4A
Thursday, March 7, 1996
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VIEWPOINT
Success of women's team deserves to be applauded
The No. 21 University of Kansas women's basketball team has exceeded all expectations set for it this year, and the season is not yet over. After winning the regular season Big Eight championship in the conference's final year, the Hawks went on to reach the championship game of the Big Eight Conference tournament. Unfortunately, they ran out of steam in Monday night's championship game and were defeated by the No. 20 Colorado Buffalooes.
But with the NCAA tournament beginning in two weeks, the Jayhawks have a good chance of extending their outstanding season.
Big Eight Coach of the Year Marian Washington turned the Jayhawks' slow start into a 20-9 season. Junior Tamecka Dixon was selected as Big Eight Player
THE ISSUE:
Women's basketball
of the Year and also was named to the Big Eight All-Tournament Team.
Now that the women will be going on the road to compete in the NCAA tournament, the fans will not have the chance to redeem themselves by attending the games.
The Jayhawks have excelled during the season despite lackluster fan support from the University students and limited media coverage.
Nevertheless, the women's basketball team should be congratulated for its efforts, applauded for its success and given our best wishes as it proceeds into the post-season tournament.
CHRIS VINE FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD.
History months are important, but some of them are not necessary
African-American History Month just ended, and Women's History Month has begun, which has sparked debate about whether these months should be celebrated. Some people are opposed to such months because they think African-American and women's history should be included in the whole of American history.
African Americans and women should be considered and incorporated into American history, but they aren't always.
African-American History Month is necessary and beneficial to all cultures. Until everyone learns to accept and appreciate African-American history, dedicating a month in its honor is essential.
Also, African-American History Month should be viewed as a tool to educate. African-American history is a huge part of this nation's history, and it should be included in school curricula everywhere.
Because not all schools or people recognize and acknowledge the influence and history of African Americans, and because some people still do not show
THE ISSUE:
History months
respect for African Americans, the month is valuable.
Women's History Month is not as necessary as African-American History Month, but women's contributions to American history deserve to be recognized.
Women's history is more widely accepted, appreciated and acknowledged than African-American history, and it also is taught more widely. In American history, women have been oppressed, but most Caucasian women haven't experienced the extreme hatred the African-American race has.
In this day and age, women's history has experienced more exposure and recognition than African-American history.
Historians should strive to include all groups in American history, and it is unfortunate that certain months have to be slated for appreciation of different groups. However, until everyone is viewed as equal, history months will continue to be necessary.
TARA FITZPATRICK FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Jeff MacNelly / CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Farrakhan exploits his cause by playing the role of victim
"Bring me before the Congress and bring your best minds," Farrakhan crowed. "They will never defeat what Allah has built. But threaten me. Do it. I was born for this moment."
A New York Republican congressman says Nation of Islam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan should answer to Congress for visiting enemies of the United States in Africa and the Middle East.
Go ahead. Throw o'l Bre'r Rabbit into that briar patch.
Perhaps he was. Farrakhan would love nothing better than to be hauled before Congress and television cameras. It would enhance his image as a victim, the greatest Black victim of racist government persecution since FBI's leader J. Edgar Hoover went after Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Panther Party in the 1960s, or, as a young agent, after Marcus Garvey in the 1920s.
That's the problem with race relations today. Too many people — Black, white and otherwise — are busy grasping for victim status (even David Duke claims it) and too few want to take personal responsibility for cleaning up the mess.
Addressing about 15,000 people in his annual Saviors Day address at the University of Illinois-Chicago Pavilion Sunday, Farrakhan rejoiced about U.S. Rep. Peter T. King's, R-New York, attack of the Nation of Islam leader's recent 23-nation tour, which included friendly visits with Arab and African tyrants and sponsors of international terrorism.
Farrakhan should know. Explaining his 35-day trip, Farrakhan declared that he was carrying a message of atonement and reconciliation.
If so, he should try to reconcile the human suffering inflicted by some of those he praised. Among those he patted on the back were the radical fundamentalist government of the Sudan, which conducts slave raids against the black, non-Muslim southern Sudanese, which sells Black women and children into slavery for as little as $15 each, according to reports from the United Na-
"Human suffering is what I'm interested in," he said.
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST
tions, the U.S. State Department and human rights organizations.
Farrakhan's representatives have dismissed the charges as plots of Israel or the CIA. But the Roman Catholic archbishop of the South Sudan is not Jewish or a U.S. agent. He and other south Sudanese refugees have pleaded with Farrakhan to denounce persecution of Africans. Yet, Farrakhan turns a deaf ear.
Farrakhan rubbed shoulders with Nigeria's notorious Sani Abacha, and he visited a political prisoner but said nothing about the execution of nine others. Abacha's tyranny has brought denunciations from TransAfrica's Randall Robinson and other Black activists, but not from Farrakhan.
Farrakhan also praised the Iranian government as a model of religious democracy, called Iraq's Saddam Hussein a great asset and ignored a lecture from Nelson Mandela about building a non-racial society.
But Farrakhan was all ears with Libya's Muammar Qaddafi, well-known sponsor of terrorists and harborer of fugitives in connection with the PanAm jetliner bombing over Lockerbee, Scotland. Having granted Farrakhan a $5 million non-refundable loan 10 years ago, he now promises $1 billion to influence American domestic and foreign policy and enable Blacks to have a Black state in America.
That's the irony of Farrakhan's prescriptions. While he 'talks a
good game against white racism,
he actually flatters and accommodates it. His call for Blacks to separate themselves from America's socio-economic mainstream — forsaking all that Blacks have invested in this country through centuries of blood, toil, sweat and tears — would make the dreams of white racists come true.
Booker T. Washington offered a similar response a century ago when white America decided to segregate the races after the Civil War rather than to welcome freed Blacks as fellow citizens. But W. E. B. DuBois and others who founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People would not buy it. Du Bois did not want to accommodate racism. He and his NAACP colleagues chose to fight, and their crusade led to the civil rights reforms of the 1940s, '50s and '60s.
But Washington's legacy lives on. Combined with Garvey, a self-help Jamaica-born nationalist who the federal government convicted and deported on tax evasion charges in the '20s, and the religious trappings of the Moorish Science Temple, a popular Islamic Black community sect in the 1920s, the Nation of Islam came alive in 1930.
The Nation's 65-year-old history of service to Black communities gives Farrakhan credibility today, a credibility greatly enhanced by this fall's historic Million Man March. But Farrakhan has since squandered the goodwill that the enormous demonstration built by exploiting its good name on his Mideast tour of reconciliation and atonement.
Reconciliation and atonement begin at home. Self-help is nothing new to Blacks. We need more of it. But we also need to fight racism relentlessly at home and abroad, every day and in every way.
Clarence Page is a columnist at the Chicago Tribune.
Not everybody is a drunk in need of counsel
As much as we try to forget it, alcohol has become a part of our lives. It surrounds us. This is not to say that we are drinking all the time, but our lives still are infused with alcohol, and there seems to be no escaping it.
However, this is a good thing to some people. Some like the constant proliferation of alcohol in their lives. They enjoy the inebriated view that liquor gives them. They want to see life through Dudley Moore's eyes. It is an empowering drug that is access-
STAFF COLUMNIST
sible to everyone. Many stores sell beer or some sort of booze. Every magazine we read or television show we watch bombards us with the supposed nuances of drinking. What we, as intelligent and moral citizens, have to decide is whether we agree with the idea.
Is drinking alco-
is drinking alcohol really so terrible? I think not. Jesus drank wine. I'm sure Einstein indulged himself with a snifter of port every now and then. I am not saying that everyone should drink a gallon a vodka every night. Alcohol is not such a terrible thing if you know what you're doing.
I don't profess to know exactly what I'm doing every time that I imbibe the spirit. There have been times that I have been drunken than Cooter Brown, but I paid the price. I remember once when I went out with some friends to a bar. After a couple of beers, I approached someone I had not seen in a long time. Once she saw that I had been drinking, her opinion of me instantly changed. All of a sudden I went from a pretty nice guy to some drunken seexecutioner, too lost in the barley to find my way out. But that simply was not the case. This case was, and still is, that alcohol is deemed by some as God's punishment to the weak and unintelligent. Some people, however, just know how to get out of it.
Alcohol can, however, be a dangerous and frightening thing. Look at the deaths incurred every year from the result of alcohol. Look at the suicides and despair surrounding those who choose to sip the proverbial wine. The ironic thing is that these people lost themselves in the spirit and had neither the inclination nor the desire to stop drinking when they saw a problem.
And some people get lost in the supposed wonders of alcohol. They see it in a glamorous and inviting light. They just don't see the problems that can emerge from its constant abuse.
Enjoying a drink with your friends is a common way to relax. Some think that drinking alcohol is like inviting Satan to a dinner party. To them, if you put the devil in, he's bound to come out. But in all actuality, what's the big deal? So what if you or I choose to have a beer on a Friday night? Does that mean we are bad people, too caught up in the luxury of booze to realize the viable dangers associated with the real American pastime. Of course not.
Just because I might go to a bar and buy a drink doesn't automatically make me Andy Capp. It's not like any of us are running moonshire into the next county. We simply are having a good time.
Carter Voekel is a Dallas Junior in Engl.
lish.
Editors
KANSAN STAFF
Managing editor .Virginia Marghelm
News .Robert Allen
Campus .Joann Birk, Phillip Brownlee
Editorial .Paul Todd
Sports .Tom Erickson
Features .Matt Hood
Photo .Matt Flickner
Wire .Tara Tronary
Graphics North Minneapolis
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Special Sections .Novela Sommers
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TOM EBLEN
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Amanda Traxler ..Sarah Wiese
Amanda Traxler
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