Newspapers / Winston-Salem Chronicle (Winston-Salem, N.C.) / Jan. 8, 2004, edition 1 / Page 6
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OPINION ? i The Chronicle f knist H. Pitt titiMi Pitt tmcK a Aseuftr T. Kivin Walker Kay Stuitz Puhlfctaer/Co-Founder Business Manager Office Manager Managing Editor Production Superv isor ? National Newspaper Publishers Association North Carotin* Press Association Certified Audit CAC of Circulation ^=1 Amalgamated * Publishers. Inc Black men The NASA rover that just landed on Mars has been in the news a lot lately. Imagine it sci entists from some other planet sent a rover or an alien repre sentative to investigate this planet. What would they learn about African-Americans, par ticularly black men? If they examined local news. the\ would be bombard ed with news about Quincy Allen, a twenty-something black man who is charged w ith 'a shooting spree. Pictures of Allen in his orange prison jumpsuit have become as famil iar as the Mona Lisa to local folks. Two of the biggest .national headlines last year focused on black men in peril as will. Kobe Bryant's mug shot was everywhere after he was accused of rape, and Michael Jackson (he is still black despite the Porcelana) has made much more news for allegedly being a pedophile than he ever received for selling more albums than the Beatles. The point is. black men are being portrayed to the world, and possibly beyond, as danger ous and sexually sinister. The danger is that there is no or too little balance to counter the negative stqries about black men. Why can't Greg Williams (Page A4) be the top story on CNN. He is a high school sen ior who has done everything right: studied hard and stayed on the straight and narrow. He is currently at the top of his class at North Forsyfh High School. When Williams and other African-American high achiev ers were honored on New Year's Day at the Emancipa tion Proclamation ceremony, no television news cameras both ered to show up to document their achievements. Murder, we assume, is the only way a black man can make headlines in the Triad. - ? - Ffle Photo Mayor Allen Joines Mayor Joines You may notice that there is rarely a week that a picture of Mayor Allen Joines doesn't appear in The Chronicle. We are not playing political favorites, but the mayor has become a fixture at communi ty events and church pro grams. And. -since? \yp arf. .k, community newspaper, we run into the mayor a lot. Any politician could show* up at one or two "black" events during election time, and many do. but it is safe to say that Joines is not faking it. He is more than two years into his term and has not let up on his community involvement. On Christmas Eve. Joines took what many would con sider a political risk when he showed up at a support rally for Darryl Hunt. He was the only w hite member of the City Council there. In a town where many non-African Americans Still believe that Hunt is a murderer and rapist, Joines' appearance surely raised some eyebrows. Thank fully. though, we have at least one prominent white citizen jn this town who is not afraid-te? . sluud ulL.the side of truth and _ justice. We should all pray for ? more like him. Th# black community has already fallen head over heels for Joines. which is a big accomplishment considering black folks can spot a slick politician at midnight while blindfolded. But Joines' popu larity does not necessarily come from the fact that he rarely turns down invitations. His actions correspond with his words, and he has only one face that is always turned toward equality and rightful ness. www.wschronicle.com [ Tip Wright Brothers-IOC 'fears Later.. oRVILLE,ARE You R3SITIVE YOU m? TIEP YOIR poCKET? P yes,wil ml NcW HURRY UP 50 1 CAN INSPECT YOUR SHoE5/r i SWeeP ^ep Responses to gay marriage piece George E. Curry ( J U4*St C olumnist Not surprisingly, I received a torren^ of mail about a column I wrote a month ago expressing mixed feelings about same-sex marriages. Many of the responses were part of a national letter-w rit ing campaign organized by the Los Angeles-based Gay & Les hian Alliance Against Defama tiort. Of course, that doesn't make their opinions any less valid, and I've decided to use this space to share excerpts from their e-mails and letters. "Like most gay people. I am able to* comprehend, if not agree with, the trouble many religious peopJe have with homosexuality, and the movement in this country to legally recognize our relation ships. After all. I was raised in the Catholic Church, where 1 was taught how vulgar, how -immoral, how disgusting, how repellent gay Nand lesbian people were. Imagine my surprise, my disgust, my .shame w ljen I realized that I was one of those people. "...You hold our sex lives to be immoral, which means that you hold our love lives, our rela tionships, to be immoral. You are fine if we keep that morality under wraps, in the privacy of our own homes. You jutt don't want to hear about it, you don't want to see it. and you sure as hell don't w ant your government or church es recognizing it as something positive, or at least neutral ...What are we to do? Do you really expect millions of peo ple in this country to remain silent about our lives, simply because you are offended? Do you expect those millions to meekly acquiesce to your demands for silence and shame?" - William F. Tulloch "You obviously were not lynched, and now you would not be killed for whistling at a white woman. You never lived that type of oppression that the. African slaves lived. I, on the other hand, am still living in the gay Jim Crow era. and you are the one posting a Straight Only' sign. .. "Many of us hide ail the things that happen to us to protect our family members from shame. Families have lost members due to suicide because they couldn't be who they were without leaving town. Many gay sons are beaten by fathers and put in the streets. Mothers disown their daughters. We are chased and beaten, physi tally and emotionally by school bullies and religious-nuts." - E. Swinney "I don't think that any strug gle can be fairly compared against another, as each person is different. However. I think a degree of respect is necessary if equality is ever to be achieved. Maybe the gay rights movement cannot be compared to the black rights movement but there is one common threat thread - we are all human. All humans deserve equality." -J. Terrell "You say that it irks you that gays have the audacity to use the civil rights movement as a model for our civil rights, that you had no choice in being black. Well, sorry to bust your bubble. I had no choice in being black or being gay. How can you tell 10 percent of the population that they chose to be something that obviously is not accepted by the masses? Who in their right mind would want that type of ridicule ? A masochist maybe, but not rns and a host of others." - Richard Kirkwood "I am an out black lesbian who has been active in the lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender/ queer/intrasex (lgbtq&i). the black communities, community econqgiic ? development and grassroot politics for over 40 years. I am an out black lesbian in a committed relationship with ' another black lesbian for over 24 years. As an out black lesbian couple, we have raised two great, straight adult children. Our chil dren are highly successful, and they have given us five wonder ful grandchildren. We have instilled in our children great sense of the black and Igbtq&i communities, profound beliefs and good work ethics." - Cheryl Robinson "Just as I'm sure you didn't wake up one day and decide you were going to be heterosexuals, most of us homosexuals did not wake up and decide to be homo sexual. You must be how God made you. As a black homosexu al man who God. in all His infi nite glory and wisdom, made. He didn't make me to be less. He made me gay and He blessed pie this way." - Minister Hank Millboume George E. Curry is editor-in chief of the NNPA News Service and BiackPressUSA.com. His most recent book is "The Best of Emerge Magazine. " an antholo gy pubtished by Ballantine Books. He can he reached through his Web site, georgecur ry.com. Can't teach old paper new tricks Ernie Pitt This & That Finally, after almost 19 years and plenty of blood, sweat and tears, justice is about to be served in the Dar ryl Hunt case. Those who stuck with Hunt are elated, and so am I. They prayed a lot. filed many motions, and that persistence has paid off. It also has revealed many other more sinister activities. Not only should the criminal justice system be overhauled, but the manner in which the daily newspaper contributed to the dissemination of misinforma tion should be criticized as well.- ? "TP* Strikes Trie as_very odd that the daily newspaper - I don't call it the local daily' because it is owned by Media General, whose headquarters is in Richmond. Va. - was able to time an eight-part series on the Hunt case .just weeks before the new evidence was discovered and released, basi cally exonerating Hunt. Now. they are taking credit for hav ing saved Hunt Hov\ ironic. Go back and look at how ultraconservative the daily's coverage was dur ing the time of the investiga tion and the trial. They never questioned nor challenged the DA's half-baked theories, nor any of the other half-truths presented at the time. The daily paper needed nearly two decades and a plethora of sci entific evidence before it "File Photo Darryl Hunt and his vtife, April ; changed its tune, while the black community and this newspaper just used common sense to see the charges against Hunt were trumped-up from (he very beginning* I suspect that the new DNA information may have been leaked to the daily so that they could clean up their act before its release. Don't be fooled. Why. all of a sudden, does an ultraconservative newspaper with a racist pasCtare about people who look like you and me? You have to go back 20 years to see wt\at The Chroni cle did and how The Chronicle kept alive the urgings of those who supplied Hunt. In fact. Allen Johnson, who is now the editor of the editorial page for the Greensboro News & Record, won a Commuriity Service Award from (he N.C: Press Association in 1985 for The Chronicle's coverage of the case (Johnson was editor of The Chronicle at the time). The journalism professor who judged the contest said, in part: "... The newspaper gave its readership the kind of cov erage that readers probably did not get from other area media sources. In particular, much of the focus was on the defen dant. and the newspaper oper ated properly within its scope to show his (Hunt's) side in the case...." Johnson was the first mem ber of the press to interview Hunt after his arrest. (Read that interview at www.wschronicle.com.) The daily's coverage back then reminds me of the case of Sheila McKellar. who was handcuffed, gagged and suffo cated in a magistrate's office. The daily thought nothing of it because McKellar was a drug addict with HIV. It also reminds me of the case involv ing Carlos Stoner, a black man who was castrated near Wash ington Park. It was' a hate crime that was kept hush-hush because the victim was allegedly homosexual. But did he deserve to be castrated and fiave his penis shoved down his throat? Were knot for The Chronicle, those incidents may never have seen the light of day. We must never forget how mainstream institutrons for profit and power have hood winked us. The view may be ? different now but the heart and soul are still the same. We must not forget our past, including the atrocities perpe trated against our community. We must look more favorably on our own institutions - mak ing them stronger and more viable. There and only there is where we have influence and power. When the deal goes down, we must be able to depend on our own. It only makes sense. God helps those who help >. themselves. Peace, love ahd grace during 2004. Amen! Ernie Pi/t is the publisher of The Chronicle and the chairman of the Housing Authority of Winston-Salem Board of Commissioners. E mtiil him at erpitt@wschroni cle.com.
Winston-Salem Chronicle (Winston-Salem, N.C.)
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