r Seventy-Fifth Year EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Views on the Question of Racial Equality Where Opinions Are Free, 420 MAYNARD ST., ANN ARBOR, MICH. Truth Will Prevail NEws PHoNE: 764-0552 Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 24, 1964 NIGHT EDITOR: JOHN KENNY Student Government Council: Chronology of a Meeting WEDNESDAY NIGHT'S Student Gov- ernment Council meeting was like an automobile accident, the kind of thing that civilized people should not want to happen but really do because its so sadis- tically fulfilling. Unfortunately, however, not only on- lookers but SGC members felt that way. All concept of SGC as a semi-important body which should be felt and not seen was gone. Instead, sweeping drama and pleas for unity and cooperation reigned. Council members forgot about the seri- ous problems at hand and settled down to enjoy themselves as actors. And it was so much fun to watch, like an old melo- drama on TV at 2 a.m. THE MEETING was called to order (rather over 15 minutes late) by a grave president dedicated to returning to the main body of Council to work with the plebians rather than seek re-elec- tion. He got irate when there was talk- ing and suitable graveyard silence settled over the proceedings. The melodrama even had a comic ele- ment in the figures of Cohen and Blue- stone, who entered just at that moment, as dedicated to turning the melodrama into a comic farce as other members were to keeping it a melodrama. Cohen wore a hunting jacket and brought a gun to protect his interests in the forthcom- ing elections (or could he have been try- ing to induce some of the cohstituency which Bluestone is so sure he accurately represents to show up to support him?). ELECTIONS BEGAN. Everything had been predetermined, as is always the case with a "proper" legislative body. The two sides, tragic and comic; each strug- gled valiantly to control the mainstream of the play. For every grave and "proper" nomination for every "properly" quali- fied candidate, Bluestone had an equally improper protest nominee. For president, Nancy Frietag solemnly nominated Doug Brook, extolling his ex- perience, executive ability and helpful connections with the University admin- istration. Bluestone came up with Cohen, who has no visible experience, executive ability or connections with the Univer- sity. In passing he noted that Brook has done very little to demonstrate the dy- namism the candidate professed he was going to exercise. Unfortunately, neither has Cohen, and from the looks of things he couldn't care less. FOR EXECUTIVE vice-president, Gary Cunningham was the chosen one. And again Cohen was Bluestone's boy. This time Cohen played "Happy Days Are Here Again" off-key on a portable tape record- er, but none of the proper Council mem- bers appreciated the humor and one even proposed that it was not proper cam- paign procedure. For administrative vice-president, Blue- stone tried another tack. He nominated Rachel Amado, a new member. She did not have Sherry Miller's long and bor- ing experience, which she frankly admit- ted, but on the other hand, Miller did not have her commitment to finding a work- able and original way to shore up or re- juvenate the haunted house of the com- mittee structure. "There were some things that I had not done at the end of my last term that I would like to put into ef- fect," was her only remark. INURED TO BLUESTONE'S impudence and too much interested in their per- sonal roles, Council did not even notice the difference between the two candi- dates. Like well trained seals they held to the dogma of the sublimity of exper- ience and elected Miller. But Bluestone's masterpiece was his nomination of Eugene Won. Won was sup- posed to have been nominated anyway, just not by Bluestone. And Bluestone said the things that should be said, enumer- ating experience and legislative record. The only difficulty was that Won has no experience and, more importantly, no legislative record. However, he came back strongly, admitting that his past was not one of which to be particularly proud. "But I have solved the problem," he proudly announced. "I have dropped a course." to appear blase and important, but they do not seem to realize that the quality does not lie in the blithe flow of weedy verbiage, of which most of them are ab- solute master, but in knowledge. Simple little word, but oh so hard for them to comprehend. Several issues they managed to get out of the way with only minor bumbling. Sharon Manning introduced a motion on block ticket sales policy which she did not know anything about; not even what was printed in The Daily. The motion requested that a committee be set up, ad hoc of course. But flying to the cause, Council replaced the committee with one person, Manning, and the poor girl had to vote herself into some work that she had not expected. Maybe it will do her some good. THEN CINEMA GUILD brought some money problems to the table, wanting the body to reverse some decisions made by the board which were leading it into financial ruin. Yes, it seems that Coun- cil has lost contact with its boards; no one seemed to know that Cinema Guild had lost $5000 last year through poor management. The drama leaped to its shoddy cli- max (or rather anti-climax) when Blue- stone presented a finished portion of his grievance motion. Although Bluestone originally presented the motion as a rush project on September 16, Council nearly voted to postpone it further. Were there questions of the maker of the motions? Two minutes of silence followed as mem- bers skimmed through the proposal, try- ing to figure out what it said on the first reading, how it differed from the orig- inal sections, and for that matter where it fitted in the original motion. NOW, WERE THERE questions? No, it appears rather there was a reprimand from Bodkin concerning bringing unre- searched motions to the table. Bluestone filled him in on the motion's history. No, Bodkin's newness on Council was not suf- ficient excuse for his utter ignorance of THAT motion. Then Bodkin, strangely unrepulsed, said that he thought that motions should be in Council members boxes 4 hours ahead of time. Oh, the motion had been in SGC boxes since Monday? Could it be that Council members do not look at the mo- tions before the Wednesday night meet- ing? But that is part of being a "proper" legislature, just too time-consuming, re- gretfully. THOSE WERE the most ludicrous er- rors, but far from the most important ones. In spite of the time that Bluestone's motion has been under consideration, in spite of the events which it precipitated, not one member of SGC including Blue- stone himself has really thought about what should be done. Not one member has even really looked at it since the first fateful meeting of its presentation. How should the motion be researched? How should it be presented in its final form? Which areas are validly the re- sponsibility of the administration and which the responsibility of the student? What can SGC do apart from the ad- ministration to alleviate grievances? Are there sections of the motion which should be struck, or other grievances which Blue- stone in his unorganized rush neglected to put in, Heaven forbid. No member could answer any of those questions, and they are only a sampling of the ones which need to be asked. In spite of all the publicity and agitation nothing has been done. AND SO IN CONFUSION and despera- tion voices got higher, arguments more bitter, and the melodrama funnier. "I don't want this Council to be the last," said Bluestone. "There must be more re- search," said Bodkin. But Council members were getting tired of the drama. They started going home. Two-thirds of the members must be pres- ent to operate. "I don't think there is a quorum," said Smithson. "This had damn well better not happen again," said Brook, but those at whom the picturesque pro- fanity was aimed were not there to hear. --izAZ1in Kr VArar To the Editor: K ENNETH WINTER is to be commended for articulating an unpopular idea which deserves the most serious consideration. The argument that Negroes may be genetically "inferior" must be met as a distinct possibility, for to deny it with such uneasy evidence either way is both simplistic and dishonest. Winter points out, rightly, I think, that racial inferiority, even if proved, is irrelevant to the civil rights issue, but he has given the wrong reasons for its irrele- vance. In citing the fact that Negroes, whatever their .genetic constitution, can be happy and sad just as much as whites, Winter seems to assume that government systems or smaller systems such as those of employment, must base their authority on some sort of morality, assuming that one ought to help people to be happy or satisfied as possible. This, I suppose, is a tenable position, though I personally dis- like it. I wish, then, to deal with what I think would be the con- servative argument:tnamelysthat governmental and other systems are not obligated to satisfy any- one's emotional needs; they are obligated, rather, to advance and reward only intelligence and achievement. This is also a ten- able position, and it must be dealt with, assuming, only for purposes of argument, that the Negro race can be proved to be genetically inferior to the Caucasian. There are three points. S* * FIRST, our present knowledge cannot establish that part of any- one's intelligence which is gene- tically determined. The genes in- volved have not been isolated. Were it proved that Negroes are racially inferior, the inferiority would still never be established for the individual case, since the possibility of suppressed "genius" genes joining in an individual by change is never ruled out. Even Science magazine knows that. Then, there is no such thing as discrimination against a race, for a race is an abstraction which does not exist "out there." There can only be discrimination against individuals on the basis of race. But if the individual cannot him- self be proved inferior genetically, all racially based discrimination is unjust. One is considered "in- nocent" of inferiority until proven "guilty," and, gentics itself teaches us that our present knowledge cannot possibly prove any indi- vidual "guilty." Here the conservative will ask us to suppose -the perfectly legiti- mate possibility that science will enable us to isolate "intelligence" genes and further to test every in- dividual for those genes in his makeup. What then? If every Ne- gro existing at a given time could be proved to be genetically in- ferior, why should a rational so- ciety treat him as though he were equal to whites? This is the radi- cal point which Winter does not touch. It requires a second argu- ment. THE ARGUMENT for social domination by the superior and for rigid class structure on the basis of intelligence and achieve- ment has been beautifully made many times, particularly in the poetry of Yeats, and we have had deTocqueville to show us the ad- verse consequences of democracy. My second point, though, is that any definition of "superiority" is questionable. The Ayn Rand con- servative (the best kind) will in- sist that intelligence and achieve- ment are superior because in- telligence and achievement have enabled man to dominate in evo- lution. But Winter himself has given us the answer here, though he did not develop it--intelligence and achievement have given us the hydrogen bomb, which may After-D~itmier Smioke ~~'~1r very likely put an end to our evolutionary dominance. The con- servative would then be put into the position of saying that in- telligence and achievement will prevent us from ever using the bomb, to which we may easily an- swer, then why was it intelligent to develop it in the first place? (Its deterrence value disappears as soon as we assume we will never use it.) Clearly intelligence itself is at least a questionable defini- tion criterion of evolutionary superiority. Most fundamentally, it does not seem that contribution TODAY AND TOMORROW: Recapture of Hoover Era By WALTER LIPPMANN IT IS HARD to recapture for those who did not know Her- bert Hoover during the first world war the brilliance of his repu- tation and the personal fascina- tion of the man. The nation had entered the war reluctantly and resentfully. The American people were predominat- ly isolationist, believing that our ramparts were the two oceans, and they were pacifists and they hated war. Hoover, though he was a Quaker and at heart a con- scientious objector to war, had in fact intervened spectacularly long before Woodrow Wilson felt himself forced to ask Congress for a declaration of war. Hoover had intervened by the gallant enterprise of saving the Belgian people during the Ger- man occupation. This struck a deep response in a nation which realized that neutrality was in- glorious and probably impossible, but yet recoiled at the butchery. WHEN THIS COUNTRY enter- ed the war, Hoover was already a legendary figure. He was also an entrancing talker. Many felt, as I did, that they had never met a more interesting man, anyone who knew so much of the world and could expound so clearly what to almost all Americans in 1917 were the inscrutable mysteries of Euro- pean politics. When the war ended in 1918 and the Presidential election of 1920 began to take shape, Hoover was the first choice of nearly all the Wilsonian idealists, 'of the progressives and liberals in both parties. Destiny had marked him, I have always thought, to be the natural heir of Woodrow Wilson, and in fact he was launched into national politics by men who be- longed to Wilson's following. He chose, however, to declare himself a Republican, and this decision, which brought him to the Presidency eight years later, opened up a breach with the pro- gressives and liberals. It was deep- ened and envenomed by the 1932 campaign, and it was not until much later in his life that the breach was healed, thanks to the initiative of President Harry Tru- man. * * * AT A TIME like this it would be foolish to attempt to anti- cipate the verdict of history. But those of us who knew Hoover during his public career may, per- haps, allow ourselves a few re- flections. I would venture to say that for the disaster which en- gulfed him in the White House Hoover was in no way responsible. In the 1920s when the great depression was brewing, there was no one, no politician or financier, who had any clear idea as to how the world should be reconstructed BUT IT IS an interesting his- torical fact that as President he adopted pragmatically virtually all the main principles of the early years of FranklinRoose- velt's New Deal. The reader will find the basic test for this asser- tion in Hoover's speech accepting the Republican nomination on Aug. 11, 1932. Writing three years later in the light of the unfolding New Deal program, I ventured to say that Hoover's "historic position as a radical innovator has been greatly underestimated and . . . Mr. Roosevelt's pioneering has been greatly exaggerated. It was Mr. Hoover who abandoned the prin- ciples of laissez-faire in relation to the business cycle, established the conviction that prosperity and depression can be publicly con- trolled by political action and drove out of the public conscious- ness the old idea that depressions must be overcome by private ad- justment." In the 1932 speech of accept- ance, Mr. Hoover said that "the function of the federal govern- ment in these times is to use its reserve powers and its strength for the protection of citizens and local governments by supportof our institutionstagainst forces be- yond their control." Hoover's recovery program in- cluded a deliberate policy of in- flating the base of credit, the use of government credit to supple- ment the deficiency of private credit, reduction of the' normal expenses of government, but an increase in the extraordinary ex- penditures-the expansion of pub- lic works in order to create em- ployment; the assumption by the federal government of the ulti- mate responsibility for relief of destitution where local or private resources were inadequate. This increase was not to be covered by taxation, but by deficit financing. * * * WHILE HOOVER is remember- ed now as a great objector to the course of affairs since 1932, this was, I believe, the effect of his disastrous accident in 1929- his being run over by the Great Depression. His negativism was not in harmony with his generous, liberal and magnanimous nature. In the field of war and peace, however, Herbert Hoover remained true to his original nature, that of the bold and brilliant' philan- thropist who binds up wounds and avoids inflicting them. Hoover fed the defeated Germans, and though he hated communism, he fed the Bolsheviks. Yet in spite of all of it he never, believed in America as a globel power with military and political commitments in every continent. He was an isola- tionist and, insofar as his beliefs could be reconciled with his duties as President and Commander in Chief, he was a conscientious ob- j ector. I remember him affectionately. Thus, in 1928 when he was nomi- nated for President, I sent him congratulations and good wishes. He replied to me at my office in the New York World, which was supporting Gov. Al Smith, that "I do not expect you to love me publicly until after November." (c) 1964, The Washington Post Co. to the survival of the human race in evolution is necessarily the goal or evena goal of intelligence, since intelligence can always ask the further question "Why should the human race continue?" Thus Ayn Rand's premise that intelligence is good because it necessarily serves the evolutionary continuation of the human race is on two counts false. Similarly with other cri- teria of superiority-all can be questioned, hence none can be definitively established as a ra- tionale for denying equality status to persons who do not possess a certain characteristic. NOW THE conservative may legitimately ask us to imagine (if it is philosophically possible to do so) that somehow we, or our com- puters, can establish a definite criterion of superiority, defined in some unquestionable way. Suppose that all Negro individuals can be proved genetically to lack that criterion. What then? The third argument must question the de- sirability of a completely rational society and the desirability of al- ways rewarding superiority, how- ever defined, by giving special privileges to those who possess that superiority. Few people wish to take this position, but I do. Psychology is showing us all the time that irrationality, even per- versity, often coexists with (though does not necessarily cause) pro- pensities which we hold to be valuable, for example, the propen- sity to be an artist. The second argument has shown that intel- ligence does not necessarily con- tribute to evolutionary survival, and this argument shows that irrationality does not necessarily exclude the possibility of valuable, even honorable, contribution to society. Hence there seems to be no reason to suppose that either intelligencebor rationality (which may even be the same thing) is a desirable premise for the es- tablishment of a social ethic. The conservative may insist that this general argument gives no reason for giving a Negro a job which he is not competent to do. True enough; but then no civil- rightser that I have ever talked to has main'inec that a Negro should hold a job which he fails to perform well Te point is that he must be given a special chance to try that job if he appears even remotelynto be qualified; a special chance in order to compensate for the possibility that we were mis- taken in underestimating his abil- Ay beforehand. FURTHER, I would contend that even if the majority of Ne- groes should be proven genetically unfit for high-paying jobs, they should nevertheless be given, by government, an average incone, if they wish it. There is nothing inherently wrcing with receiving money without workiag, once An Randhas been disposed of. Most import c°ti3, I would a,_gle that Negroes, even if genetically dif- ferent, should be conhdered so- cially equal not in oicer to cater to their emotio,'ual needs, a de- meaning proposition, sut because we have no basis for assuming that a rational judgment is a desirable one, or that rational y will ever give us an anquestion- able criterion for making judg- ments of value. Democracy, I think, is misin- terpreted if we declare its premise to be the equality of all men. The premise of democracy is skepti- cism, that all values are question- able, and even if we found an unquestionable value we could still question the method by which it was established. We are obligated to behave as though Lll p_- jpie were equal, not because they are, but because to behave otherwse is to involve ourselves in untenable Dremises. constitute that undefined entity we know as intelligence are so complex, and so fraught with con- troversy as to produce very little in the way of a testable hypo- thesis. Furthermore, the whole field of psychometry is so confused as to preclude any sort of definitive conclusion on the basis of test evidence. However, even within the context of contemporary psy- chological fudgery, one canxeason- ably argue for the notion of Ne- gro superiority-or at least in- telligence equity. For instance, Northern Negroes scored signifi- cantly higher on the Army Alpha tests than Southern whites. Should we thus treat the southern white as being "possibly" inferior? MORE IMPORTANTLY, no in- dividual within racial groupings is likely to be either 100 per cent "white" or 100 per cent "Negro." The infusion and diffusion of Ne- gro blood in Western Europe went on over a period of centuries. The migration or movement of the Moors into Spain is only the most ~well known of the many and con- tinuous contacts between thenAf- rican culture and the so-called white world. (Needless to say such a notion is even more descriptive of the Southern United States.) There is no entity which might be known as the "white" (or (or "Caucasian," or any other euphemism) race or, conversely, the "Negro" race. All "races" are far more diffuse mixtures of sev- eral racial groupings than one might suspect (witness the inter- penetration of Mongol genes into eastern Europe). Thus, when we speak of some- one (that is to say, in this con- text, a Negro) as being a member of one group or another, we are speaking, not in terms of absolutes, but in terms of points on a con- tinuum. This sort of assumption precludes any sort of "Negro- white" generalizations. BEYOND THESE purely logical difficulties, Winter's argumenta- tion for Negro cultural inferiority is clearly incorrect. Highly de- veloped social systems have existed in Africa for centuries. His notion of the "African tribe" as some sort of underdeveloped social en- tity is so obviously simplistic, on the face of it that the rest of his anthropolically relevant argument becomes suspect. (Immanuel Wal- lerstein, a noted contemporary writer on African affairs, collerates the lack of a developed industrial society in Africa very closely with the tremendous depopulation of an originally underpopulated area, by slavery. He estimates that Euro- pean slave traders removed be- tween thirty and forty million people from the African continent -one half of whom died in transit to the Americas.) * * * ALL OF THIS is really irrelevant to the notion of a social ethic based upon either Negro or white inferiority. I would like to submit that the most adequate rational for equitable treatment of all groups within society-within the framework of adequate attempts to adjust the inequities already present in society's operation-is the simple social psychological fact that inequities within society are more destructive of democratic values than any sort of benefit that might be derived from an action ethic based on actual in- equities. -Stephen D. Berkowitz,'65 MEMORIES: Don't Miss Newsreel! At the Michigan 'theatre FOR THOSE WISHING to re- live their carefree youth (like last week, for example), the cur- rent Michigan Theatre bill is strongly recommended. At long last the inevitable newsreel foot- ball highlights are those of a game that all of you out there can identify with, whether you really want to or not: last Satur- day's game with Purdue. Furthermore, those of you who missed that particular debacle have the opportunity to see the highlights of the gridiron action "live on the big screen," as the friendly anouncers used to say. Selected scenes from each thrill- packed quarter are shown with appropriate snide comments from the announcer, while those who attended the game in person can scan the crowd shots and see who dropped that cider down their col- lars three seconds from the final gun. BUT THE NEWSREEL is not de- voted entirely to the Wolverines. There is also a fine wrapup of some of last week's United States medal-winning achievements: the camera depicts the victories of Lesley Bush in platform diving, Sharon Stouder in women's relay swimming and Bob Hayes in the I I 4 1 YOUNG, VERSATILE: Paul Taylor Dance Co. IN TODAY'S WORLD of pop art, music and literature with their stress on empty spaces, it is extremely refreshing to see well choreographed dances precisely executed. This is, what the Paul Taylor Dance Company presented to a very receptive audience in the first of the Chamber Dance Festival Concerts. One is immediately impressed by Taylor's youth and versatility as a choreographer and dancer, as well as the youth and well- balanced performances of his company. It is difficult to single out outstanding performances. LAST NIGHT'S PROGRAM consisted of five works opening with "Aureol," a study in five movements. In this work the outstanding elements were precision, energy and the graceful polished movement of a flock of soft, white doves, balanced against Taylor's own solo of inversions, and his duet with Miss Walton based on precise mirrored movements. The total work was set against the repetative background of music by Handel. The following duet by Miss Walton and Mr. Wagnoer was a unique patchwork of Hayden's classical music, extremely fluent modern dance movements and costumes obviously painted by an abstract modern artist. As diverse as these elements may seem, the total result was startling and exciting. This company does not lack for a sense of humor as they demon- started in their third work, "Three-Epitaphs." This number depicted a nonenergetic, nonidentifiable society literally clothed in black from head to foot, with mirrors attached to their heads which sent spectrums