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
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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.
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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
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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
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