The Puzzling Piece
*
EDITORIALS
Never Forget That These Editorials Are The Opinion Of One Man
-And He May Be Wrong
Judge Not
WHEN DRAFTEES ARE RANKED BY
MENTAL SCORES
Mental
Group
I
n
in
IV
v
White
Draftees
7.6%
32.1%
34.6%
16.0%
9.1%
Negro
Draftees
0.3%
3.3%
18.2%
38.2%
37.1%
Men in Groups L. n and HI, scoring
from 31 to 100 oitidrmed Forces Quali
fication Test, automatically meet mental
standards for military service. Those in
Groups IV and Y. scoring 0 to 30, gen
erally are considered unacceptable with
out special literacy training.
HOW REGIONS AND RACES FARE IN
DRAFTEES' MENTAL TESTS
Year ended June 30, 1966 ’ Per cent
failing Armed Forets Qualification Test
Whitfe*.. Negro'
Dtoftees Draftees
South •• *Wt "IBFJte
SouthCentral 12% 57<&~
Northeast . 12% 45%-"
Midwest and
West 8% 37%
Note; Data are for Army Areas; Alaska
and Hawaii are not included.
This tabulation above will receive the
widest and wildest kinds of interpreta
tion.
At one end of the racist rainbow it
will be offered as proof positive that
negroes are inferior to whites, and at
the other end of this dull-tinted rain
bow it will be offered as proof positive
of white exploitation of negroes.
But it is neither. It is only testimony
to the difference that exists — always
has and always wiU b«&reen people of
utterly different lineage. Into this tabu
lation go factors of climate, of food, of
government — or lack of it — that
reach from the cradle of creation to the
momentous times of tijW mid-20th cen
tury.
Necessity is the mother of all inven
tion, and that segment of mankind
—M .aKe in feltOih tropical do
main do not have to reach so deep, or
cling so firmly to barren soil as those
whose seed were washed up on less
hospitable shores.
Neither the negro nor the white man
is responsible for these accidents of his
tory, but today they are equally the
victim of those who find it necessary to
erase both cultures in the instant acts
of an ungenetical crime called “racial
integration”. Crossing Holsteins with
Herefords does not result in better beef
or better milk. Bird dogs make poor rab
bit hounds and few Beagles point birds.
Tabulations of cold statistics such as
these we include above reflect the un
bending zeal of white missionaries to
force every society into their own im
perfect mold. Few white people could
pass a survival test in Equatorial Africa
that is child’s play to a native there. ;;r
Forcing a misfit into an unsuitable
world lpads to fear, frustratiqnft' and
the violence that is eternally, -file by
product j>f these two emotions! ’
3§No where since recorded history be
gan har any considerable segment of
the negro world reached the levels in
every field or endeavor that are enjoyed
by the best elements of negro society in
the Southern States of these United
States.
That this has taken place in a segre
gated society is deplored by people who
have no understanding of the overall
problem. In the South the negro has
been accepted as an individual; excep
tions have been made for the extremely
able negro and exceptions have been
made for his. less able brethren. This
has permitted the finer elements of
negro society to reach pinnacles never
dreamed of by negroes any where at any
time in the world before.
Graduates of negro schools in the
South do better in colleges, than grad
uates of racially mixed schools in file
north. Why’ The answer is simple; ne
gro teachers can teach negroes better
than white teachers. By the same token
white teachers can teach white children
bettor than negro teachers. This is not
an argument of racial superiority or ta
. Not So Surprising
No one should have fainted in shock
when the President of the Carolina Pow
er & light Company rose up in opposi
tion last week to the possibility of eight
Eastern North Carolina towns building
their own electric generating facility.
This chief power executive cannot he
pleased with the prospect of losing
millions of dollars per year income,
which, is what would happen if this
dream comes true. And we surely hope
that it does come true.
' There is no ceiling to electricity sales
in sight. Experts in this field have even
quit guessing about when the sales of
electricity will level off.
That is the most, important reason why
these cities — all in need of revenue —
should leave no reasonable stone un
turned in their search in this direction.
The vast profits of the privately own
ed power monopolies are surely not ille
gal. But neither are similar profits from
city-owned facilities that can be turned
to do the things that cities are now
forced to do in the way of providing
services to their citizens and their trade
areas.
' Cities are now crying for revenue.
Even such wild propositions as a local
option sales tax arc being seriously con
sidered. Profits from sale of electricity
make much more sense.
Certainly the president of any pri
vate power monopoly knows full well
that when cities build a modern generat
ing plant they are going to learn the
high profit secrets of these monopolies.
We daresay the telephone company
doesn’t want to surrender any part of
its equally rich monopoly.
In the months ahead as this contro
versy gets hotter keep one thing very
clearly in mind: Privately-owned utility
monopolies have nothing — absolutely
nothing in common with private, compet
itive business.
The Terrible Lesson
For those of us fat and fiftyish who
trudged or flew across Western Europe
in World War II it seems rather weird
that Germans are still being tried for
the concentration camp murders that
have made Hitlerian Germany a syn
onym for hell on earth.
But the trials do go on, and if they
do nothing more they should remind us
what a fine line exists between civiliza
tion and barbarism. Nothing is more
civilized than the pudgy, beer softened
German, singing and dancing to the wild
cadence of so much great German mu
sic.
And nothing this modern world has
known — or is likely to know — sur
passes in savagery this same easy-to-cry,
baby-blue-eyed German when he is
equipped with uniform, jack boots and
total power.
Xenophobia is a word now being free
ly used against the mainland Chinese,
who have replaced the Russians as the
people most suspicious of all that is
foreign. But 25 years ago the Gentle
Germanfolk carried this hatred of
foreignefJrto its ultjipate terror by de
Hgft;
cial inferiority. ^J^jpthing-more nor
less than acceptance o^'the uncontradict
able fact that thetwo pees are-different.
"- Even the most violent negro leaders
are learning this lesson, or admitting
perhaps what they already knew, and
this explains why more and more of
these negro spokesmen are turning
their back on the . white “liberal” ele
ments who have used and abused the
negro as either a political or a charitable
“good work”.
Among the things that every negro
is born knowing is that white men who
begin hanging around and patronizing
them with too much flattery are either
after their money, their women, or more
recently their vote. 7
Negroes have far more respect, and
understandably so, for the. white man
who tells them he is unequivocably op
posed to racial mixing Pan they do for
the white man who lies to them in the
sirupy platitudes of “Instant Brother
hood” and “Christian Fellowship”.
Thir virus has reached its high fever
point in the current sickness of the
it can be
will recover,
wiU be long
7 - ’
If you had to make a wild guess what
would you say is the. most revolutionary
force at work in the world today. Com
munism? Capitalism? Christianity?' Athe
ism? Pretty good arguments might be
made for each. /
But I have reached the firm conclu
sion thaj the most revolutionary} force
at work in the world today is television.
The force of television has hardly been
felt in the world at large, but here in
file United States it has already begun
to exert its unimaginable force.
Gutenburg and movable type opened
up unimaginable vistas for those with
a thirst for knowledge, but now televi
sion plants the seed in even the most
reluctant soil. No effort to even learn to
read is necessary for the total impact of
television. In fact, reading may be an
impediment to the ultimate total power
of this educational force.
The humblest hovel now sprouts a tele
vision aerial. More American homes
have TV than have running water, indi
cating something that iriay give rural
sociologists recurring nightmares. But
for good or evil TV is here to stay. At
its best it can excite the imagination, stir
the noblest emotions and lead the way
to great new frontiers, but at its worst
it is an instant house organ of porno
graphy and selfishness.
No politician can ignore television
with impunity. We face the almost cer
tain possibility in the reasonably near
future of the Madison Avenue presi
dent, conceived, and bom in the back
rooms of advertising rather than in the
smoke-filled convention rooms, which
heretofore have been the breeding
grounds for our “Great Statesmen”.
Television lets the poorest laborer
walk into the most magnificent pent
houses, see the finest wines, richest
foods, most elegant clothing just a
tube’s thickness away from his finger
tips. Ah, Tantalus.
AvivilUivu VUll UV v v uiuuvuax J
in upgrading the tastes, the dreams, the
ambitions of the masses, or it can be
revolutionary in creating animosities be
yond the temporizing ability of our eco
nomy. Television is a force that re
quires much more constant care and
feeding than it is presently getting.
Somehow it does seem that there has
to be a finer destiny for this magnificent
medium than the peddling of soap powd
ers and denture cleansers. In its few fine
hours Television has offered more to
more than any medium in the history of
civilization, but in its average to less
than-average hour television has kept
its eye on the gutter when it should
have been looking to the stars.
stroying not only all that was foreign
but all that wis pot totally “Aryan" in
its own midst. Jetos whose German line
age went batik a' thousand years were
cremated along witb'^oles, and their
only crime was that they were not
“German”. 7
This kind of blind hatred, irritated by
the “Super Race” rhetoric of Hitler ahd
Company led this not-so-super race to
the edge of annihilation.
This same kind of blind hatred, irritat
ed by the “Black Power” rhetoric of
Stokely Carmichael. and Company can
very easily cause millions of other in
nocent people to tumble off the pre
cipice.
Those racial extremists in our own
nation — at either end of the -issue' —•
are blood brethren to the
Legions who very nearly plunged the
world into a second “Dark >^je”.
Those of us who have high hopes for
the future of our descendants and the
world as a whole should weigh very cafe
fully the crude, cruel arguments that are
now being heard all up and down the
land.
RK1AL
Published everv