2
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Tuesday, February 20, 1968
White power prepares
At a recent press convention, President Johnson asked one reporter what the press preparations were underway for covering civil right's activities in the months to come.
"Oh, we're all set," the reporter replied brightly, "we bought a new mobile unit so we can cover the riots better this summer."
According to the March issue of Esquire magazine, in an article called "The Second Civil War" ("This time it's simple, Black vs. White") every major city has a map for defense from its own citizenry.
Busloads of riot-ready policemen were sent cruising around Philadelphia continually last summer, not unlike the military policy of keeping nuclear armed bombers in the air at all times.
Among the new weaponry to aid the policeman stopping riots are special riot shields and helmets, which make him look like a gladiator, tear-gas grenades, stoner assault guns, and chemicals which releases a liquid jet of non-lethal but toally disorienting gas.
The latest work being done along this line is an experimental projectile for firing gases at a fleeing man, and on a spinning gas grenade that hops around while it goes off, making it impossible to scoop up and hurl back at the cops.
Even more elaborately, special policemen are now being trained as anti-sniper marksmen who can shoot from helicopters, and a new $30,-000 armor-plated commando police vehicle, with a combat crew of twelve, revolving turret for machine gun, and an electrified body that give a shock to anybody who touches it. Five were used in Detroit, according to Esquire magazine, and thirty other police departments are interested in them.
Everyone; it seems, is completely sure that riots will occur; The press, the police, the city, and the people.
If police are making such defensive preparations, it's even more disturbing to think how Joe Rioter is planning his summer.
A contradictory kind of irony surrounds the entire, almost surrealistic, scene where two sides elaborately prepare for and definitely plan on the occurrence of violence of a spontaneous, impromptu nature.
It would seem, therefore, that riot may be the wrong word. A riot connotes something unexpected that gets quickly out of hand; what may occur this summer is expected to the point that police have maps, plans, and set procedures to attempt to quickly keep it in check to some degree.
These are not really riots; these are isolated rebellions, but they are unique among other kinds of rebellions in that they can best achieve whatever purposes are planned through maximum disorder and anarchy.
And, like every other aspect of this unplanned planning, everybody knows it.
Militant black power leaders scream that these riots cause Whitey to think about the civil rights issue and really confront himself with his own views, and whether or not this is true, one sad commentary may be made on this particular view.
Whatever point may be made for the cause of civil rights due to a riot is already being made much more effectively by these psychological and military preparations.
But the worst aspect about all of this is best illustrated by an example of one riot that had just about run its course until the network television cameras were in place, and then it began with a self-conscious enthusiasm.
Because of the detailed, publicized nature of police and mass media preparation for civil rights riots this summer, this whole situation has already become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It is now almost impossible to imagine that violence will not occur since so many people of every aspect of the situation are completely ready, willing, and able.
John Hill
Assistant Editorial Editor
Newsroom—UN 4-3646 Business Office—UN 4-3198
Published at the University of Kansas daily during the academic year except holidays and examination periods. Mail subscription rates: $6 a semester, $10 a year. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kan. 60044. Accommodations, goods, services and employment advertised offered to all students are regard to color, creed or national origin. Opinions expressed are not necessarily of the University of Kansas or the State Board of Regents.
Member Associated Collegiate Press
REPRESENTED FOR NATIONAL ADVERTISING BY
National Educational Advertising Services
A DIVISION OF
READER'S DIRECT SALES & SERVICES, ING.
890 Lexington Ave., New York, N.Y. 10017
Daily Kansan Editorial Essay
Black power is growing in Whitey's mind
By Will Hardesty
"Black Power" is a scary phrase to some Americans—a threatening phrase to others. But what is it?
Newsweek calls it an outgrowth of "thinking black" which is "the kids with their 'natural' coifs and their Afro clothes and their lessons in Swahili, taking a joy in blackness as exaggerated as the shame of blackness has always been in white America. It is the young leaders of CORE . . . studying a map of Indonesia and pondering quite seriously whether Americ's urban ghettos, too, can be forged into an independent 'island republic.'"
The term "black power" was first coined by Stokely Carmichael when he yelled it during the 1966 Meredith March through Mississippi.
Black Power is generally thought of as a threat to the white Establishment, and, in fact, in part, it is.
"I want to burn down every building in this town," says J. T. Wilkins, a Vietnam veteran. "Let me do that and I'll be grateful to the white man for the rest of my life. . . Yknow if I was back in Vietnam, I'd shoot every white guy I could find."
"Terrorism is a real danger. They're studying at night: do-it-yourself bombs are the current fad. There will be buildings coming down," says one doctor who works in the New York City ghettos.
Wilkins found the national racial troubles did not change while he was in Vietnam. When he got back, he was still a "nigger" to many Americans. He has become bitter, and he turned to the black power concept to get something done. Other Vietnam veterans will be coming back in the months to come. If they are Negro, and if the country they have just risked their lives for does not act grateful and does not grant them the respect they think they should and do deserve, 1968 could see the racial problem become more and more acute.
Even those who are relatively optimistic see some bad times ahead.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, an urban specialist,
says, "There will be an increased elevation of low-
level rioting and a degree of terrorism. Why shouldn't we have it? Why don't we believe what the Negro says he will do?"
Why is there black power?
One reason might be due to the talk of repression. Radicals have talked about "shipping those niggers back where they came from" since the start of the civil rights movement. When this idea proved to be so impractical as to be ludicrous, other ideas came to the fore. Concentration camps for Negro radicals have been talked of. There are those who talk of garrisoning the ghetto and limiting freedom of speech in the face of a "clear and present danger."
Or, black power might be the fault of the whites. When Stokely Carmichael first uttered the phrase, he didn't think it would be anything more than just another phrase to be adopted by some radical Negro groups—not a phrase to strike fear into the hearts of the whites. The whites heard it, however, and saw the ideas as a threat to them. They feared it and the Negroes who advocated it. The Negroes seized on the idea as a club to hold over the heads of the whites who would not accept the Negroes as full citizens.
A third theory for the development of Black Power is a theory of "nothing-else-has-worked-solets'-try-this."
Whatever black power is and wherever it came from, it is now a major force to be reckoned with and counted on in the American political scene and particularly in the sphere of civil rights.
But this solution is not attainable until the day there are no "Negroes" or "whites," but only a race of mulatto Americans. Until that day, there will still be some sort of discrimination, no matter how slight. And after that time, there will be another group which will be discriminated against and which will cry out for civil rights—maybe the American Indian or, since the solution is far in the future, perhaps some species from another planet.
There is one easy, sure, handy-dandy, all-purpose answer. Total equality.
Perhaps a more realistic question to ask ourselves is: What can be done NOW to ease the transition towards a monochromatic society?
To this question, there is NO clear, easy answer.
"This thing is becoming two armed camps, but it is a risk black people are willing to take," says Rep. John Conyers, a Negro congressman from Detroit. "Look, we started the whole civil-rights business with two Presidents who both told Martin Luther King we can't get a civil-rights bill—it's impossible. But the pressure of events made it possible. Confrontation is both inevitable and creative. There's nobody who can call in anybody and turn it off."
Some of the nation's top people in the know about civil rights are predicting "violence, winter violence." This winter might be the first of a series of long, hot winters. Violence probably will continue in the summers of 1968 and the years after. There probably will be more "long, hot summers." Denver, Kansas City, St. Louis and Omaha are cities in this general area which might be in for troubles.
While we agree with the slogan, "Freedom— Now!," it might be time for the Negroes to cool it. Now is the time for testing the new civil rights laws and then court cases if the guaranteed rights are not there. Now is the time for the education of more leaders—peaceful leaders.
Throughout the meditation and writing of this, an ancient commencement speaker's and politician's platitude kept coming back to haunt us "You are the upcoming leaders of the nation." The beginnings of a real civil rights solution lies with today's students. If the college student, or high school student, or junior high student, or elementary student of today can develop a genuine attitude of tolerance and acceptance of the Negro, when these students are leaders, the tremendous tension and pressure could lessen. They won't be able to solve the problem, but where the generation before them began to scratch the surface, they will be able to get down to the real nitty-gritty of the problem.