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Summer Session Kansan
Tuesday, July 16, 1963
Prisons Without Bars
They say that you can't legislate equality.
They are right. You can't, by law, wash away the natural inequalities which exist among men. One man can paint pictures, another hit a baseball a mile, and still another do neither.
THE FIRST two will be socially accepted and well-paid for their talents. The third, likely, will have to live his life without much money or publicity.
So, the argument which states that equality can't be legislated is right.
But those persons who wish to fight against the Negro in the battle of civil rights are wrong when they say the proposal to integrate public accommodations is wrong because "you can't legislate equality."
We have laws which prevent false imprisonment. I think there is a parallel to that in public accommodations measures.
THEY MISS the boat; the purpose of public accommodations measures is to legislate against inequality. That can be done.
So long as operators of public accommodations such as restaurants may deny admittance to Negroes simply because they are Negroes, the operators carry the power to impose an imprisonment.
THE MORE SUBTLE nature of the Negro's prison does not lessen the anguish or hardships suffered therein.
The question that should be asked in considering such measures is, "What kind of a world do we want to live in?"
Men can mold the institutions which regulate our lives.
Do we want to preserve the present hypocrisy where parents tell children, "Do unto others as you would be done—except with niggers?"
DO WE RAISE the banal flag of private ownership to the position of a glorious battle banner in the civil rights struggle?
If so, that, like it or not, has one clear meaning:
We, in the United States, prize the "right" of
a businessman to bar a Negro more highly than we prize a Negro's right to live with full access to the rights outlined in the Constitution.
IT USED to be popular to say the Constitution "guarantees" rights to people. After more than 150 years, the Negro can tell you that it does not do anything of the sort.
At present, it only pays lip service to a wonderful ideal.
And of all places that fundamental ideals need to be fulfilled and not merely mouthed, the world's foremost democracy must rank first.
THIS IS NO silly little game that we are now playing. Men of conscience have grown nauseated from dining at the halfway house of hypocrisy.
The main fare at this table is salted with the tears of men, women and children whose crime has been the color of their skin.
I wonder at the miraculous smugness of persons who can say with clear conscience that the holiness of private ownership is clear license to doom others less fortunate to a hell of second class citizenship.
THERE IS A lot of talk and concern about this country operating with an inverted sense of values. The dilemma of the Negro is the result of such a mixed up values system.
But people are afraid that we can go too far. They fear that a public accommodations law would infringe on the rights of private property and ownership.
That fear attains reasonable dimensions so long as it remains isolated in theory. When it is considered in terms of consequences to human beings, it becomes ludicrous.
We can't have our cake and eat it too; the Constitution applies to everyone or it is the greatest document of hypocrisy ever venerated by modern civilization.
Take your pick; you either pull with the Negro in his struggle or you shove him back with a fear that is anchored in ignorance or doublethink.
- Terry Murphy
Black Continent of Africa Burns White Hot with Hatred
By Neil Smith
JOHANNESBURG —(UPI)— At the rugged southernmost tip of Africa where the continent juts out into the Temperate Zone lies South Africa, a nation of paradoxes.
This is a land of gold and diamonds, of year-round sunshine, of stern Calvinist traditions, luxury living—and one of the world's worst racial problems.
THE RACE PROBLEM is deeply ingrained in the country's history. When the first white settlers arrived from Holland in 1652 they found the sub-continent inhabited by primitive yellowish-skinned bushmen and Hottentot tribes. The Bantu races who today form the bulk of the non-white population were slowly migrating down the eastern side of the country, separated from the newly-arrived Europeans by a no-man's-land at least 750 miles wide.
The primitive tribes died out, exterminated by attacks from both Whites and Bantu, and ravaged by smallpox. In the 18th century white and black began a century-long battle for possession of the rich grazing and farming lands. The white man won and the framework for today's tensions was completed.
Britain became paramount power in South Africa at the time of the Napoleonic wars. A century later she conquered the independent Boer Republics founded by descendants of the early Dutch settlers who trekked vast distances to escape from British racial legislation. The Union of South Africa was formed in 1910 and for fifty years its relationship with Britain was similar to that of Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
IN 1961 SOUTH AFRICA became an independent republic outside the Commonwealth, and now it faces the future as the lone white western-oriented state in a huge, black, neutralist continent.
But if the state is "white" its population is overwhelmingly non-white. The 3.2 million white South Africans hold sway over 11-million Africans, 1.5 million colored (Mulattos) and 500,000 Asiatics who have little or no say in running the country.
Despite continuing white immigration the proportion of whites is dropping steadily and demographers estimate that by the end of the century, the present proportion of 20 per cent will have dropped to 15 per cent due to the high non-white birth rate and improved medical facilities provided, paradoxically enough, by white taxpayers.
- The country's downfall and economic ruin have been predicted many times in the past decade, but it is now riding high on the greatest wave of prosperity it has ever known.
THIS IS ONLY one of many South African paradoxes. Among the others:
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- The black majority is the most sophisticated and westernized in Africa, yet is denied social and political rights conceded many years past in other parts of Africa.
- The United Nations has condemned South Africa for the way it treats its black majority, but in the material things of life—wages, car ownership, new housing, educational and medical facilities—the South African Bantu is far better off than his fellows in independent black African states.
South Africa is the natural workshop and fountainhead of technical knowledge for the continent, but its markets and influence in black Africa diminish daily.
This land of paradoxes sprawls over 472,000 square miles. With its arid dependency of Southwest Africa, to all intents and purposes a fifth province of the republic, it covers an area almost as great as the United States east of the Mississippi.
The ruling whites include about 2 million Afrikaners, strongly Calvinist descendants of the early Dutch settlers. They are possibly the only white race in the world almost totally uninfluenced by the great liberal resurgence that began with the American and French revolutions. There are also more than one million English speaking South Africans and smaller numbers of almost every nationality in Europe.
THE AFRICANS, colored and Asiatics embrace as much racial variety as the white group: stone age Bushmen Remnants. Zulu college professors, Moslem descendants of Malay slaves, proud sikhs, and weird permutations of Afrikaner-Hottenot-English-Bantu miscegenation.
(Continued on page 3)
BOOK REVIEWS
AN OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS, by Joseph Conrad (Dell Laurel, 50 cents).
It is a mistake to regard the novels of Joseph Conrad as merely exotic, though superficially the romantic aura may account for their continuing popularity. Conrad is one of the most complex writers in the English language, and underlying the atmosphere one will find symbolism and psychological realism.
Such is the case with "An Outcast of the Islands." Once again we find the familiar Conrad renegade who is trying to come to grips with himself, with society, and with his past. This outcast is a South Seas trader who betrays his friend for the love of a Malayan girl, and who rapidly collapses and breaks down.
Perhaps the point of the setting is that it helps to make more credible such a breakdown. The fecundity and rot of the jungle make it seem almost possible to draw from the pages the scents and the sounds.-CMP
FAMOUS AMERICAN PLAYS OF THE 1950s, selected by Lee Strasberg (Dell Laurel, 75 cents).
This excellent anthology joins the previous Dell volumes on the twenties, thirties and forties. It reveals the changes that have occurred in the drama since the gaudy twenties, though admittedly Lee Strasberg's choices are not necessarily typical of the Broadway theater. Yet there are similarities, too. The theater of the absurd, demonstrated here in "The Zoo Story," and fantasy, demonstrated in "Camino Real," also were suggested in such plays of the twenties as "Beggar on Horseback."
Strasberg has selected Tennessee Williams' unsuccessful "Camino Real," Lillian Hellman's "The Autumn Garden," Robert Anderson's "Tea and Sympathy," Edward Albee's "The Zoo Story" and Michael Gazzo's "A Hatful of Rain." It is an interesting group of plays. "The Autumn Garden" is Hellman in almost Chekovian mood. "Tea and Sympathy" is sharp commercial theater. "A Hatful of Rain" is disturbing realism. The other two may be a bit wild for some readers and some theatergoers, but still of considerable interest.
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UHURU, by Robert Ruark (Crest, 95 cents).
In the shocking, yet still factual, fashion of his "Something of Value" of several years ago, the somewhat flamboyant Robert Ruark has produced another violent story of Africa. East Africa, specifically, Kenya, which has been the scene of so much drama in recent years, is his setting. The canvas is a wide one, and the cast is of characters many.
"Uhuru" is a word of many meanings, but symbolically it refers to the freedom being sought by so many Africans, and being attained by some. "Uhuru" deals with East Africa in the post-Mau Mau period, and it has events and characters of contemporary interest.
This is a big book. Persons who are repelled by Ruark's newspaper column or the idea of violence should not shy away from this one, for Ruark tells here the story of what has been happening in many places in less than a decade.
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THE BRONZE GOD OF RHODES, by L. Sprague de Camp (Bantam, 60 cents)—a book very much in tune with an era that loves spectacles from Hollywood and Italy. It describes the city of Rhodes in 305 B.C., under siege, and the great defender, Chares.
ESTHER, by Mary Elizabeth Vroman (Bantam, 40 cents)—a Bantam original, concerning racial prejudice in the South, beautifully timed for today's conflict.
- * *
BLOODY GOLD, by Peter Dawson (Bantam, 40 cents)—a slight, fast-moving, entertaining western, concerning a gang, a woman, and the gold they are trying to escape with.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
by Bibler
QUIT WORR!N' ABOUT WHAT KIND OF A COURSE IT IS!
WITH A LINE THIS LONG IT MUST BE A "SNAP!"