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March 21, 2002
David
Vest
Hail
to the Chaff
March 20, 2002
Kay Lee
Censorship at Angelfire
Robert
Jensen
The
Politics of Pain
and Pleasure
Sheperd Bliss
Notes from Hawai'i:
Trouble in Paradise
Rick Giambetti
Prozac
and Suicide:
an Interview with
Dr. David Healy
Philip Farruggio
Bullies
Lori Allen
Live
from Ramallah:
The Madness of Occupation
March
19, 2002
Tariq
Ali
Nuke
Iraq?
Phyllis
Pollack
Roger
Daltrey's LA Surprise
Amir Ahmadi
War-Mongering
Academics:
The New Tartuffe
Ben White
Bomber
Blair
Fran Shor
Child-Murderers
and Madmen
March
18, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Crazy
is Cool
Dave Marsh
DeskScan:
What's Playing At My House
Armen
Khanbabyan
The
Pentagon in the Caucasus:
Georgia Is Only the Beginning
Gabriel
Ash
Abdullah
v. Osama
Bernard
Weiner
Middle
East for Dummies
Alexander
Cockburn
Tipping
in America
March
17, 2002
David
Vest
The
Politics of Packaging
Tariq
Ali
The
Left's New Empire Loyalists
March
16, 2002
Chris
Floyd
Ashcroft's
Secret Snatches
March 15, 2002
Doron Rosenblum
Israel's Settler Warlords
Alex Lynch
Rhetorical
Attacks On Iraq
Norman Madarasz
Neo-Con Propaganda
and the National Review
Paul-Marie
de La Gorce
Making
Enemies
March
14, 2002
Dr. Susan
Block
RIP
Danny Pearl
Francis
Boyle
Bush
Nuke Plan Violates International Law, Again
Wayne
Saunders
Memo
to Paul McCartney:
There Are Two Kinds
of Freedom, Sir
H.P. Albarelli
Anthrax
Cover-up?
March
13, 2002
Amira
Hass
Are
the Occupied Protecting the Occupier?
CounterPunch
Wire
National
Review Editors Suggest Nuking Mecca
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Personal
Responsibility
for Corporate Elites?
Robert
Fisk
Arabs
Don't Want US
to Strike Iraq
Alexander
Cockburn
When
Billy Graham Wanted
to Kill One Million People
March
12, 2002
Kay Lee
Dangerous
Changes in
California's Prisons
John Patrick
Leary
The
Return of Otto Reich
Wole Akande
US
is Being Discredited
in the Eyes of Africa
March
11, 2002
Hani Shukrallah
This
is the Way the World Ends
Tommy
Ates
Bush's
New Nuke Policy:
Target Allies and Enemies
Lidia Andrusenko
The Great
Chicken War:
Bush v. Putin
Dave Marsh
10
CDs Playing On My Desk
John Chuckman
Footprints
in the Dust
Norman
Madarasz
Max
Steel in a Time of Chaos
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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8-Page Special Issue
War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
Search
CounterPunch
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
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March 22, 2002
How Black Academia Can Rise
To The Next Level
By Tommy Ates
On affirmative action and the hiring process,
can black
academia practice what they preach? Well, probably yes and
no... The question of whether racial discrimination exists
against whites at historic black colleges depends what
definition of discrimination that person subscribes to.
Ironically, affirmative action for minorities at closed
white universities in the 1960s opened the door at these
lawsuits, quietly shelved by many black colleges.
Increasingly, more racial discrimination
lawsuits are being
filed, by whites at traditional African-American colleges,
who are refused tenure as a professor or who are appointed
in administration positions. Yes, question of what is
'proper' affirmative action again raises its head and we
must decide soon. These government incentives (or mandates)
are well intentioned, but as the media press regarding
reverse-discrimination suits barely hint at: whites, in an
increasing multi-cultural world, are finding difficulty in
crossing cultural road blocks regarding issues that were
supposedly 'settled.' The reason the plaintiffs give for
feeling that they have been discriminated against are
similar to minorities except in one sense, none seem to have
the outright hostility that has generally accompanied
working in a 'closed' atmosphere. In fact, many litigants
report fair and wonderful treatment by the faculty and the
students as a whole.
But there is a problem; whites and
blacks at traditional black colleges have different ideas of
what the goal of the school is. For whites, it is another
avenue of learning, of being able to teach promising pupils
and reach tenure status. For blacks, it is preserving an
avenue of learning by African-Americans for
African-Americans, learning in a way that requires little
deviation from cultural lingo. You are guided in your
students by blacks that have your best interests at heart
(unlike the mainstream social machine). It is okay to talk
in 'black speak' informally. It is okay to feel safe being
black.
All of these things have become an integral
part of the
black college experience in modern times. Yet, in the late
20th Century, as taxpayer dollars infiltrated
African-American universities, the same government
stipulations in regards to reaching committed hiring goals
and student diversity applied to these schools as well as
the state and private white schools. The oozing dilemma of
historic black colleges being sacked with such
discrimination suits and burying them is nothing new. The
fact that more media organizations are reporting them is
notable. Younger whites are realizing they need equal access
to this emerging, niche society and since they are the
dominant ones (right now), it presents a potential problem.
Clearly there are two sides to this issue.
White educator
litigants charge that they were shut out the door; but
historic black colleges also have a charge to keep in hiring
and promoting personnel that reflects and promotes the type
of students it wants to attend that school. Would the
non-white teachers be able to keep the same charge as
<W.E.B>. du Bois or a Mary McLeod Bethune? (Would they
know
who they were?)
Already at some of the smaller black
colleges (like Lincoln
University), the white student population now vastly
outnumbers the original black counterparts. It becomes
increasingly hard to celebrate black-derived traditions and
celebrated with fewer and fewer blacks present. Inevitably,
there becomes a change in identity in which another (mostly
white) rises from the ashes.
This gradual, but dramatic trend is one
that is following
smaller, lesser known African-American college one by one as
more blacks head to major universities where there tends to
be greater resources and larger endowments. White
instructors and lecturers, attracted by the difference in
education experience (and also, the need for diversity in
staffing) are applying in larger numbers, leaving a looming,
cultural question for black academia. Can a white president
lead black students at a historic black college?
To place an equal standard for hiring
staff, black academia
would have to let go its independent spirit, its inner
voice, to join a modern society who has not yet remembered,
regretted, or fully admitted its mistakes and abuses of
African people. We still remember it was crime to teach
blacks to read before the Civil War. We still remember when
we had no legitimate voice. Our political leaders are still
attacked for stating inclusive positions and denigrated for
showing any kind of oratory skills other than those that
reflect Western values. Our schools are still substandard
and in the upper middle-class 'resistance war' to share
taxpayer dollars in education, we know that the war not to
teach black youth is still not over. In essence, we are
still tolerated, not celebrated.
Should whites achieve equal parity in
the black education
system? Of course. Would that potentially lose the one last
educational voice we have? Certainly. The problem is an
issue of conscience. And for the life of me, on this issue, I
wish I didn't have one--we have to begin to trust us, and
them.
Can we?
Tommy Ates
is a freelance writer based in Austin, TX. His columns have appeared
in The Houston Chronicle, Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, Wichita
Eagle and Global Black News. He can be reached at:
atesbodhi5.aol.com.
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