Newspapers / Black Ink (Black Student … / May 5, 1977, edition 1 / Page 12
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Page 12 Reader urges removal of racist maeazine ^ Contin Dear Editor: The University has long been noted for its quest for academic excellence and high-quality scholar ship. As a leader of institutions of higher learning, the University has sought to provide the highest quality materials for the members of the University community in which students, faculty, staff and others might contribute to a tradi tion of scholarship, consequently, affording members of the Univer sity in addition to furnishing ser vices for the state, the nation, and the world. With these meritorious and noble goals that the University seeks to realize for itself (as well as for the members of the University community) it puzzles the author how the University allows itself to sink to a nadir of mediocrity by allowing the University libraries to posit publications that are not only an offense to the dignity of segments of the University com munity (and human dignity in general) but in addition, particular- continued from Page 11 • ly discouraging to persons who share the high ideals and aspirations of the University. Specifically, the publication is The Thunderbolt, published by the National States Rights Party (a Neo-Nazi Organization). This publi cation indiscriminately and irre sponsibly reports information that has as its primary goal the degrada tion of the culture, history, and contributions of the Black and Jewish peoples of this nation. The newspaper is located in Wilson Library in the Periodical Annex. It goes without saying, that every member of the University community who shares in the University’s aspirations of academic excellence and high-quality scholar ship, and moreover, in the dignity of persons, should demand the im mediate and permanent removal of The Thunderbolt from this institu tion. Marvin Hamilton Chapel Hill Sidff phoKi by James Parker Black Ink pays tribute to Reverend Milton Lewis, Black campus minister who has given much of himself in his three years at Carolina. We wish him luck and success in his future endeavors. Senior disappointed at UNC life style Don Personette Staff Contributor I came to UNC with a distinct vision of college life. Everyone wore sweaters, smoked pipes (the mjiles that is) and was serious about getting a college education. There was more to it than that, however. I thought the high school days of queer-baiting and nigger-calling were behind me. An enlightened group of people went to college, I innocently believed; prejudices and biases would not enter into a university environ ment. Reality has slapped me re peatedly in the face for four years now. I look back and find it diffi cult to believe I ever had such idealistic beliefs. It didn’t take long to realize that higher education didn’t necessarily mean higher attitudes. Intelligence is one thing, I quickly lesimed; ground-in preju dices are another. Four years of constant com ments about niggers from so many acquaintances of mine have some what disillusioned me. People who are intelligent, people who have eagerly helped me when needed, used the word nigger as if they didn’t understand its implications. But they did. Blacks were niggers and niggers were dumb and lazy. And often nothing was said, but the prejudice was obviously there. Any ideas of integration helping solve the problem die in a dorm housing only whites. If prejudice is so widespread in college students at a supposed bastion of liberalism, what hope is there for ever doing away with it? These are college students, the so- called cream of the crop, not the everyday uneducated redneck fig ure. How is it possible to watch a basketball game and dismiss the Editor makes aj^al Dear Editor: I enjoyed the Awards Banquet last week and was quite encouraged by what I saw. The Black Ink is very much in the same vein as newspapers of the Black press. It has been a struggle for both of us. I was very happy that you and your staff and members of the UNC Black community have recognized your talents. Quite often we will wait to get sanction or approval from the powers that be before we feel good about ourselves. But I nink we do well to recognize our- elves and be proud of whatever accomplishments we make. I think the training that the Black ink staff has gotten, whether they are journalism majors or not, IS valuable for coping with the many struggles in life. You perhaps most of all can testify to that. I hope that some of you will look beyond simply wanting to work for a daily at a decent wage or wanting to change the dailies to something the Black community can relate to. Instead, I hop>e some of you will get into Black press as owners of weeklies. The need is as pressing today as it was 150 years ago. The Black press needs workers more than we need journalists. Someday the distinction will be come evident. Again I congratulate you and your staff for one Helluva good job under some very heavy circum stances. Much luck and success in the future. Sincerely, Ernie Pitt Editor-in-chief Winston-Salem Chronicle Vegas as a “bunch of niggers” and then, in the next breath, applaud Ford and Davis? I must admit that I’ll never understand this exception rule, especially com ing from a college student. I must keep telling myself, though, that education and attitudes do not necessarily go hand-in-hand. There’s more than the race problem. There’s also the situation of queers and fags, as the gay pop ulation is so commonly and laugh ingly referred to. Surely a college student would be able to live by a “live and let live” philosophy, I thought. Surely in the southern part of heaven, people would be free (free from cruelty and prejudice) to prac tice whatever they pleased so long as it didn’t directly interfere with someone else’s life. Once again I was wrong. Sample comments a- bout gays during the recent South eastern Gay Conference include: “In my mind, there’s nothing worse that you could be (a child killer? a rapist? a Manson?)”; and “I think we just oughta take ’em and hsmg ’em.” It was made to sound as if straights had gays to fear as w^ell as the opposite. There are so many, not nearly all, but so many students who feel this way. Intelligent, personable people—but unwilling to accept even the existence of an opposite style of hfe, be it Black or gay. I had been unprepared for this in a college town. But maybe I’ve expected too much from college students. Maybe I’ll look back after a couple of weeks and see the good side of college—the harmless pranks, the close friends, the intellectual ful fillment, the laughs, the comrad- erie, the personal insight I’ve gained about myself. But for now, in many respects, I am simply disappointed. I hear how enlightened this University is, from students, from faculty, from outsiders, and I just want to laugh... or maybe cry. Are Blacks really better ? cont. from page 6 from both.” Yet one thing remains an absolute fact in sports and that is that Blacks dominate some sporting events and whites dominate others. Seventy per cent of the players in the NBA are Black. Ninety-nine per cent of the pro hockey players are white. As shown in the Olym pics, the United States representa tives for the 400 and 1600 meter relay teams were composed of many Blacks and few whites. Sprinters such as Harvey Glance, Herman Frazier, Moxie Parks, and Fred Newhouse carried the baton in the United States’ gold medal- winning relay races. O’Koren also notes that en vironmental factors have kept the game’s greatest players on obscure playground courts. “I think the best players are still on the streets, especially in Harlem. I went up there and those guys were good. They could be millionaires, but they just use so much dope. It’s just so easy to take a sniff or use cocaine or something in the city. A guy will come over to the school yard and he’ll try to give you some dope. He’ll call you every name in the book, but I think you’ll get respect if you just say, ‘Look, I don’t want it because I don’t want to be standing on the comer for the rest of my life. I want to go somewhere and be somebody.’ If the situation that Mike O’Koren mentioned, in which the Blacks in the city play in the school yard £md the whites in the suburbs play by themselves was reversed, then how would things be under those circumstances? That’s a question to keep in mind.
Black Ink (Black Student Movement, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
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May 5, 1977, edition 1
12
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