1989_04 The Daily Collegian April 1989

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Page 2    Friday, April 14. 1989 TheDaUy CoUegian
'—Opinion
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LETTEKS
Black culture exposure needed
To the Editor
As the world becomes more diverse in
its cultural backgrounds so should the
minds of people in our community,
especially college students. Few college
students have ever been exposed to the
entire histosjr' of Afro-Americans,
Mexican-Americans, and other ethnic
backgrounds. %
Through their limited education in high
school and even in the junior college
level, students have been taught an
inadequate view about the impact different
cultures have had in shaping history and
in our society today. For example, many
students have been taught that blacks
were slaves and indentured servants, but
not that they built and maintained a vast
empire for several centuries before the
Europeans did. In my own experience
with the educational system, it was not
until I had a Black Studies class here at
Fresno State university that I learned the
historical importance of different ethnic
groups, predominately the black race.
Teachers may not only inadequately
expose their students to the full history of
different ethnic groups, but may also
BLOOM COUNTY
teach with a biased point of view. An
extreme example of this in the United
States is the formation white suprcmist
groups—The Ku Klux Klan, White
Brotherhood, the Knights of the White
Camillia. They have been taught to
believe that any individual not of white
protestant race is inferior and imposing
on their rights. Supposedly our society is
more educated than previous years but
there has been a great increase in the
membership of these white suprcmist
groups. For example, between 1916-1920
there were between 500,000 to 1;000,000
members, whereas today there is over two
million members. It is my opinion that it
racial ignorance that causes people to join
these various groups.
In conclusion, an individual's
knowledge about different ethnic groups
needs to be expanded. There is never a
point where an individual can hold too
much knowledge. Knowledge is power,
but inadequate and biased knowledge is
self-destructive.
Sincerely, .
Bonnie Leslie
Freshman, CSUF
by Berke Breathed
BLOOM COUNTY
by Berke Breathed
m -c<tarruL imeeia
on me sa/rn
theDaily Collegian
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Silva, North and
born hypocrites
Steve Leone
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning
from uneasy dreams he found himself
transformed in his bed into a gigantic
insect....
What has happened to me? he thought.
It was no dream.
—Franz Kafka, The
Metamorphisis
You wake up one morning and find
yourself transformed into a giant
hypocrite. You try and shake it off. You
tear at your face by the bathroom sink,
plunge it into cold water, scrub at it
endlessly with comet, but to no avail.
You are still hopelessly a hypocrite.
Your chest feels weighted by some
unknown force. It isn't asthma and you
don't have the flu, but you cough and it
hurts. Your mother knocks at the
bathroom door. You try to answer, but
your mouth is a set of giant mandibles
and you garble out a chirping noise like a
chorus of crickets. Horrified, you clutch
at your throat with hands transfigured into
funy pinchers.
"Arc you okay, son?" your mother
asks, knocking in a panicked rush. What
has happened to me?—you think. The
horror, the horror...
Everyone is a hypocrite. Face it.
Hypocrisy is everywhere; in my life, in
yours, everywhere in the world We
pledge to do things and do the exact
opposite. We can't help it—we're
imperfect beings. But some, including
many leaders of our own country, won't
admit to the hypocrisy. They deny iL
That's reality, and it's downright
frightening.
What's hypocritic now about our
campus is this whole Silva vs. Women's
Studies issue. As we are instructed in WS
classes, feminism is a concept which
upholds the belief in an egalitarian
society in which all women and men arc
created equal and thus should be treated
equally. In patriarchal society as we know
it, this is a difficult task! one we should
be fighting for today in the work force,
etc. In such an incident as the Silva issue,
when it was one man fighting the
direction of a woman studies discussion,
both sides should be deemed hypocritic.
First of all, Silva. He. wants respect.
He wants apologies. Well, according to
some in the class, the guy evidently didn't
give his instructor Marcia Bedard the
respect to discontinue his (what the
instructor calls) interrogation after having
been asked, and also refused to leave.
Both of course can be contested because
of uncircumstantial evidence; none can
agree on what really happened. However,
it being en "interrogation" alone
implicates Silva as one who believes
himself an authority figure. His stance,
then, implies that he feels himself above
the woman involved, Bonnic Sheress, in
a sense; he demanded answers with the
insistence that he deserved them.
However, it seems that instructor
Bedard's essential definition of feminism
is the concept that "women are victims."
Instead of taking both stances on the-
issue, in what could have been a prolific
'discussion, she threw the man out. This
is an ironic twist on the "men's club"
idiom; you don't follow the rules or the
movement of the club or pass
qualifications, you're out    , -
Feminism shouldn't be a restrictive
club; it's an ideal for equality, for the
right to voice all sides. A classroom,
especially one which contains woman's
studies curriculum, should objectively
cite all sides, views, opinions to all
issues and not uphold restrictive views,
such as creating the woman as a victim.
The latter happens in society, but as in a
classroom setting, it doesn't have to be
that way. It's all a matter of choice.
Women can be aggressive in
discussion; many in the class could have
put up an opposing stance to Silva's
interrogation. To give up like passive    '
victims and force the man and his
opinions/questions out the door is to
uphold exactly what feminism is trying
to fight: restriction of equality. The
Hypocrisy Bug eats this stuff up. Why
can't there ever be a separate peace?
A major force of hypocrisy in the
world is our own country. America was
founded on the butchering of native
American Indians. Now these Indians are
forced, or so it would seem, to live on
reservations, and yet the country upholds
the rights of its citizens.
In the U.S. courts today, we have as a
hypocrite a national hero: Oliver North.
When he took the position of national
security advisor, he pledged a vow to
oppose all ordcrsihat he deemed immoral
or corrupt. His support of his actions in
the Iran-Contra incident contradict this
vow. His current response to this in the
hearings? "It was wrong, but what I was
doing was right. I was following orders."
Ollie's response is analogous to what
indicted S.S. officers responded at the
Nuremburg trials of 1946 to the question
of war crimes against the Jews: the
holocaust. In a sense then, North's
patriotism, his personal view of
nationalism, is analogous to-Hitler's nazi-
ism—"Just following orders, man."
Those involved in the Iran-Contra
incident, congressmen, the former and
present President alike, are equally as
hypocritic for pointing the finger at
North. Hypocrites, hypocrites
everywhere, and no one alive to say they
aren't. Maybe some historical figures,
like Jesus, Mohammed, Buddah, etc.,
could make this claim. Anyone alive who
docs is proving their own hypocrisy; my
roommate for example. Just kidding.
So what am I for pointing out all these
hypocrisies? Why, a hypocrite, of course.
Call me that again, though, and I'll crawl
out through the plumbing in your
bathroom sink, out and down the wall to
your pantry, and make hell out of your
donuts and Fruit Loops. And cheese,
cheese is good. Any cheese crumbs on the
floor and they're mine. The scary part is if
you catch me, I'm dead bug-meat.
Hypocrites, you see, are very easy to
stamp out, especially if they're in plain
sight on the floor eating cheese crumbs.
Steve Leone's column appears every
Friday in the Daily Collegian.
READER
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