance. But there are enough essential similari ties in the two cases to warrant our watchful attention and ready action.” NBUF has kept a watchfiil eye on the genocidal trends and developments and their impact on the African community in America since 1981. According to Bob Brown an orgemizer with the All African Peoples Revolutionary Party, NBUF is following a long tradition of international appeals concern ing the condition of Afiican peo ple in this country. Brother Bob will be the hook editor of our historic complaint and petition drive. Brother Bob has been researching the over 70 years of international appeals on behalf of the Afiican Community in the United States. Bob informs us that since the Paris Peace Conference (1918), and the founding of the League of Nations (1920) £md the United Nations (1945), several historic and precedent setting appeals, petitions and complaints have been submitted to the interna tional commrmity speaking for people of Afiican descent in the United States. There have been numerous appeals on behalf of the Afiican Community to the United Nations from a variety of black organizations since 1947. Finally Bob Brown explained that our campaign will differ from previous complaints and petition “because it will be a product of a mass, nationwide organizing campaign and mobi lization effort.” CONRAD WORRILL is National Chairman of the National Black United Front in Chicago.