1990_02 The Daily Collegian February 1990

              Page   2    Monday, February 12,- 199Q
The Daily
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Time for a change
6/acfc H/sfo/y Month losing meaning
Donnell Alexander
Pick a news medium, any news
medium; TV. talk radio or news¬
paper. Choose your selling and a
time of day in the month called
February. A-year cafled 1990.
Somewhere, there's going lo be
a feature on Rosa Parks, because
it's Black History Month and a
period of time designated for
remembering people like her.
Rosa Parks was great. She
provided the civil rights move¬
ment with its most potent meta¬
phor three decades ago when she.
refused lo take her place on the
back of the bus and turned Ihe
South upside down.
But her gesture, as well as
those of her pioneer contemporar¬
ies, is losing meaning.
Back in the mid-60s. when
Malcolm Xwas a powerful voice in
Harlem. Mike Wallace and CBS-
did this little piece on The Hate
that Hate Produced." It depicted
Malcolm and ihe Nation of Islam
as vigilante alternatives for lcss-
and these are Mike's words, not
mine— "sober-minded Negroes."
Now, cities name playgrounds
after Malcolm X. citing him as a
visionary in the realm of black
self-determinism.
Maybe he'll be the Rosa Parks of
the 1990s.
My point Is this: That woman
was what we needed back then,
but we're getting her now, 30
years too late. ,
The world needed Malcolm X
when he was living, breathing and
touching people. The world didn't
get him because the media wasn't
ready. They weren't even close.
Even now. at yet another time
when the unveiling of a hero or
two would feel just right, they're
serving out nostalgia in heaping
helpings.
Innundation is sometimes like
an opiate.
Commemoration is an odd.
pathetic, necessary thing.
•••
In these days of Bill Lees, Don
Kings. Marion Barrys. gangs.
joblessness and Batman haircuts,
who is set to be remembered in
the coming millenium? You think
they'll be telling kids about David
Dtnkins? Louis Farrakhan,
maybe? Any voles for conservative
economist Waller Williams?
Nothing is sure but that this
person isn't someone being
lauded silly right now. Any hero
out there isn't being cloaked In
blanket endorsements.
Unless of course everything has
turned out fine, the trouble is
over and no one's been hipped
aboul il.
More likely, the'media and all
the oilier commemoration sympa¬
thizers will keep on trotting out
Rosa and Martin and those poor
civil rights workers from "Missis¬
sippi Burning" while no one will
sing for Huey.
It's almost like some old ritual.
We spend our Decembers
singing "Silver Bells," "Green-
sleeves" and "Little Town of
Bethelehem" all the live-long day.
These are songs we've heard since
childhood, and haven't yet com¬
prehended their meanings.
It's almost funny.
It's beginning to look a lot like
Christmas, everywhere I go.
FOR THE RECORD
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THE DAILY COLLEGIAN
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