'A positive step' |
City, students respond to continuing racism
Graphic by Sioux Andersoi
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By MIKE RUST
Of the Emerald
During the past couple months, in
cidents of racial harassment in Eugene
have drawn censure from both com
munity leaders and the press.
But some local residents didn’t have to
be told racial harassment exists in
Eugene — they’ve had first-hand exper
ience for quite a while.
Gwen Polite of the Eugene chapter of
the National Association for the Advan
cement of Colored People says the level
of racial harrassment has remained con
stant since she moved to Eugene in
1969.
“It’s been more or less undercover,”
Polite says. “People have been reluctant
to mention things that happen to them.”
Donovan Guy, University Black
Student Union vice president, agrees,
calling the situation in Eugene “institu
tional racism.
■ ‘It’s a subtle racism. It’s people
laughing with you and then stabbing you
in the back. It’s people watching you
when you step onto a street.
“It’s not like in a southern town where
they call you ‘nigger.’ Here they don’t say
it, but you know they’re thinking it."
Last month, public attention and com
munity concern were sparked when a
black woman and her family in west
Eugene received a threatening letter. But
the letter was only one of a number of
recent incidents of harassment in the
Eugene area, Polite says. Others in
clude:
• A white family that has adopted two
black children were the targets of a
threatening phone call.
Polite’s husband, Willie, who is
Eugene NAACP president, told the
Eugene city council last week that the
couple’s adopted children were de
scribed by the caller as “the lowest
things in the neighborhood.”
• Last February, a privately printed
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racist pamphlet called “The Fifth King
dom" was distributed in west Eugene.
• A letter on stationary reported to
bear the letterhead of the Oregon Wild
life Society has apparently circulated
containing racist threats.
• A Eugene construction worker had a
tire slashed and received racist notes
while on the job.
• A local clergyman was the recipient
of racist-oriented mail.
There also have been reports of blacks
experiencing difficulty in finding jobs
because of their race. An NAACP sta
tement issued last month described the
"covert racism" faced by minority re
sidents.
"Covert racism is where an ethnic
minority family goes into a restaurant and
everyone else is served first," the sta
tement read. It described covert racism
as being excluded from training pro
grams and turned down for jobs for
which the minority applicant was best
qualified.
The statement also described covert
racism as “finding out the day after you
applied or left a deposit that the apart
ment house was already rented.”
Also, there are “small things such as
name calling and stares,” says BSU
Pres. Vince Green.
Last week, the Eugene City Council
directed the Human Rights Council and
city staff to study harassment legislations
and draft an ordinance that would make
racial and ethnic harassment a crime.
However, black leaders on campus
and in the community are realistic about
such legislation's impact.
“The ordinance is good if it acts,”
Green says. “If it just sits there, then why
have it?”
Gwen Polite says she doesn’t think an
ordinance “is going to help the situation.
“We have laws against crime. We have
crime all over.”
Local minorities face the threat of
harassment "every day and every hour,”
she says. “How is an ordinance going to
help? It can’t stop letters. It can’t stop
phone calls. When papers on the Fifth
Kingdom come up, how can an ordin
ance stop that?”
However, state and local harassment
legislation is "a positive step,” she says.
Ultimately, individual attitudes must
change before legislation will be effec
tive, Polite says.
The BSU will sponsor a panel discus
sion Tuesday night that will include law
school dean Derrick Bell, Rep. Jim
Weaver, D-Ore., Oregon Attorney Gen
eral Dave Fronhmayer and Oregon State
University vice president Clifford Smith.
BSU member Donald Brown says the
panel will to try answer questions about
the proposed anti-harassment legisla
tion.
“One of the problems is that we don’t
want to give the white man a weapon to
use against us,” Brown says.
Brown, who says the Reagan adminis
tration “put us back 25 years,” says that
the time has come for white liberals to
"make their decision" concerning the
racial situation in America.
'There’s a fire growing,” Brown says.
“Throw a little alcohol on it, you’ll have to
deal with it.”
Class studies economics of bias
Can capitalists capitalize on
discrimination?
Economics Prof. Robert Campbell dis
cusses such questions in Race and
Economics, a new special topics class
this term.
Factors that appear to represent a
slow-down in discrimination can be at
tributed to economic changes, Campbell
says.
Campbell says Race and Economics is
not an anthropology class. Because it’s
difficult to separate different races from
among the mass of discriminated peo
ples, the course deals with
discrimination rather than race, he says.
One statistic worth exploring, Camp
bell says, is the fact that in 1969 the
female work force earned 59 percent as
much as the male work force. In 1971,
women earned 61 percent as much as
men did.
This statistic could mean sexual dis
crimination is slowing down, Campbell
says. It also could mean that two addi
tional working years have improved
women’s labor qualifications, he adds.
One reason for women’s improved
labor status is that they have gained
more seniority and more skill, Campbell
says. Women have developed more
marketable qualities and therefore are
discriminated against less.
Blacks also possess a higher labor |
status now than thay have in the past, §
Campbell says.
This could be attributed to investments
in human capital, he says. Providing
better education and health care are
investments in human capital because
each enhances a person’s ability to
work.
According to Campbell, improved
black education has in turn improved
black labor status. The average young,
married black encounters the same labor
opportunities as his white counterpart,
he says.
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