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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (June 3, 1982)
Page 4 Portland Observer, June 3, 1962 EDITORIAL/OPINION The political economy of ¿lack murder Maynard Jackson was elected mayor shows. One group o f white patrolmen ins 1973. By the mid-1970s the city leaked to the media their view that Since the arrest and subsequent con projected the image o f a successful black police and government officials were simply “ too stupid to solve the viction o f Wayne W illiam s, (he na pro-business, biracial community. tional media has all but forgotten the Unresolved socioeconomic tensions case." By (he winter o f 1981 Atlanta tragedy o f A tla n ta . The unresolved created by the new realities o f modern was by all accounts “ a city under murders o f m ore than tw o dozen capital expansion and the older pat seige.” Small school children from nations. The Argentines continously battled black youths have been safely terns o f white Souther racism finally poor and middle class black neigh the British, both on the mainland and in the is relegated to the obscurity o f the news exploded in the late 1970s. Almost borhoods were actually arming them papers’ back pages. The green rib one quarter o f Atlanta residents exist selves in school with homemade wea- lands. Before and after Argentine indepen bons o f last spring are now ancient below the poverty level. 26 per cent o f pons. The white business community dence, the British attempted to ursurp its sov- history. all household heads were unemployed was convinced that a “ racial blowup vereignty and even today its economic controls Yet large unanswered questions re in 1978. In recent years large numbers would occur if a white was charged are strong. main. The Atlanta tragedy was often o f m id d le -to -u p p e r incom e whites with (he murders.” Promising over When Argentina became independent it presented narrowly as a ’ ’ homicide fled to the suburbs. Between 1970- 8,000 more jobs for inner city youths, claimed the Malvinas, but the British took case,” devoid o f the political and eco 1980 102,000 whites left Atlanta, and the A tlanta Chamber o f Commerce nomic dynamics o f black life in that blacks became two-thirds o f the city's actually delivered only 2,000. them by force in 1833. They remained British city. In retrospect, what many o b population. Incidents o f violence be Police repression escalated every until A p ril 2nd in spite o f 150 years o f Argen servers failed to grasp was the fact tween the remnants o f the old segre where. 1,500 children in February, tine diplomatic attempts to obtain their release. that the p attern o f racial violence gationist police force and blacks be 1981, and 4,670 children in M arch, The fact that Argentina is a brutal regime against black youths was only one came m ore freq u e n t. In 1973 and 1981, were stopped by authorities for does not negate the right o f Argentina to the specific aspect o f a larger and even 1974, 23 blacks were gunned down by violating a 7 p .m . cityw ide curfew. islands. ( It is strange that the US media — so more devastating process— the under police; twelve were under 14 years Ordered to cooperate with local o ffi development o f the black population old. In the m id-1970s, A tlan ta had cials, the FB I p ro m p tly in fu riate d strangely silent while the US armed Argentina as a whole. We can see this process the highest per capita police killings blacks by suggesting that some o f the —- is suddenly concerned w ith A rgentine op clearly by reviewing a few basic facts o f civilians in the U .S . By 1979. A t victims* mothers may have been (he pression.) about Atlanta. lanta surpassed D e tro it as the city killers. W ith the arrest o f W illiams, The Montonero Peronist Movement, the with the highest murder rate in Am er the FBI left (he city, and the attention political opposition to the current government, M odern A tlanta is the product o f ica. o f white capitalist A m erica moved the infusion o f monopoly capital in pointed that out that although the islands were Black A tlantans were poorly pre elsewhere. to a rapidly changing racial and poli pared to deal w ith their c h ild re n ’ s Since the arrest o f W illiam s, the recovered by representatives o f a m ilitary dict tical m ilieu . U n til the C iv il Rights murders. M any black ministers and m urders have continued. On Feb atorship, “ regardless o f who carried out the Movement, the piedmont and Black- religious leaders, the backbone o f the ruary 10, 1982, the body o f Frederick operation or their intentions, the recovery o f belt South's central means o f produc black c o m m u n ity ’ s C iv il Rights York was found hanging from a tree full national sovereignty over the territory is tion was predominantly agricultural, Movement, at firs, showed little con at Piedmont Avenue and Renaissance construction and light industry. D ur cern in the case. Community groups Drive. As o f this w riting, two more still a genuine demand o f the Argentine ing the 1950s and 1960s Georgia ex did little to help resolve local tensions Black youths have disappeared— 21- people.” perienced a massive economic trans until the summer and autumn months year-old M ichael P h illip s and 22- fo rm a tio n . The num ber o f black- o f 1980. As the num ber o f victims year-old Chester Gaston. Both young owned and operated farm s in the m ounted, criticism s were raised men had some o f the physical charac state dropped from 12,049 to 4,450 against the black middle class, and teristics o f the black males who were between 1954 and 1969, as agribusi observers commented , ha, only poor murdered since 1979. ness increased. Atlanta became a glit black children were being singled out The political economy o f black op tering convention center, and head by the killer or killers. pression continues in Atlanta, as well quarters fo r v irtu a lly every m a jo r as in virtually every other American T he local w hite-ow ned media city. The lives of black youth are still examples o f the school district’s seeming in c o rp o ra tio n in the Southeast. Jim C ro w was g radu ally abandoned as branded the Jackson A d m in is tra endangered, because we have failed ability to keep its numbers straight. blacks comprised 51 per cent o f (he tion hopelessly inept and promoted to recognize that the murders are in The Jackson residents say there are city’s population by 1970. A tlanta's the racial slur that blacks were intel the last analysis a product o f black discrepancies in the revenue figures provided black e lite , allied w ith lib e ra l ele lectu ally incapable o f governing a underdevelopment and systematic ex by the district staff to justify the closure. ments o f the city’s white private sec major metropolis. Television stations ploitation. tor, successfully challenged the older competed with each other to project These discrepancies could all but erase the Dr. Manning Marable is director o f supposed savings. These, together with the loss racist hierarchy to become the new tactlessly the anguish o f black p a r the Race R elations In s titu te , Fisk managers o f the political apparatus. ents, turning funerals into circus side- University, Nashville, Tennessee. o f $20 m illion in school property and by Manning Marable Third World supports Argentina The Third W orld is in almost unanimous support o f Argentina in the Argentine-British battle over the Malvinas. This not an expres sion o f support for the Argentine m ilitary dic tatorship which continues to opress its citizens, but an outcry against colonialism and imper ialism. The current British action is seen as an ex tension o f the gunboat diplomacy that both the United Kingdom and the United States have used to control the economies and the natural resources o f Latin America. It is also a clear demonstration that the true interest o f the United States in providing arms and m ili tary training to Argentina and other Third W orld countries is not for the security and protection o f those nations but for the eco nomic and political interest o f the U .S. The days o f the Empire are gone— but the US must help perpetuate the myth. I f the United States government should take a stand against colonialism for the Malvinas, G ibraltar and other British possessions— what about Puerto Rico?. The dispute between Britian and Argentina dates back to the birth o f the Latin American Errors blur district statistics The Portland School District is in the un tenable position o f justifying its decision to close Jackson High School vet retain the residential neighborhood served by Jackson in the Portland district. Jackson residents — in light o f the closure o f their school — are asking to withdraw and form their own district. The closure o f Jackson has been justified on financial savings — decreasing eirollment, ever increasing difficulty in finding adequate tunas, m e problem with this justification is the shifting sands o f school district statistics. Remember the long struggle over the deseg regation plan — when every night the numbers provided by the district were different? Remember the “ slight” budget error that caused pain to every school district in the state as budgets were adjusted downward to make up the difference? These are only two recent iM izo.s«- Jfc ourtw K o fU feet, n t u r HfdMdhWtcf. 1 educational considerations, could make the closure o f Jackson a loss rather than a gain. Whatever the outcome o f the Jackson issue, Superintendent M a tt Prophet must free himself from the district’s earlier errors. These were not his mistakes and he can only harm his own credibility by defending his less compe tent predecessors. His job now is to insure that the staff provides accurate inform ation so that he and the board can make informed decisions. W CtC.i rr'j I i r r « .« A /M . 1 I M l lo » t MV ytofl IA»T m »S7 A /« '« even f v r * find • ’Y « lo W Ä JoB . »/fc. »F TMAT'i HMPP<b)N«- T o to w , HdVw) CNN SC X» > T « » N C T o * ftCACANOMlCI? Short circuiting the global village by l rank Viviano Pacific News Service As the war in the Malvinas moves into a second m onth, it raises two deeply disturbing questions: What is really going on there? A nd what longterm significance does it have? In a sense, the lack o f a reliable answer to the firs, question offers an answer to the second. There is something quite striking about the fact th a t, in an age o f instant electronic com m u nication s, we cannot see or hear the M alvin as war. Since the very dawn o f that age 35 years ago, its u ltim a te im pact on society has been a matter o f intense debate, focused on two c o n tra d ic to ry scenarios. O ne, pictured by G eorge O rw e ll in “ 1984” , foresaw a world in which electronic media served only to isolate individuals fro m the truth and render them powerless. The second emerged fro m M ars h all M cLuhan’s “ Understanding Media: The Extensions o f M an ” which predicticted that the electronic age would instead give b irth to a “ global village” , a world united by the rapid and continuous exchange o f inform ation.” I f the past few weeks are any guide, it is O rw e ll’ s dark scenario that may be taking shape. Outside o f the islands themselves and the ministries in London and Buenos A ires, no one really does know w h a t’s going on in the M a lv in a s . The governm ents o f A rg en tin a and B ritain a lik e have seen to that, establishing a virtual blackout on the flow o f images and inform ation from the battle scene. W h ile reporters and cam eram en direct their attention to ministerial press conferences and m an-on-lhe- street interviews (what Daniel Boor stin once called "non-events” ), the — ¿ ■ ■ J Oregon Name Subscribe today) Receive your Observer by mail. Only $10 per year jf F 6 B MB Address City ’«'A ,|.- i ; h " P u b lis h e rs £3 | | H ■ ■ 9 1« Association State Portland Observer Box 3137 Portland, OR 97208 7ip MEMBER NHWA m AeeoeleMon • Founded TBBB actual struggle in the South Atlantic proceeds in strangely silent and invisible realm , a kind o f govern ment engineered w arp in the electronic universe. U n lik e US involvem ent in Vietnam , which flooded American living rooms almost nightly with a com pelling m ilita ry horror show, the action in the Malvinas is all o ff screen. The longterm significance o f the Malvinas war, in other words, inay be its suggestion that governments have learned the potent lesson from Vietnam : M od ern war must be fought in the communciations dark, even by democracies. No less an authority than M ajo r General W illiam Westmoreland, the com m ander o f U S forces in Indochina 15 years ago, confirm s the importance o f that lesson. If he had to fig h t another w ar, W estm oreland recently said, the first thing he would do is censor the press. Indeed, he is but the latest in a long line o f A m erican o ffic ia ls , stretching back to R ichard N ixon and including President Reagan, who have implied that the press — and television coverage in particular — helped “ lose” the war in Vietnam. The issue o f censorship has, o f course, been raised in the context of the M alvin as, most notably when the British Broadcasting C o rp o ra tion was attacked by Prime Minister Thatcher for its efforts to treat the Argentine position with fairness and objectivity. Bu, censorship, in the sense that it is usually understood, may not be the true crux o f the matter. Despite the assault on the B BC, its an alytical w ork goes on iiiiiinpeedcd. The superficial appeal anccs o f a fu n ctio n al dem ocracy, served by a freely c ritica l press, have been maintained. The deeper problem is plain access. By tacit mutual consent, the British and their A rgentine foes have simply short-circuited the global village — yanked the plug out on the form o f jo u rn alism to which m illions look today for some semblance o f the “ te x tu re ” o f events: their look, sound and feel. As Vietnam clearly demonstrated, the images that convey this texture have a power all their own, and one which operates on a level to ta lly d iffe re n t from that o f cool, dispassionate news analysis. E rik B arnouw , the dean o f A m erican broadcast historians, has argued that the collapse of popular support for the Indochina war owed much more to such images than it did to explicit criticism o f US policy from news analysts. In fact, even when voice-over n arratio n o ffe re d a ration ale in favor o f A m erican m ilitary actions, the sheer sight o f Amrican boys burning villages — or American boys in plastic body bags — worked to counter-purpose. Hence the ominous character o f the naval battles o ff A rg e n tin a ’s coast, w hith their unseen aerial dogfight and their doubly, anonymous dead. It is d iffic u lt to avoid concluding that televised images o f the IIM S S h effield exploding into flam es, or o f the G eneral Hclgrano sinking into u watery grave, would not have influenced the public opinion which makes military conflict possible. Instead, Argentines, Britons and the larger w orld that their war concerns must settle for analytical speculations, and a landscape empty o f all hut non-events. « Ofiyrighl Pin ific News Service Portland Observer ow‘ > ’" » I , '•«iiowai The P o rtla n d O b s e rv e r IU S P S 969 6801 it published every Thursday by Exie Publishing Company, Inc , 2201 North Killings worth, Portland, Oragon 97217, Post Office Box 3137, Portland, Oregon 97208 Second claaa postage paid ar Portland, Oregon M8V1FI* IO Ali. Subscriptions: »10 00 par -'ear In the Tri County area Poat m a s te r Send address char,„ ■ t h e / ’rirz/uzir/O/nrrvr-r, P O Box 3137, Portland, Oregon 97208 283 2486 A l McGilberry, Managing Editor A ! 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