4
The Daily Tar Heel/Monday, March 15, 1993
Jackson issues call for student action against racial division
By Jason Richardson
State and National Editor
DURHAM Civil rights activist
Jesse Jackson delivered arousing wake
up call to American college students
Tuesday at Duke Chapel.
“Shall we choose to live together, or
shall we choose ethnic cleansing?” Jack
son asked the crowd, which filled the
chapel.
“Racism: This assumption that some
one is superior because of race it is
unscientific. It is politically divisive,
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economically exploitative, and it makes
our culture awkward and uncomfort
able.”
In his speech, titled “America at a
Crossroads: Our Hour of Decision,”
Jackson called on college students to
take up the flag of activism and outlined
problems caused by racism around the
world. “We have a choice to make, and
each choice has its consequences,” Jack
son said. “Life or death, hope or hate
and hurt, the low road or the high road.
“There is a certain urgency in our
country ... for us to approach a choice
between cultural
diversity and eth-
nic cleansing.
“Therefore we
say,‘Let’sendrac-
ism, sexism, anti-
Semitism, anti-
Arabism ... to re-
alize the best in
this lesson called
America.’”
Jackson warned
students that racial
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jesse jackson
and ethnic problems in America had
reached lethal levels.
“We must choose coexistence or
coannihilation,” Jackson said. He
blamed racism and the color line for
tensions in Los Angeles, Haiti and Ma
jor League Baseball.
Jackson pointed out America’s long
ties to that country, including Haiti’s
assistance to the United States in the
American Revolution.
“And yet, if a Cuban is found at sea,
the orders are to let him in. If a Haitian
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DE R K E L E Y
p *1993
or black Cuban is found, the orders are
to take him back.
“Why a black Cuban? Because he is
not discernible from a Haitian!”
He said that the differing orders were
not about numbers, but about race. “We
are locking them in Haiti, not locking
them out of here. And we are locking
them in to be killed.” He decried what
he called a silence in America about the
issue and asked the audience why they
thought there had been no major outcry.
“Because they’re black,” Jackson
said, answering his own question.
He berated President Clinton for re
neging on his promise to reverse the
Bush administration’s stance on Hai
tian immigrants. “We simply want the
covenant honored.”
Another issue for which Jackson has
gained public prominence is his activ
ism in promoting minority hiring among
professional athletic teams, particularly
in Major League Baseball.
“Athletics ... institutional racism.
There are 28 Major League Baseball
teams 46 years after Jackie Robinson
broke the color barrier, and there are
zero blacks” in baseball’s higher posi
tions, Jackson said.
He pointed out that blacks made a up
a major portion of the players in profes
sional sports. “When the rules are fair,
we do well. But when the rules are
subjective ...”
He said blacks excelled at sports not
because of biological reasons but be
cause the rules were clear and public.
“But who becomes a tenured profes
sor? The rules are not as clear,” he said,
leading into a discussion about Darryl
Roberts, a black political science pro
fessor who was refused tenure at Duke.
“Behind the closed doors, he cannot get
tenure. We must say, ‘Open the doors!
Let’s play by one set of rules.”’
He encouraged multicultural educa
tion as a method to ease racial tensions
in America. “America’s a great nation,
but we’re just one third of our hemi
sphere. Open up the real world order,
and let the joy and the love come in.”
Many of Jackson’s sternest remarks
were reserved for incidents in Ameri
can history that he said reflected rac
ism. “Our nation was bom in contradic
tion. It was bom with high and lofty
Pageant
But last year, a close friend in
Burlington entered the Miss Alamance
County contest. Lloyd watched her
friend and decided the competition was
something she could and should do.
She lost weight, polished her inter
view skills and practiced playing the
piano. Then she won.
UNC junior Lamiece McKoy wears
the Miss Brunswick County crown. She
says she is “gung-ho” about the Miss
America program. And she doesn’ t like
the term “beauty pageant.” A beauty
pageant doesn’t have an interview or
talent competition, she said.
“In that kind of pageant, what you
look like is more important than who
you are,” McKoy said.
To train for the Miss Brunswick
County contest, she lifted weights, prac
ticed her song, “Orange Colored Sky,”
watched the news on television and
read news magazines. Then she won
her first title in five preliminary con
tests.
Stephanie Hackney, a first-year den
tal student, snared the second-runner
up and Miss Congeniality title in the
Miss Greater Raleigh pageant in Janu
ary.
She won Onslow County’s Junior
Miss pageant in 1987 and danced in the
Miss North Carolina pageant for three
years.
“I saw everything backstage and
knew it was just something I wanted to
do,” Hackney said. She loves to per
form and make people smile and said
competing in the pageant was a positive
experience.
Lloyd, McKoy and Hackney com
peted in a tradition that was undergoing
a major image alteration.
Beauty pageants became scholarship
pageants, and scholarship pageants will
phase into scholarship programs in the
near future, Lloyd said.
Hackney said pageants had changed
from the stereotypical beauty pageant.
“They really are becoming scholar
ship pageants,” she said. “They look for
the well-rounded girl, but it’s slow go
ing to pull away from society’s expec
tations.”
There now is less emphasis on body
and more on the whole person, McKoy
said. Evening gown competition in
cludes a brief interview on stage and
counts 15 percent. Physical fitness,
gauged while wearing bathing suits,
also counts 15 percent. The talent por
tion makes up 40 percent, and an inter
view with the judges provides the final
30 percent.
Less emphasis on the body means
fewer stereotypes about what winners
should look like, McKoy said.
“I’m a curvaceous black woman, not
pencil-thin, ‘model’ gorgeous. 1 don’t
democratic ideals. We are all made by a
common Creator with certain inalien
able rights. And yet, those who wrote
down these concepts set up a system
wherein only white male landowners
could vote,” Jackson said.
“The Constitution had to be saved by
the Bill of Rights,” he said. “The only
thing that saved our country from Ger
man-style fascism was African Ameri
cans, Native Americans, Hispanic
Americans, Asian Americans ... fight
ing for justice and equality.”
Jackson closed his remarks with a
final call to students to lead the fight in
improving America. “Why is there so
little student activism today? Because
so much of young America has been
lulled to sleep in the treacherous jour
ney of self-gratification and instant grati
fication and hedonism.”
He called for young Americans to
reject these paths and choose activism.
“When you add up at-risk sex, drug
habits, at-risk family values, at-risk
prayer life ... you end up with tragic,
not magic, consequences.
“We must rise above our ‘isms,’ and
just care. The best of us will be mea
sured by how we treat the rest of us.
Keep hope alive.”
from page 1
think pageants perpetuate the beauty
myth anymore,” she said.
But Boxill disagrees. “Beauty pag
eants sustain the stereotype that women
are to be seen as sex or beauty objects,”
she said. She teaches a class about so
cial and political ethics and discusses
pageants while lecturing about sexism.
“Even though the interviews are
present and there is an attempt to make
the pageant a brain exercise, the changes
do not succeed,” Boxill said. “Pageants
undermine the advances of women and
put us back into the mindset of ‘that’s
all we’re here for.’”
Harris also thinks that despite the
changes in the pageant system, they
provide another avenue to turn women
into objects, judged by standards de
cided by a faceless “they.”
“Physical beauty is still fundamen
tal, even with the aspect of scholarships
and talent,” Harris said. “It’s positive
that pageants are diversifying, but it
doesn’t change what is fundamentally
corrupt.”
The pageants reinforce a focus on the
external that can “plunge women into
patterns that can be physically destruc
tive,” she said.
Harris said she despaired to read the
journal entries of women’s studies stu
dents that express self-hatred and enor
mous dissatisfaction with the way the
students look.
Nicole Kaufman, a senior from Win
ston-Salem, entered the N.C. prelimi
nary for Miss Teen USA about seven
years ago and left with extremely nega
tive opinions about pageants. Other
pageant contestants said Miss USA was
a less progressive program than the
Miss America network.
“Everyone backstage was taping,
teasing and tucking to get that perfect
look for the cattle call,” Kaufman said.
“I really don’t see any merit in them.”
The young women in the pageant
stayed at a hotel in Greensboro,
Kaufman said. Her roommate, coached
by a former Mrs. USA, mixed a solution
of Preparation H, a medicine for hemor
rhoids, and Ben Gay the night before
the pageant.
She rubbed it on her legs, wrapped
her legs in Saran Wrap, pulled on jog
ging pants and went to bed. She hoped
the solution would create heat and sweat
the fluid from her legs to emphasize
muscle definition.
Kaufman woke during the night and
looked over at her roommate. “She was
standing buck naked on her bed, peel
ing off the Saran Wrap. It was so hot she
couldn’t stand it,” Kaufman said.
Kaufman’s roommate won the pag
eant and currently attends UNC.
Lloyd, McKoy and Hackney empha
sized that pageants were rewarding when
entered for the right reasons. Good rea
sons mentioned were scholarship
money, the experience itself and friends
made during competition.
And wrong reasons? Entering only
to win and making the pageant their
“be-all and end-all,” McKoy said.
All three women said pageants did
not exploit women because contestants
entered by choice. And all three dis
agreed that pageants dehumanize
women.
Lloyd said she had decided to com
pete in pageants to dispel stereotypes.
“I did not become a stereotype when I
won they got me, with all my opin
ions.”
She doesn’t always like wearing the
crown that comes with her title. “Some
people, mainly older people, treat me
differently when I’m wearing my
crown,” she said. “It’s as if I’m not a
person, not able to contribute to an
intelligent conversation.”
The Miss America program is the
largest scholarship program in the coun
try for women, offering literally mil
lions of dollars. The funds available
make the program worthy of alteration
rather than eradication, Lloyd said.
“It’s not to be done away with. It is to
be changed,” Lloyd said. “Nothing is
wrong with the pageant that is not present
in every part of our society. There are so
many positive aspects to pageants that it
is worth sticking with and changing for
good.”
But Harris thinks pageants represent
what is destructive to women as a group.
‘I mean my comments and my opin
ions to be a criticism of a culture that
perpetuates and encourages us to inter
nalize strict standards and external val
ues.”