Salon | Letters to the editor

_______________GANGSTA ATHLETES, ANXIOUS WHITES BY GARY KAMIYA (12/10/97)

As a journalist and a young African-American man, I was utterly offended and disgusted after reading Gary Kamiya's severely slanted piece. I am so sick and tired of being sick and tired of whites attempting to define the behavior with which blacks, particularly black men, should conduct ourselves! Who the hell are whites to set standards for anybody? Whites are the last race of people from whom I'd like to take behavior cues. If Kamiya and those who agree with him really want evidence of obscene behavior, why don't they look at the record of Europeans and Euro-Americans, particularly in the New World. Is aggressive black urban gangsta street culture any more aggressive and obscene than the aggression Europeans imposed upon people in West Africa for more than 300 years beginning in the 15th or 16th century? Is aggressive black urban gangsta street culture any more aggressive and offensive than the aggression imposed upon millions of African and African-American people brought to this New World and forced to work for nothing, stripped of their identities? But, of course, self-examination is always the most difficult.

-- Marcus Franklin

_______________CHOKE YOUR COACH, BECOME A CAUSE BY DAVID HOROWITZ (12/10/97)

David Horowitz makes grand claims about "America's receding racial past" -- quite interesting for an article devoted to how whites have become better at telling the differences between "good" and "bad" blacks, written by a guy whose career consists of denigrating the disenfranchised as a means of kissing up to the establishment, published in a magazine which recently ran the following straight-faced commentary by Salon Executive Editor Gary Kamiya: "In the best of all possible sports worlds, black emotional fireworks would enliven white dullness (who wants to watch a bunch of repressed honkies who never celebrate?) and white restraint would temper black individualism." Oh, yes, those dark-skinned races are just so much closer to nature, aren't they? So much freer. It's got to be the influence of the jungle running through their primal blood. It's tough to appreciate these things, being a cerebral, reserved white man. But I try.
Horowitz cheats. In his version, Rodney King was "throwing cops" and they responded by getting "overly rough" with him. Horowitz makes a savage group beating sound so polite and so justified. Maybe if his arguments were strong enough to support themselves, he wouldn't have to resort to distortions to blur the truth. America has "moved past the bad days of segregation"? Tell that to all of the kids in de facto segregated schools, families in segregated neighborhoods, workers in segregated businesses. Where does Horowitz live that he can be so wrong about how life is lived all across the country?
Just because the cops, for the most part, realize that beating blacks in the street is really bad publicity doesn't mean racism has receded or vanished. Rather, like most invidious viruses, it has mutated, adapted, gone behind boardroom doors. It hides behind "Politically Incorrect and Proud" T-shirts and it lurks in GOP speeches. It flaunts itself in the disparity between sentencing for crack and powder cocaine and it thrives in clutched pocket books and averted glances. Mock the idea of "institutional racism" all you like, but if you ridicule the possibility that it still exists, you're left with patently racist charges of laziness, stupidity and cowardice as the only explanations for statistically lower levels of African-American achievement. That's what Horowitz implies, but as always, is too spineless to come out and say. Is a racist who lacks the courage of his own convictions better or worse than a confident, assertive racist? David?

-- Cole Odell
SALON | Dec. 17, 1997

R E C E N T L Y+| AUTHOR-FREE WRITING BY BENJAMIN MARCUS

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_______________GANGSTA ATHLETES, ANXIOUS WHITES BY GARY KAMIYA (12/10/97)
	As a journalist and a young African-American man, I was utterly offended and disgusted after reading Gary Kamiya's severely slanted piece. I am so sick and tired of being sick and tired of whites attempting to define the behavior with which blacks, particularly black men, should conduct ourselves! Who the hell are whites to set standards for anybody? Whites are the last race of people from whom I'd like to take behavior cues. If Kamiya and those who agree with him really want evidence of obscene behavior, why don't they look at the record of Europeans and Euro-Americans, particularly in the New World. Is aggressive black urban gangsta street culture any more aggressive and obscene than the aggression Europeans imposed upon people in West Africa for more than 300 years beginning in the 15th or 16th century? Is aggressive black urban gangsta street culture any more aggressive and offensive than the aggression imposed upon millions of African and African-American people brought to this New World and forced to work for nothing, stripped of their identities? But, of course, self-examination is always the most difficult. -- Marcus Franklin
_______________CHOKE YOUR COACH, BECOME A CAUSE BY DAVID HOROWITZ (12/10/97)
	David Horowitz makes grand claims about "America's receding racial past" -- quite interesting for an article devoted to how whites have become better at telling the differences between "good" and "bad" blacks, written by a guy whose career consists of denigrating the disenfranchised as a means of kissing up to the establishment, published in a magazine which recently ran the following straight-faced commentary by Salon Executive Editor Gary Kamiya: "In the best of all possible sports worlds, black emotional fireworks would enliven white dullness (who wants to watch a bunch of repressed honkies who never celebrate?) and white restraint would temper black individualism." Oh, yes, those dark-skinned races are just so much closer to nature, aren't they? So much freer. It's got to be the influence of the jungle running through their primal blood. It's tough to appreciate these things, being a cerebral, reserved white man. But I try. Horowitz cheats. In his version, Rodney King was "throwing cops" and they responded by getting "overly rough" with him. Horowitz makes a savage group beating sound so polite and so justified. Maybe if his arguments were strong enough to support themselves, he wouldn't have to resort to distortions to blur the truth. America has "moved past the bad days of segregation"? Tell that to all of the kids in de facto segregated schools, families in segregated neighborhoods, workers in segregated businesses. Where does Horowitz live that he can be so wrong about how life is lived all across the country? Just because the cops, for the most part, realize that beating blacks in the street is really bad publicity doesn't mean racism has receded or vanished. Rather, like most invidious viruses, it has mutated, adapted, gone behind boardroom doors. It hides behind "Politically Incorrect and Proud" T-shirts and it lurks in GOP speeches. It flaunts itself in the disparity between sentencing for crack and powder cocaine and it thrives in clutched pocket books and averted glances. Mock the idea of "institutional racism" all you like, but if you ridicule the possibility that it still exists, you're left with patently racist charges of laziness, stupidity and cowardice as the only explanations for statistically lower levels of African-American achievement. That's what Horowitz implies, but as always, is too spineless to come out and say. Is a racist who lacks the courage of his own convictions better or worse than a confident, assertive racist? David? -- Cole Odell SALON \| Dec. 17, 1997