OPINION
Page 4 Wednesday, February 12, 1986 The Michigan Daily
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Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan
Wasserman
Vol. XCVI, No. 94
420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Unsigned editorials represent a majority of the Daily's Editorial Board
A v
A potent package
RAPE is embedded in this
society's culture. Recently, a
White Plains, New York perfume
company considered marketing a
new perfume under the name
"Rape."
The fact is rape sells. The Rolling
Stones and the Who, just to mention
two legendary groups have songs
where rape is part of the lyrics. In
"Purple Rain," Prince beats his
devoted girlfriend. Macho
posturing, sexual fantasy, rape
mythology and violence combine
into a potent package.
- Promoters and advertisers as a
group are responsible for taking
advantage of and perpetuating
violent sexist traditions. For every
step forward that women's
liberation takes, some
businessman somewhere is spen-
ding a million dollars on a new
promotional campaign that uses
women only as sexual objects.
There are two points of view on
the culture of rape in the United
States. One point of view holds that
the state should outlaw por-
nography, objectifying ads and
rapist song lyrics. After all, there is
little moral excuse for these
phenomena and if after centuries of
struggle for women's liberation
they still exist, perhaps it is time to
use force to stop practicing rape-
culture promoters and intimidate
would-be sexist exploiters.
In contrast, a libertarian or
anarchist point of view might hold
that repression of the rape-culture
is practically impossible and an
evil in itself. The libertarians point
out that Victorian morality is often
behind the actions of anti-por-
nography feminists.
On the other hand, advertisers
and promoters hide behind "liber-
ty" in order to sell women's bodies
- whether it be in ads, lyrics or
perfume names. Clearly, liberty
only means the liberty to exploit
women to the New York company
that considered "Rape" for a per-
fume name.
State repression is never a good
thing in its own right. However, it is
also an evil to tolerate the power to
promote violence against women.
The mobilization against "Rape"
perfume is a model that deserves
replication. When a woman attor-
ney heard about the perfume com-
pany's name, she informed the
New York chapter of NOW
(National Organization for
Women). NOW made a few phone-
calls and the perfume company,
admitting the impact of public
pressure, withdrew its name idea
for its new perfume.
Libertarians have a special
responsibility to mobilize people to
oppose sexism that hides behind
the freedom of the marketplace
and freedom of speech. Only this
kind of militant political
mobilization against sexism can
avert a growing call for the state to
ban sexist culture.
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4
Union struggle still. relevant
Racial health gap
By Eban Goodstein
Bruce Springsteen has been in the news
lately, doing benefits for union workers
fighting plant shutdowns. Springsteen,
raised in the industrial heartland of New
Jersey, has been sending the old message
that workers need to join together to fight
for better wages and working conditions.
But Springsteen seems to be singing
against a current of public apathy - if not
hostility - towards unionism that has been
growing stronger over the past few years.
This has something to do with Reagan's
union-busting administration, but in a large
measure may be due to the success of unions
themselves in winning decent wages and
working conditions for a broad spectrum of
Americans.
The old conservative arguments against
unions - that they are all corrupt, that they
are bad for productivity - in addition to
being without basis are also increasingly
irrelevant. The feeling today is that unions
have simply outlived their usefulness. A
common perception seems to be that while
unions have been necessary back in the
'30's, times have changed. With minimum
wage and safety laws, it's harder to "ex-
ploit" workers today. And if it is hard to see
a need for unions - if no one's getting ex-
ploited - it is also harder to sympathize
with their struggles.
The recent Hormel strike in Minnesota -
where the National Guard was just called in
to open the plant - is a good example. The
meat workers were offered $10 an hour.
Many people argue they should be glad to
work for such a "good" wage.
Have unions outlived their usefulness?
Are workers still exploited today? To an-
Goodstein is a graduate student in
economics and a member of the
Democratic Socialists of America.
swer these two questions, it's worth thinking
about why union organizing was legally en-
couraged in the 1930's. Unions were seen as
a way of equalizing the power of workers
and employers. In times of unemployment,
employers could find other workers easier
than a worker could find another job. Thus
the worker had little real power to turn
down and offer. Furthermore, once hired a
lone worker had no protection from ar-
bitrary discipline or unsafe work assign-
ments. Unions provided a "countervailing
power" to prevent the exploitaiton of the
workers' relative weakness both in the
marketplace and on the job.
Into the 1950's unions grew rapidly,
reaching a membership peak of over a third
of the workforce in 1956. They provided a
solid boost to the growth of a prosperous
middle class, narrowing the wage gap bet-
ween blue and white collar workers. Unions
also supported the minimum wage and
worker protection legislation of the '60's and
early '70's, which provided benfits for all
workers, union and non-union.
At the same time, however, union mem-
bership began a steady decline, until in 1984
barely a fifth of the workforce in the country
was organized. In reality this decline can be
attributed to increased union-busting by
management, recently aided by gover-
nment, and to decreased organizing efforts
by the unions themselves. But many
people view the decline as symptomatic of
the "irrelevance" of unions in today's
America. The struggle has already been
won. Exploitation is no longer a reality.
A moment's reflection should convince
you that this is not true. A lone worker is stil
hard pressed to "bargain" for higher
wages, and is still liable to be fired for ob-
jecting to working conditions. Full-time
work at minimum wage will not keep a
family out of poverty, and government
health and safety regulations mean little to
the average worker. The conditions for ex-
ploitation - the power of employers to dic-
tate wages and working conditions within a
broad range - remain just as real now as 50
years ago.
On a personal level, most of us have ex-
perienced unjust treatment at the hands of
work supervisors. As young people, or tem-
porary employees, such behavior was en-
dured, or else we quit - the costs were not
high. For many people though, the options
are not so broad. The costs of quitting are
much higher.
Which brings us back to the Hormel case.
With only $0.69 separating the
management's wage proposal from the
union's, non-economic issues have been
fueling the strike. A 20 percent line speed-
up, high injury rates, two-tier wages, and
previous wage and previous benefit cuts of
over 23 percent are what the workers and
their union are objecting to. At the same
time, Hormel just announced record profits
- up 30 percent from last year, when it was
already the industry leader. Hormel
Chairman Richard Knowlton saw his take
home pay rise form $231,000 to $570,000.
While at the same time their labor con-
tributes to record profits their wages and
working conditions deteriorate, workers
have two options: they can quit, or fight for
just treatment. As Hormel worker Dan
Erikson, whose extended family has over
250 years of work in the meat plant, put it:
"We don't like what we're doing. But when
you're pushed in a corner, you've got to do
what you've got to do. I just want to be
proud enough to walk back into that plant."
Equalizing power is what unions are good
for. Without a union, workers like Erikson
are as powerless today as they were in the
1930's. With a union, they at least have a
fighting chance to address injustices at the
workplace. Springsteen recently told em-
ployees facing a shutdown, "It's their
money, it's their plant, but it's your jobs".
His statement underlines the fact that the
union struggle is as relevant today as it ever
was.
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W HITE domination of Blacks
through American in-
: stitutions is a life and death
question. The Reagan ad-
ministration's Task Force on Black
and Minority Health has prepared
statistics that compare Black and
rwhite mortality rates for all
causes. The statistics show that if
Blacks enjoyed health care as good
as that of whites, Blacks would suf-
fer 58,942 fewer deaths per year.
The leading cause of what is
called "excess death of American
Blacks" is heart disease and
stroke, which accounts for over
18,000 of the "excess deaths" per
year. Homocide and accidents,
cancer, infant mortality, cirrhosis
and diabetes are the next major
causes of "excess deaths" for
Blacks. Another 11,552 per year
result from 'all other causes.''
As in the case of the upward
trend in infant mortality
nationally, one can not argue about
the cases of individuals when it
comes to "excess death" statistics.
No individual white or individual
Black can understand the health
conditions of their respective
groups just by reflecting on per-
sonal experience.
Most individual whites do not
consciously try to obtain health
care advantages over the Blacks
they know. Usually, people want
their friends and neighbors to have
the same health treatment they en-
joy.
Statistics are always impersonal
and often alienating. Blacks have
meaning of such statistics.
Affirmative action is similarly
hard to grasp sometimes. The
notion of equal opportunity bet-
ween individuals seems violated by
affirmative action's preferential
treatment of minorities as groups.
The individual white college or
graduate school applicant does not
think of himself as having unfair
advantages over Black applicants.
Hence, it is difficult to understand
why Blacks should receive
preferential treatment, all else
being equal.
In fact though, the individual
white American benefits as a
member of a race that has enjoyed
400 years of advantages over
Blacks. The white individual him-
self did not cheat any Blacks.
Rather, the institutions of slavery,
Jim Crow and socialgclass ex-
ploited Blacks as a group. The
higher mortality of Blacks is
proof of the continued existence of
the effects of racist institutions.
According to Off Our Backs, a
feminist journal, Reagan ad-
ministration official Margaret
Heckler explained the Black/white
health gap as caused by
"knowledge" and "lifestyle" dif-
ferences. Heckler implies that
Blacks as a group have less
knowledge about health issues and
a more unhealthy lifestyle than
whites. It is a small step from this
"blame-the-victim" view to an in-
dividualistic view of the racial dif-
ference. What Heckler and other
apologists of institutional violence
LETTERS:4
No concrete definition of
To the Daily:
"The right to choose". The
very phrase seems to embody all
that America stands for. Ob-
viously, nothing could be more
basic than a woman's right to
choose what happens to her own
body.
Maybe. Maybe not.
It all sounds so good, but ac-
tually the claims of the pro-
choice movement do not hold up
under close examination. For in-
stance, do we really have the
right to our own bodies? Legally,
in most instances, we do. But
who among us would casually
allow someone to commit suicide
because he has a right to choose
what hapnens to his body?
I have to be to qualify? Yet we
already have legislation against
murder, even without a clear
definition. We give each other
the benefit of the doubt. What
makes the fetus so different?
Some say that since we can't
legally define the fetus as human,
each woman should decide for
herself if the fetus is human or
not. Now, that's a frightening
line of thought. Remember when
whites believed they were "more
human" than blacks? Or when
men considered themselves
superior to women? We're still
fighting those battles. On what
basis? Isn't it because we believe
that women and blacks are equal
leaky. On the other hand, what
does the pro-life movement
believe? Does it believe that
women do not have a right to
their bodies? No, they simply
point out that a person's right to
live supercedes a woman's right
over her body, just as we value
the woman's right to equality
over the man's opinion of
chauvinism. They believe
children are human and
valuable, whetherhor not they
are planned and wanted (the pro-
life criteria for a valuable life),
just as they value every person's
life, even after he no longer
values it himself.
The pro-life movement is not
'human'0
they do not exist in a vacuum. We
are free to excercise our rights
only if they do not interfere with
the fundamental rights of others.
When one person's right inter-
feres with another's, we cannot
grant the rights to those who can
shout the loudest. Otherwise, ou
rights will no longer be
inalienable, but granted to the
highest bidder.
I believe that time will show
that the pro-choice movement is
founded on flawed logic and
selfish arguments. Further-
more, as technology improves,
pre-mature babies will be saved
at earlier stages of developments
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