Newspapers / Winston-Salem Chronicle (Winston-Salem, N.C.) / Nov. 22, 1980, edition 1 / Page 4
Part of Winston-Salem Chronicle (Winston-Salem, N.C.) / About this page
This page has errors
The date, title, or page description is wrong
This page has harmful content
This page contains sensitive or offensive material
,< V* I - . t ? \ lvagc 4-Thc Chronicle, Saturday, November 22, 1980 ^Bb i? ^ k\ Wiqston-i Ndu * ti I rncsi H. Pill Member North C arollna Bltrk Publlnher'% Afttocladon 1.(1 It Of Elt/fltslU'i totyKa Koben I I lei NCPA Sports Editor N.C. Press Association Outrage In By Clifton Graves Some were shocked, others saddened; but most, outraged, at the "non-decision" in the Klan-Nazi trial. I say "non-decision" because a not guilty verdict for those six hoodlums was in effect no verdict at all. Some\will contend that the technical legal aspects ot the case were the determining factors in the non-decision. They will cite the failure of the CWP witnesses to testify against the Klan; the non-apperance of the federal government agent who allegedly "set-up" the Klan andNazis; and the unprecedented (in a case of this import) decision to let the jury go home during deliberations. Granted, these are valid observations - points which will be commented on for decades to come. ^But-tmfommately_foLNorih Carolina and America^ the average Black, brown and red man don't see it that wav. Thev do not give a dpn about this legal tactic or that legal technicality. All they know is what they see; and what they see is. the "same old-same old..." a perpetuation of America's racist two-tier system of injustice!! To the oppressed elements in this society, the Greensboro debacle is added to an ever growing list of ? -,4deja vu" scenarios. They have seen it all before... Names, dates, and faces change, but the verdicts are almost always the same. From this day forward, a collective of concerned citizens of all races must increase - with great diligence i -the efforts to bring true justice to this land of no justice. ft-' Black People a, i ' By Allen Johnson Special to the Chronicle I Americans are notorious for holding conferences. We rent rooms in Ramada Inns, assemble our best minds, socialize in conference suits adorned with ^ decorative name lags, go on sightseeing tours of Atlanta or New York or wherever the conference is held, and leave agreeing that there is a problem and something ought to be done. There is a wide variety of American conferences. Among the more prevalent of the speices are: The Bi-Raical Race Relations Confernece:\Jsua\\y these conferences are called retreats and involve a group of black afttfwhite people who share a cabin in the coun?try-for the weekend and play volleyball and scrabble together. They also meditate and play "I'm Okay, You're Okay" games. When the weekend has ended, they wonder why other black people and white people can't live together in harmony as they did. Then the white people go back to their high-paying jobs and big houses and the black people go back to their lower paying jobs and not-so-big houses-until the next t retreat. The Black Intelligentsia Conference.-This get-together is the perfect time to argue such earth-shaking literary questions as whether Richard Wright had a mole his left, ? - ? or ngni ear iodc. - / The Black Leaders Conference:Noted black leaders congregate and and talk about how racism still exists and needs to be crushed. Who elected these black leaders? Well, nobody really. The white media got together and said they were black leaders, so they must be. The Devoted Fan of Something or Other ! Being An Am It is a pleasure to be a attendance at the polls. United States Citizen. However, the referenEven thoUffh we are fnis- Hum rftn<vrnino iuHt?#?c ??. Itrated by Bureaucracy, and quirements, whether to, or the citizens are exasperated not to be lawyers, was of by inflation, hardship and importance enough to be government originated mis- placed on the ballot, but no fortune, we can look for- emphasis was exercised to ward to future elections to make the voter aware of replace the people in office how critical the outcome in hopes that situations will might become. The need improve. for better government was This year, the voters their prime concern, and showed their need and the referendum was a concern, by their spirited strong unrecognized part of Salem Cfyroqiclc Member oundcd '4^4 hist I i!ci)ion\c \UlDvV) oii/itlcr V y/ Audit Bureau Donna E. Oldham of circulations ' City Editor Elaine L. Pitt Office Manager Greensboro Time is running out on North Carolina and America, tor today literally thousands are screaming inwardly and outwardly: How long?!? How long?!? How long can we idly watch innocents like the Wilmington 10-be marched off to prison, while red-neck murderers like the Klan Nazi 6 go free?!? How long can we condone the vindication of white policemen like the ones who murdered Mr. McDuffie in Miami, while black 17 year-oldTerrance Johnson sits in a Maryland prison for defending himself from a racist policemen's attack?!? How long can we passively watch the selective persecutions of a Charles Diggs, C&rl Russell, or Jean Burkins while hundreds of their white counterparts go barely adr monished?!? v HOW lone will we let Amerira ir> uc that it ic more important and newsworthy to discover who shot that fool J.R. Ewing, than to find out who shot Vernon Jordan, the brothers in Buffalo, or those children in Atlanta?!? The collective answer to the questions should be resounding: NCTTLONG!!! But emotional rhetoric alone is insufficient. Immediately, yet deliberately, we must begin to develop plans of action to counter the right-wing tidal wave that is engulfing us. Tactics such as calling for Justice Department and/or congressional inquiries into the Greensboro horror story are necessary - but these are only tactics!! What we need is a long term STRATEGY, that will effectively counter the Reagan-Helms reactionaries, as well as the forces behind the Greensboro See Page 6 <4 1 ' K - ? ' (? V .? *1 v 1 1 .. "m m/7 T/>??/?M/?/ ?? r?u tAtLW \ Conference:Since the 20th century is so boring and unfulfilling, many of us have the tendency to latch onto anything aviailable to make life worthwhile-espically since television is so bad and movies cost a month's rent. Wheter you're a devotee of "Star Trek," "Dallas," checkers, chess, ant farming, nucleat waste disposal, old Godzilla movies or underwater basketweaving, there is a conference for you somewhere. If not, you've just as much right as anybody else to start one. The Wear-A-Three-Piece-Suit-and-aSkinny-Tie-andGet-a-job-with-a-high-Paying White-Corporation Conference:Young, black Barbies and Kens bring sparkling resumses to huge conferences attended mostly by white recruiters from white businesses which have no openings. _ :_Why ihese recruiters-bother, to come at all has long been a mystery to me. A friend of mine who regularly wears suits and skinny ties (so he should know) once told me that the companies send representatives because it's good public relations. Now excuse me for being ignorant, but 1 never could quite figure how giving encouraging interviews to people for jobs which do not exist can be good public relations. Rumor has it that the conference was invented hv Thomas T. Conference in 1775. Conference was an English statesman who figured that the perfect way tc keep the uppitty colonists in their place was to have them meet at taverns, try to impress each other, agree that the sky will probably continue to be blue and get drunk. Although Conference's plan didn't work quite as fast as he would have hoped, it seems it finally be making headway. Heck, even our systems of government is based largely or conference. They call the Congresses. V ? \ X erican Citizen c inn a 1 n?Anla "" I aic, usuanj, The State of North Caro- educated machines, not Una has removed another necessarily accustomed to one of the "People's mercifully dealing with the Rights" by mixing it into a compassionate phase of panel of confusing final true Justice, decisions. The voters have Attorneys have led the been misled by a co- people to - believe every incidental "side effect judge had to be, first, a lawyer. This misconception of the election process. kept the lawyers and judges Justice administered by in the same syndicate. The professional patterns State's judges become leaves little chance for the judge and jury and they are unfairly accused. Profes- See Page 6 , * 4 ? W ~ vl WHATEVER HAPPENED TO Liberals-and espically blacks-are consumed with gloom and despair over what a Reagan presidency will mean for their interest. It will be months before anyone knows for sure, but it is hard to see, at this point, the justification for the gloom. indeed, it may turn out that in a year or two, Reagan will be viewed as not really so bad-if only because the expectations are so negative. I've been questioning, listening to and reading some of these forecasters of doom and trying to figure out just what the peculiarly anti-black consequences of a Reagan presidency are like to be. For instance, I've just finished taking to a man who acknowledged that he is in a deep funk. He is afraid, he says, that Reagan will shortly begin to dismantle all the programs that have been designed to help blacks. Like what for instance? ' He thought'for several seconds, then said: "Like CETA, for instance." But as we talked he acknowledged that even a conservative President is unlikely to shut down a program that employs the hard-core jobless without creating some alternative for putting them to work. And since the Reagan predisposition would abe to put them to work in the private sector, that might turn out to be a plus. j "What about welfare?" he said. But Reagan's celebrated (and perhaps overrated) slashing of California's welfare rolls when he was governor of that state _ i* ? - - - was accompusned by training recipients and moving them first into public and thence into private sector jobs. My gloomy friend agreed. ,"\ And so it has gone in a number of conversations. Some blacks have depressed Km iliai Reagan wuulii nUj be kindly disposed toward federal minority business programs. But those programs are the creature of another conservative President, Richard Nixon, and seem to fit with Reagan's general notion that the best thing that can be done for minorities is to move them into the economic maninstrea. None of thise is to say that there is no cause for concdrn. Those who favor the Equal Rights Amendment or who oppose school prayers or who see busing as the solution to the educational problems of blacks have no basis for ontimism in thp u/oVp Doar???'e. 1 _f ? ...v ntm? vi nvagaii a uiaasivc viciury. OUl The morning-after shock effects of the Reagan landslide are beginning to fade away, and a more realistic attitude is being taken by many people who fear the worst from a self-professed conservative Administration. The Reagan campaign rhetoric-44let's get government off the backs of the people, etc."- led many to fear a wholesale dismantling of social programs and a rollback of civil rights measures come next January. But there's a big difference between campaign rhetoric , - ana tnc reality of governing a large, pluralistic nation in which the judiciary, the Congress and permanedt civil servants all serve as brakes on even the most idologically-oriented president. And there is considerable evidence that Mr. Reagan is more pragmatic than his reputation leads people to believe. It's not unusual for presidents to adopt a right-wing or left-wing rhetorical stance while actually running a middle-of-the-road administration. Clearly, a Reagan presidency will have a strong titlt to the right, as did Nixon's. But all presidents move to the center after they are elected, and the hard realitites of governing mean they are largely unable to touch the vital f' - _ V w mm imu , -,-; " ?? mt" im*m* T .-,: ? .* tffrr? v - : .j _. ? 3! * . -'? *-*.-7 _ ~ <jJr ji^ "DIRT CHCAP'-#* " \eagan As L \resident I these things were not at the heart of black concerns even before the election. A Reagan presidency bids fair to put roadblocks in the way of government-funded abortion. But whether this will have the dire consequences predicted by pro-abortion liberals remains to be seen. Tl ? ine clearest tnreat to the intersts of minorities and liberals is in the judiciary. The fear is that Reagan will be inclined to appoint Rehnquist-type judges to the courts, and since the Senate has been denuded of its leberal wing (with South Carolina's Strom Thurmond to replace Ted Kennedy as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee) it will be more difficult to wage effective battle against some of the more reactionary appoint-ments. ; -V - , But even here, there mfcy 8e some surprises. Nothing in Reagan's history suggests that his inclination will be to the Haynsworth/Carswell type of judges--unless he senses a need to throw a bone or two to his most right-wing supporters. The best guess, based on what is known of Reagan, is taht his Cabinet will be chosen on the basise of experience and demonstrated competency, and that it will likely include at least as many blacks--one--as Carter appointed. Nor is there any reason to suppose that he_ will place substantially fewer blacks than did Carter in important sub-cabinet posts. ' Most of the fears 1 have heard expressed are based on the fact that, during much of our history, conservative politics has tended to mean racist politics. But for all his attempts to do so during the campaign. Carter was unable to sell the image of Reagan as racist. Overall, it strikes me that the predictions of disaster are based more on emotion than on a realistic assessment of what is likely to happen. The more prudent course, it seems to me, is for blacks, other minorities and liberals to gird to fight oiv speicific issues rather than react to a Reagan administration as evil incarnate. And if Reagan is able to do half of what he clearly expects to do in terms of setting the U.S. economy straight, black America's unrestrained tears may turn into restrained cheers. The advice hese is: Let's wait and see. andslide ^ - - I iren i core interests of major interest groups. THe courts will continue to stand as bulwarks against erosion of black constitutional rights-even a conservative Supreme Court backed affirmative action in the Weber and Fullilove cases. And the coaltion that splintered during the Carter Administration because of competition for influence with a friendly presedent, will regroup and strengthen in the coming months. Such colaitions are always more united when defending basic interest. Every president-elect enjoys a honeymoon period, espically when he comes to office in an electoral victory of such massive proportions. It makes sense to suspend judgment until Mr. Reagna announces his major appointments and the basic program he intends to carry out in the first months of his presidency. In his August speech to the National Urban League, candidate Reagan came out strongly for urban revitali zation, welfare for the truly needy, equal opportunity and "jobs, jobs, jobs." And he promised not to fight national problems "on the backs of the poor"-- a clear pledge not St\* Page JO V L
Winston-Salem Chronicle (Winston-Salem, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Nov. 22, 1980, edition 1
4
Click "Submit" to request a review of this page. NCDHC staff will check .
0 / 75