Page 4-Tuesday, January 17, 1978-The Michigan Daily Eighty-Eight Years of Editorial Freedom 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mt 48109 Vol. LXXXViiI, No. 88 News Phone: 764-0552 Edited and'managed by students at the University of Michigan Slated anti-discrimination bill should be kept intact APr2. IC~JI ASc6 NE 4O I'M 7. . I ut ARE '(09 T eeurEV IV6V AKJPBAD A1J12 F 16fT/{WD 3Sk6 WO OWTO KEP SEG Es. ARC W'OU Af 1 ( AW r. eGrt ~ rMr u eA I RtWATs. I £20I'M MY HOHC~lOfRk MH AFROMS4AA AVAitA HKATH, iT HAVET ' SAW- MAC C'0 ZM?1 P6RS6& 10IVlw- THIS J OeB' 70- L'08 I16kt-~ 7/, ~us"f ( I&)e'-1z, Th1J f~'tL)T- ~JTh. 10, rM 0o AM2 #11010, p I W-;:, SroE rr. L AST MONDAY, the Ann Arbor City Council debated a comprehensive anti-discrimination ordinance that could well be called the most far-reach- ing doctrine of equal rights ever attem- pted by a local government. One coun- cil member called it "a model" for oth- er cities to pattern, while more than one observer thought the Ann Arbor ordi- nance was second only to the Federal 1964 Civil Rights Act. And it is for this reason that the An Arbor ordinance received its sharpest criticism. Opponents of the ordinance argue that the bill as it now stands is so com- prehensive and so all-inclusive as to be rendered ineffective. Councilman Roger Bertois (R-Third Ward) told the asembled council that the anti- discrimination bill "included every- thing but the whales - and they made the endangered species list." Instead of the proposed all-encom- passing ordinance, opponents of the human rights bill want a simple state- anent outlawing discrimination based on race, creed, color, sex, national origin and religion. Anything beyond that, they say, is unworkable. As it now stands, the ordinance out- laws discrimination based on those five areas, as well as prohibiting discrimin- ation based on age, family responsibili- ty (meaning people with children), marital status, sexual orientation, edu- cation association, physical limitation, source of income, personal association, and the condition of being pregnant. Opponents were able to muster enough support to delete too other areas, discrimination based on person- al appearance and on political affilia- tion. Mayor Albert Wheeler has already indicated. that although he went along with the amendments deleting personal appearance and political affiliation, he will not stand for any further cut-and- paste episodes that will reduce the scope of the document. Wheeler has also declared that he will veto the bill if it is amended beyond recognition during the Council's working session. The basic premise of those who would trim down the ordinance is that there have been few cases reported to the Human Rights Office in the last few years of discrimination based on any- thing other than "the big five." It was that line of thinking that got personal. appearance and political affiliation yanked from the original bill. T HE FACT of the matter is that peo- ple are still discriminated against 6ecause of their personal appearance, and people are still discriminated against because of the political party they belong to. People still find them- selves shut out in the cold because land- lords are adverse to long hair, beards, or applicants with ax scars down the middle of their face. We have not reach- ed such a utopian state where commu- nists and even nazis can expouse their particular beliefs without being subject to chastisement in either housing or employment opportunities. Any section of the human rights or- dinance as it now stands that gets deleted is in effect deleting a segment of society that is discriminated against with the justification that that segment is not as visible as "the big five" _ race, cried, color, sex and national origin. It is a foregone conclusion that most complaints of discrimination will be limited to the traditional areas. But that is no excuse for limiting our efforts to deal with discrimination in whatever forum it chooses to rear its ugly head. If the only complaint against the human rights ordinance is that it is too all-inclusive, then that is also the bill's most commendable feature. Ann Arbor has enacted the first or- dinance for a local unit that attempts to deal with discrimination on more than the traditional fronts. Even if a city this size does not have the resources to en- force every provision, as the opponents claim, is it to be faulted for attempting the first real effort at wiping out the most conspicuous blot on our society? U. S. blacks' fear the resurgence of i 0 By JOEL DREYFUSS Pacific News Service Now that the victories of the civil rights movement have become history, there is a growing fear among blacks that racism is again taking hold in America. The revival is seen by many as more subtle and elusive than in the past, and thus harder to fight, because a majority of white Americans, supported by an influential body of intellectuals, denies it is real. The controversy over the Bakke case and affirmative action is partly responsible for ptions about people who are different." THE WHITE complacency goes back to the period following the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, when the Nixonian ethic of law and order submerged the race debate. Ed- ward Banfield, a Nixon urban affairs advisor, provided an intellectual rationale for -dismissing the race issue in his 1970 book The Unheavenly City., "Thevlower class individual lives in the slum and sees little or no reason to com- plain," wrote Banfield. "Features that make 'You run into good, well-motivated people who think they are fair, who feel they have turned around from attitudes and beliefs they grew up with. But they continue to view blacks in a deficit model: "less than, " "not as good r as, ' "if we could only d bring them up to speed.' SE -' o such-and-such to -Dr. Price Cobbs author of Black Rage EDITORIAL STAFF ANN MARIE LIPINSKI Editors-in-Chief JIM TOBIN LOIS JOSIMOVICH ....................Managing Editor GEORGE LOBSENZ..................... Managing Editor STU McCONNELL............................Managing Editor JENNIFER MILLER... .................Managing Editor PATRICIA MONTEMURRI.............Magaging Editor KEN PARSIGIAN........................ Managing Editor; BOB ROSENBAUM...........................Managing Editor MARGARET YAO..... ...............Managing Editor SUSAN ADES JAY LEVIN Sunday Magazine Editors ELAINE FLECTCHER TOM O'CONNELL Associate Magazine Editors STAFF WRITERS: Susan Barry, Richard Berke, Brian Blan- chard, Michael Beckman, Lori Carruthers, Ken Chotiner, Eileen Daley, Lisa Fisher, Denise Fox, Steve Gold, David Goodman, Elisa Isaacson, Michael Jones, Lani Jordan, Janet Klein, Garth Kriewall,;Gregg Krupa, Paula Lashinsky, Marty Levine, Dobilas Matunonis, Carolyn Morgan, Dan Oberdorfer, Mark Parrent, Karen Paul, Stephen Pickover, ChristopherPotter, Martha Retallick, Keith Richburg, Diane Robinson, Julie Rovner, Dennis Sabo, Annmarie Schiavi, Paul Shapiro, R. J. Smith, Elizabeth Slowik, Mike Taylor, Pauline Toole, Sue Warner, Jim Warren, Linda Willcox, Shelley Wolson, Tim Yagle, Mike Yellin, Barbara Zahs, Jim Zazakis Mark Anrews, Mike Gilford, Richard Foltman Weather Forecasters reopening the debate on race relations that had been dormant since the 1960s. It has also exposed, quite clearly, the new sophistication of racial attitudes that have continued unabated since the 1950s. "RACISM IS ALIVE and well," says Dr. Price Cobbs, a black psychiatrist and co- author of the best-seller Black Rage. "You run into good, well-motivated people who think they are fair, who feel they have turned around from attitudes and beliefs they grew up with. But they continue to view. blacks in a deficit model: 'less than,' 'not as good as,' 'if we could only do such-and-such to bring them up to speed.' " The notion that racism is no longer a significant force in America is implicit in the work of Nathan Glazer, one of the leading in- tellectual champions of neo-conservatism. In his book Affirmative Discrimination, Glazer announces that racism has been defeated and calls on the courts to withdraw from the battle for equal opportunity so "the forces of political democracy in a pluralistic society can do their proper work." THE CONCEPT is.attractive if you believe that race is now a benign factor. But many blacks see signs of just the opposite: signs in unemployment and income statistics, in sur- veys of white racial attitudes, or in the por- trayal of blacks in the popular media. A Louis Harris survey last summer repor- ted t hat "a majority of blacks feel discriminated against while a majority of' whites feel blacks are not." "Much of what passes for benign race relations," says Dr. Cobb, "is some kind of social comfort on the part of whites who are dealing with blacks. There are many whites who can be comfortable with blacks socially but who don't have any idea of the depth and degree of their remaining negative assum- the slum repellent to others actually please him." Banfield's attitude has become widespread today, according to Stanford University socidlogist Seymour Martin Lipset, another neo-conservative.I MOST WHITES, says Lipset, "accept the reality of at least some racial discrimination but see black problems as stemming essen- tially from the moral failings of individuals." In other words, the old stereotype of the lazy and shiftless black persists. At the same time, fully 55 per cent of white Americans feel blacks have "moved too fast" in their struggle for equality, according to a 1977 Harris poll. Syndicated columnist Bob Greene reports that the use of the word "nigger" has regained prominence. "The word is popping up more and more in polite company as well as among people who used it all along," he says. "It probably means that we're on our way into a new cycle of racism in America..." Recently, Atlanta businessman J. B. Fuqua, chief executive of Fuqua Industries and a friend of President Carter, exposed a slight variation of the neo-conservative theology. Fuqua told New York magazine writer Dan Dorfman that blacks are the "least capable of producing in today's society. You park a certain percentage of them-like antiquated machinery (which you depreciate)-and you support them through welfare .. . which we're doing. (Blacks) say they haven't had the opportunities, but that doesn't change things. The fact is many are not productive . .. they're just not as skillful as the whites..." THE SUBTLE message of Fuqua's not-so- suble words is that racism is no longer to blame for the condition of blacks. Blacks are poor because they are incapable of being anything else, he seems to say. raczsm, The complexity of this "new racism," as some have called it, was cited in a September 1977 report by the U.S. Civil Rights Com- mission. It noted that ... more subtle forms of discrimination continue to materialize requiring ever more stringent enforcement to ensure compliance with the law." One example of this new subtlety may be found in sports, an area viewed by many Americans as the greatest example of equal opportunity. AFTER ANALYZING 12 National Football League games on the three major television networks, psychologist Raymond E. Rainvile of the State University of New York in Oneon- ta found that the announcers subjected black athletes to more negative comments about their talents, abilities and motivation. He concluded that the announcers were "building a positive reputation for white players and a comparatively negative reputation for black players." And there are other examples. Most of the dozens of black studies programs that sprang up in the 1960s are gone today, the victims of underfundingand general neglect. Few books or articles by black authors are published today, and since the demisei of "blax- ploitation," the film industry has reverted to the lily-white look of the 1950s. Major box office hits give little evidence of a movement toward Glazer's "pluralistic society." In "Star Wars," "Annie Hall," "The Deep" and other major films, blacks are either excluded or limited to villainous roles. AND DESPITE the success of "Roots," the television industry has made little progress in its portrayal of blacks or other minorities, who are too often cast as modern day versions of Amos and Andy. "Few blacks" on television, says Dr. Eugene Thomas of the University of Wiscon- sin, "are seen with the pluses and minuses of the average man, the ambiguity. The black is either super-excellent or super-deficient." "It appears to mean that the American majority is nowhere near ready to accept blacks as equal-if you see television as a reflection of society." THUS WHILE the opponents of affirmative action still point to the considerable progress blacks have made in the last two decades, blacks are growing ever more concerned that whites have made little progress in their racial attitudes, and that the "new racism" will spread and affect opportunities for blacks and other minorities. Dr. Faustine Jones of Howard University studied changes in racial attitudes between 1969 and 1975 and concluded: "Black Americans feel that a significant proportion of the white population has shifted priorities from, elinfinating the vestiges of racial discrimination as the major goal of this society to reviving feelings that blacks have had as much help as they need or deserve. She adds: "The feeling is that blacks cannot afford to let this happen again. If you under- stand history, you don't sit around and let history repeat itself." Joel Dreyfuss, formerly a staff reporter for the New York Post and Washington Post, is a member of PNS' Foundation- funded task force of scholars and Jour- nalists on inner cities. Editorials which appear without a by-line represent a con- sensus opinion of the Daily's editorial board. All other editorials, as well as cartoons, are the opinions of the individuals who sub- mi theme - :. ...... ...... .....:.:.:.:..:....:...........: ::::::....::.:: .:: ::::::: :::.: OUR CONCERN IS THAT THE PANAMA CANAL TREATY SHOULD GUARANTEE "EXPEDITIOUS TRANSIT" OF OUR WARSHIPS DURING EMERGENCIESI 3 WHAT WOULD WE DO IN AN EMERGENCY WITHOUT THAT GUARANTEE? J Mam -- .. -00 _~ E TO w' ITING. Letters to WE'D BLAST OUR WA- IN TEREA,4P FAKE OVE 4?! STILL, IT WOU HAVE SOMETH LD BE NICE ING IN WRI hit and run To The Daily: Help! New Year's Night (Sun- day, January 1, 1978), we were involved in a hit and run acci- dent: while waiting for the light at the intersection of South In- dustrial and Eisenhower we were attacked by a large snowplow! The cumbersome vehicle not only ranner h -m ia nd n.rnmfi wagon containing four witnesses whose names we neglected to ob- tain. This message is our only hope to find these good samaritans who assisted us in tracking down our assailants. Hopefully we can together get this matter cleared up so that all parties involved can start sleeping better at night. -Mr. and Ms. Lewandowski' r p. n l..'-foi.,71C TheE and hospital areas there are many such "associations." Where there are not, clericals are ' sometimes called together for management-run "secretarial meetings" or "in-service training sessions." Such "associations" and meetings are initiated and en- couraged by management in an effort to con clericals into '.i~b rr -- hnie ..r- - nnr .rn 'aily about the union in non-work areas during non-work time, University management recently interfered with a lunch meeting in the School of Business Ad- ministration staff lounge. (The OCC has filed an unfair labor practice charge with the Michigan Employment Relations Commission, which will be con- duct a hearing on January 31.) z ~N