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University Daily Kansan Thursday, March 4, 1965
Discrimination
In Lawrence, New York or Atlanta people are painfully aware of discrimination in one form or another. This awareness of a social and economic evil sounds almost too simple to discuss.
But it isn't.
It is not hard to define it, but it is difficult to explain where discrimination, or lack of it, will end.
IN SELMA, Alabama, the ridiculous efforts of the sheriff to keep Negroes from becoming registered voters was publicized to the point of absurdity. Martin Luther King's marches are also noted in the press. These examples of discrimination are well known and valid. But the one thing that many Southerners are fighting for is never publicized.
They are fighting for the right to choose whom they want to live with and associate with. Is this an absurd demand?
In light of what may happen in the future it may not be as ridiculous as it seems.
Suppose, for example, that in the next 20 years all, and I do mean all, forms of discrimination are eliminated.
THIS WOULD mean discrimination in all public and private establishments would be gone. And, it would lead, supposedly, to a utopia of fair play and equality. But there would be disharmony in this heaven of goodness.
Imagine an apartment house owner interviewing a prospective tenant. The owner is white and the customer is a Negro. The owner, harboring no racial prejudice, (because of the education he received in the early part of 1965) talks to the man about renting a six-room apartment.
In the course of the conversation the owner discovers that the man enjoys loud parties, has three afghan hounds and five children. He has two stereo record players (with overhead speakers) and his wife likes to move the furniture at odd hours of the morning.
The owner is beginning to have his doubts as to the desirability of the man as a tenant. He finds that he just does not like the man. But his hands are tied. He cannot tell the man of his doubts. The progressive elements and humanitarians have released the Negro from the image of the 60's and the owner is compelled to judge the man on the same level as everyone else, even if he doesn't want to do it.
HE IS THEREFORE unable to express his dislike for the boisterous activities of the man. His friends, the newspapers and the government would immediately scream discrimination if he did.
In other words, if things get progressively "better" for all people in this country there will be no recourse for simply disliking another person.
This is a cruel world, we are told, and everyone must take care of himself. But how would it be possible to take care of that right if it becomes unfashionable to simply disapprove of and dislike someone else.
Integration is vital for this country's image, economy and conscience. But it is not necessary and possibly undesirable for the equalization process to take from some to give to another.
IF THE QUESTION ever comes to the individual right of rejecting another person for his personal appearance, clothes or other factors this country will be in even more trouble. It seems unbelievably optimistic to dream that a sweet-smelling world of love, understanding and mutual friendliness will ever occur in this century. It is human nature to love and to hate. All the laws in the world will not change that.
To take away the right of discrimination in all areas of life would bring a bland and boring existence to the world. The right of choice would die hard, but it would die. The challenge of life itself might even become impaired.
It seems fair to say that the image of the bitter Southern segregationist will die one day. But desire of many in the South to choose—not just between the white and the Negro, but to choose in all aspects of life—will not. It should not be sluffed off as just an excuse for the vestiges of an evil institution.
We should not be so zealous about minority rights as to forget the rights of others.
Linda Ellis
Balance Shaky in Middle East
By Phil Newsom UPI Foreign News Analyst
A basic policy of the United States in the Middle East has been to preserve a balance of military power between Israel and the Arab states as a means of preserving the peace.
Of late, however, two developments seemed to threaten both the balance and the peace. These were the stepped up flow of arms from the Soviet Union to the Arabs and the increasing tension between Israel and the Arabs over Israel's diversion of waters from the Jordan River and the Arab's counter-plan to deprive Israel of those waters by diversion plans of their own.
Obviously neither the balance of power theory nor the rival plans for diversion of the Jordan provided any solution on the long-standing quarrel between the two groups which remained subject to upset by any sudden jar.
AGAINST THIS background, the governments of the United States and West Germany suddenly find themselves thrust into a situation in which neither comes off with any great degree of honor.
The Germans especially seem to have fallen into a carefully laid Moscow-Cairo trap triggered by the visit of East German Communist strongman Walter Ulbricht to the United Arab Republic.
For the Germans the Ulbricht visit had serious political implications in that it seemed to imply Egyptian recognition of the East German state.
The ineptness with which the problem was handled could have serious repercussions against West German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard's government when it comes up for election next September.
WEST GERMAN reaction to the visit rested upon the 15-year-old so-called Hallstein doctrine which dictates that West Germany will break diplomatic relations with any government, except the Soviet Union, that recognizes East Germany.
The Ulbricht visit, however, involved more than that. It was preceded by a demand from U.A.R. President Gamal Abdel Nasser that West Germany cut off its arms aid to Israel. The alternative would be formal U.A.R. recognition of the East German regime.
The West German government capitulated to the blackmail, agreeing to cancel remaining deliveries of $80 million worth of arms promised to Israel in 1961.
Whereupon Nasser went right ahead with the Ulbricht visit, including a 21-gun salute upon his arrival.
Daili! Hänsan
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BOOK REVIEWS
THE PICKWICK PAPERS, by Charles Dickens (Signet Classics, 95 cents).
Christmas seems to be the proper time to bring out new paperback editions of Dickens, and this is one of the handsomest copies of them all. Whether another "Pickwick Papers" is needed is another matter, but this edition should be worth your attention.
Many readers are prone to dodge Dickens today, and "The Pickwick Papers" frequently is avoided in part because of its girth. Get up off that chair in front of the television set and read something you'll never forget! The book is all about the Pickwick Club and its various adventures over the London and English countryside.
Plot? Hardly. Just delightful experiences. And, as a matter of fact, some pertinent commentaries about social conditions, such as prisons and courts of the time. It seems incredible in a way that this masterpiece could have been Dickens' first novel. One of his greatest comic creations, Sam Weller, is on hand, and Pickwick himself is a consistently delightful type.
THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS, by John Bunyan (Signet Classics, 50 cents).
A comment appeared recently that no one read "The Pilgrim's Progress" any longer—and maybe never did. Scan the great American biographies and autobiographies, and you find the book occupying a place similar to The Bible. We know it touched one famous American; Theodore Roosevelt obviously had read it, for his allusion to the muckraker in his famous attack on the expose artists of early century would bear this out.
The book belongs to another age, an age more pious and moralistic than ours, perhaps. Bunyan was writing a religious allegory, the story of Christian's journey to salvation, and all his troubles along the way—the Slough of Despond, the Delectable Mountains, Doubting Castle, the Palace Beautiful, Vanity Fair, the Celestial City.
There. Aren't those names that conjure up pictures you've heard? If you have not read "The Pilgrim's Progress" now's your chance, for here is an attractive new paperback edition.
THE CONFIDENCE-MAN, by Herman Melville (Signet Classics, 60 cents).
Well, Melville's around again, and the average KU student, who's heard of "Moby Dick" because he saw the Gregory Peck movie, may find this paperback on his English reading list one of these days. The book is somewhat different from the famous Melville works, however, even though the message, once again, is there.
What message? Well, the message about human depravity, which if you think about it shows up in most Melville novels. "The Confidence-Man" is set on a Mississippi steamboat, and the protagonist dons a series of impostures to go to work on the hypocritical passengers. Melville, therefore, is once again tearing us inside out to get to that dark side that seems to be—in his view—innate to man.
The afterword links the book not only to Melville but to recent works—"The Day of the Locust," "The Hamlet," "Invisible Man." Ferreting out the links should be an interesting task of the uninitiated, and a must for the chaps who find it impossible to read a book merely for enjoyment and understanding.
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CURIOUS SEX CUSTOMS IN THE FAR EAST, by Magnus Hirschfeld (Capricorn, $1.45).—Hirschfeld was the founder of the Institute of Sexology in Berlin, and the book is based on his observations while on a world lecture tour. It is not for those who expect pornographic titillation. The author describes married life in Japan, Japanese Geishas, Sing Song girls of China, Chinese polygamy, fertility charms, phallic cults, erotic sects in India, eunuchs of Delhi, and customs of the Sudanese.
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