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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (March 1, 1978)
Letters Lethargic fans It isn’t true that the fans in Mac Court are the best fans anywhere. Their behavior this last week proved them to be as fickle as fans can be. As long as the team really had things moving their way, the fans were great — enthusiastic, sup portive, vocal. But as soon as the tables turned the fans just stopped contributing. I found it very sad when the band played the fight song during the last quarter of the USC game: with the score tied and less than two minutes to play, the fans wouldn’t even stand for the fight song. Every player on the court was working his tail off, and the crowd couldn’t even rouse it self to do more than clap lethargi cally. I believe that if the home crowd won’t support their team, that team may as well play all their games on the road. And support isn’t just booing UCLA’s free throws, either — it’s also yelling encouragement when the Ducks are down by ten and doing their damnedest to catch up, helping to generate the electricity that inten sity and concentration bring. It’s when they’re down that they really need us! The best fans around? If crowds were rated the way basketball teams are, we’d make a far worse showing than the Ducks made in the Pac-8. Becky Beaman Senior, Math Good photo, bad caption My compliments to Patrick Sul livan for his fine cover photo of the Feb. 23 Emerald. The picture was taken at Kiai!, a martial arts de monstration produced by the Asian American Student Union, and showed Albert Li, a black belt in Tae Kwan Do, mid-air at the instant his kick connected with three pine boards. The editorial staff is due some criticism, however, for the poor taste and judgment displayed by the caption “Chop-chop” across the bottom of the photograph. The -opinion Del Monte recruiters here Submitted by Timothy Shorrock for Clergy and Laity Concerned Graduate student, Asian studies Today Del Monte Corporation, the largest fruit and vegetable canner in the world, is recruiting on campus. This article is to focus attention on Del Monte’s role in Southern Africa, its involvement in cash cropping, and its exploitation of workers both in the United States and in the Third World. The presence of Del Monte’s re cruiters underlines this campus' coopera tion with multinational corporations, inter national capital, and apartheid. Del Monte Corporation has annual sales of $1.5 billion and has operations in 21 countries and 17 states in the U.S. All of the land controlled by Del Monte is not being used for growing crops which di rectly feed the local population, but for growing cash crops for export to the U.S. and Western Europe. This creates a de pendency in the Third World and rein forces underdevelopment; food must be imported from the U.S. and becomes, in Earl Butz’s famous words, “a weapon, one of the principle weapons in our negotiating kit.” One of the countries where Del Monte exploits the people and the land is Namibia. In violation of a United Nations decree banning exploitation of Namibia’s re sources as long as South Africa illegally occupies it, Del Monte fishes sardines from Nambian waters and ships them to the U.S., where they are processed into cattle fodder and cat food — while Nam bians suffer from malnutrition and protein deficiency. Del Monte’s South African op erations, along with many other American financial and industrial involvements, help to sustain the system of apartheid. The extremely low wages paid to African workers, $37 per month in the Nambian fishing industry, make possible the huge profits of Del Monte and the other corpora tions involved in Southern Africa. Del Monte also controls large areas of land in Mexico, the Phillipines, Puerto Rico, and Guatemala, for growing export crops such as pineapple and bananas. A major reason for its involvement in these countries is the presence of a cheap labor force under the control of repressive gov ernments reinforced by American military aid. Del Monte is a close ally of President Marcos; when moves towards limiting American ownership of land were made in the Phillipines Senate in the early 1970s, Marcos came to the rescue with martial law, with restored American ownership rights. In the United States, Del Monte has consistently fought workers’ demands for better pay and working conditions. As ag ricultural workers have become more militant, however, the corporation has simply shifted its operations to areas like the Philippines and Mexico. Lately, Del Monte has come under at tack for its practices. Last year several shareholder resolutions condemning the exploitation of labor and use of cash crop ping were filed by stockholders at the company’s annual meeting in San Fran cisco, and they have been the target of marches and boycotts in several cities around the U.S. Del Monte’s response has been to defend its operations in Southern Africa and the Philippines as “on the cutting edge of social reform...Capital investment in a country such as South Africa provides a higher standard of living and employment for the people there.” (San Francisco Chronicle, 9/26/77) In an in-house docu ment printed in a Del Monte public rela tions journal, Del Monte spokespersons are urged to “Take the offensive...If ‘ob scene profits’ are the issue, let’s not try to justify our God given right to obscene pro fits! Let’s tell the American people why we need profits...And then let’s tell them why we need more profits — to do a better job and to build an even better standard of living for all Americans.” It’s time to question Del Monte’s com mitment to a decent standard of living for Americans and Third World peoples. It’s time to question a system under which basic human needs, such as food, are subject to the inequities of markets where price, quality, and quantity are controlled by a few. It’s time to question why the University offers legitimacy to recruiters from corporations like Del Monte. J wordchop-chop has no meaning in contemporary Asian American culture. It is largely a white con struct, a manifestation of the image white Americans have of Asian Americans — in short, a stereotype, and a demeaning one. Webster’s New World diction ary attributes the word to Pidgin English. It is a language which evolved in the historical frame work of colonialism: specifi cally in the exploitation of Asian peoples in the construction of the California railroad and of the Panama Canal, and in the mines, farms, and factories of the Pacific rim. The implication is that Pidgin English is used with and by a race too backward to learn Standard English and hence inferior to the white race which does use Stan dard English. In this context, not speaking Pidgin was regarded as being uppity. (Of course it was never at issue whether white em ployers of Asian laborers should learn Asian languages.) The Emerald’s gaffe is espe cially ironic occurring as it does in conjunction with an event in the Multi-Cultural Historical Sym posium. The week-long celebra tion of cultural pride and racial identity was designed to heighten awareness of the contribution to American history and culture by minority races. The Emerald owes itself some research in ethnic studies and owes to all Asian Americans, particularly the mem bers of the Asian American Stu dent Union who produced Kaiail, a profound and abject apology. Debra Luttrell Senior, Fine Arts Out of context In a letter to the Emerald (Mon day 27 February) Dan Todd states that the Bible has become “...a lamp unto his feet, and a light unto his path." (Quoting Psalm 119:105). The contents of his let ter, however, indicate the con trary. Instead, he merely picks and chooses verses capriciously to support whatever strikes his fancy. Todd cites Ephesians 5:22, 23 “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife...” as meaning that a wife should submit to whatever cruelties a husband contrives. Todd’s specious premise is that these verses sanction whipping his wife with a saw chain!!! Yet he conveniently ignores the full con text of verse 23: "For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.” In whipping his wife with a chain, Todd has chosen to ignore the injunction of Ephesians 5:25: Husbands, love your wives even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it." Even more to the point are verses 28 and 29 of the same chapter: "So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church." Thus the Biblical model of wives submitting to husbands is within the context of a relationship in which the husband emulates the love that Jesus Christ has for the church. Christ’s love for the church is so boundless that he wil lingly gave his life for it. There is no higher model of true love for one’s wife than this. Todd is stretching credulity to infer that Ephesians 5 sanctions gutter level behaviour on the part of husbands. Todd goes on in his letter to tear still more verses out of context in an effort to show that the Bible requires wives to approve their husbands committing murder and rape. Again, Todd ignores the clear letter of the Word in favor of obfuscation. If the Bible is truly his lamp and light, then how can he honestly ignore the injunction of the Ten Commandents? Exodus 20:13, and 14 clearly state: “Thou shaft not kill. Thou shalt not com mit adultery.” Todd has attempted to be clever in satirizing the Bible. How ever, such a purportedly humor ous attack on scriptural integrity is at best superficial. At worst, it is intellectually dishonest. The hon est skeptic must admit that there is no way short of a contrived, twisted reading to make the ob noxious assertion that the Bible condones murder, rape, and cruelty to one’s wife. Anyone can play Todd’s disre putable game of pulling verses from their contextual moorings. A simple example would be to say ‘‘The Bible says ‘there is no God.’ ” Yet the full context of that statement is found in Psalm 14:1: “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.” Quite a differ ence!! Melvin Rollema Third year law Misquoted I would like to correct a crucial error reported in Monday’s Emerald. I said that while many Jews believe the reason women traditionally are not called to read Torah is they may be ritually un clean due to menstruation. This is absolutely untrue — it is a folklore myth. Traditionally, women are not called to Torah because of a dis cussion in the Talmud dealing with the question of community honor, not with ritual uncleanliness. The significant issue I tried to raise in my talk was the way in which these myths are used to socialize men and women into li mited roles. The first step in changing those roles is exposing those myths. Rabbi Laura Geller
