Y2K Brings Death, Destruction

Being safe this New Year’s Eve is about more than not drinking and driving, it’s about being prepared for both millennial fanaticism and food shortages. It is about having a means of staying warm when the gas lines are shut off and avoiding Times Square in New York City at all costs. I am not exaggerating. So much of terrorism is focused on symbolic dates, and January 1, 2000 could be construed as doomsday to any number of Nostradamus wannabes or mathematically-impaired millennialists. That is why I ask you where you are going to be when the looting starts? [con't]

Liberals Should...Conserve More

Editor:

I am responding to Peter Cook’s Opinions Article, "Major Parties Prove Indistinguishable, Confining." Being an average, liberal-minded student, I tend to disagree with idea that the average liberal minded student wants everyone in the world to have two cars and a house in the suburbs...

I don’t mean to be nitpicky; however, I feel that suburbs and owning two cars is a wasteful way of living. Any liberal with as much forethought as Peter Cook deems Pomona students to have would realize right away that there are only enough resources in this world for the one percent who already do live in suburbs and own two cars to have such luxuries. Rather, would it not be more reasonable for everyone in this world to have the one vehicle they need and live in a more manageable space than a suburb? Suburbs are not only facilitators of unequal resources, they also tear apart the community atmosphere of a city by allowing those who have the means to move away from those people who do not have the means. This is one of the primary reasons why so many inner cities are in the bad shape they are in, because those households that are better off move out and take with them the resources needed to give the community vitality.

Sincerely,

Andrew Cvitanovich ’02

Anti-Yuppieville Article Cheered

Editor:

Hats off to Todd Anderson for a witty romp in Yuppieville. From Gap Kids silk embroidered bassinet to a celestial "spread your ashes in space" grave, Yuppies have many material hankerings that make them worthy targets of ridicule. Rest assured, Mr. Anderson, that my compliments come strictly over email, and will not be duplicated on handmade paper thank you notes with my name embossed on them.

Sincerely,

Merryl Reiss ’99

Welcome to the Real World, Bud

Editor:

Upon reading Colin Platt’s Opinion piece, "We’ve Got One Word for You, Son: Plastics," I hoped that perhaps it was some sort of tongue in cheek joke. Unfortunately, it appears that Mr. Platt actually espouses the destructive beliefs advocated therein. He rails against the "social construct of practicality" without presenting a viable alternative. "What does practicality do for our souls, or our minds?" he asks.

Perhaps he should ask an impoverished, unemployed person in the Third World about the value of the American work ethic. Perhaps he longs for a utopia where no one need pursue gross material ends and we can all serve each other in peace and happiness. Grow up. Working is how we "save our species from its utterly precarious existence," Mr. Platt. When you graduate, I hope you have the opportunity to experience the joy of being self-actualized as you live in poverty.

By condemning pursuit of practical ends as the path to turn our society into an insect hive and simultaneously advocating saving the human race and creative thought, this columnist enters a paradox. Practical work provides Mr. Platt with food. What is more practical than the pursuit of life? What sort of useless ideas, removed from relevance to human existence, does Mr. Platt believe are of value? What is the concept of value if it is disengaged from human life? Financial success is a symbol, as money is a symbol, of value produced. You have created something that others found valuable, and you are rewarded. It is not selling your soul; it instead indicates to you how valuable your contributions are.

So much progress has come from those who have "enjoin[ed] their intelligence with the working world." Does Mr. Platt believe that technological advancement occurs spontaneously, amongst dilettantes and non-professionals? Some does, to be sure, but a large part of what makes our lives possible results from people working in practical fields, advancing science, law, and medicine. These people had to pursue a rigorous course of study to succeed in their fields. They had to think about what is practical and cast aside adolescent and immature grumbling like that of Mr. Platt as just what it is: anathema to human life.

Sincerely,

Amber Taylor CMC ’02

Racism Dangerous for America

Editor:

Seeing the large front page photo of a CPD supporter in last week’s Student Life as he held up that hate-filled sign left us shocked and then searching for some article addressing the demonstrations in front of city hall. Who is this white old man? How was he acting that day? What is the overall status of the protests? So many questions. Lacking those answers ourselves, we can only address more theoretical questions. Namely: Is the application of free speech laws in America fundamentally flawed? His sign is persecutory and hateful. It sends forth the message that certain people do not deserve equal protection under the law. It is an attack on the very humanity of African Americans. How is it that he can disseminate these ideas freely?

There are two standard arguments against criminalizing any speech (unless it has a clear connection to physical danger, as in yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, or is "libelous"-such speech is already criminalized). Firstly, censoring content can lead to too much ambiguity, which could be taken advantage of by overzealous government employees to censor more and more. Secondly, racism is better out in the open, where it can be carefully watched and confronted.

Neither of these arguments is satisfactory, as we already rely on the judgment of judges (a bit repetitive, eh?) in determining when content is libelous, for example. Also, allowing the hate-spewers to freely air their messages doesn’t allow us to fight it any better in some sort of a "marketplace of ideas." After all, that man in the picture would deny certain people access to the marketplace altogether! He isn’t looking for a debate so much as he is looking to humiliate or even start the oft-prophesied (as foretold by racist maniacs) coming race war.

However, these are not the most serious arguments against current legal interpretations of the First Amendment. We should question what sort of message is being sent by the way in which the First Amendment is applied-often in the government’s favor and against the people. For example, take McCarthyism, or the recent WTO protests in Seattle. In both cases, various governments at various levels used the power of the state to deny free speech to the people. What message does it send when the only "minority opinion" speech that the government clearly protects is racist speech? We jail the Martin Luther King Jrs of the world for "disturbing the peace" only to turn around and protect the would be genocidal Hitlers? When the police protect Klansmen, but shoot others with rubber bullets, we have more than simple individual racism, but structural racism.

Defined by sociologists, individual racism refers to the behavior of individual members of one ethnic group that is intended to have differential or harmful effects on the members of another ethnic group. In contrast, structural discrimination refers to the policies of institutions that are race-neutral in intent but have a differential or harmful effect on minority groups. The key impact of structural discrimination lies in not its intent but the effect of placing the minority group in a subordinate position.

In this incident with the protesting white old man, he clearly demonstrated individual discrimination as he publicly held a sign containing derogatory remarks against African Americans, such as "your nigger ass." However, the implied structural discrimination seems much less obvious. The government allowed the man to disseminate racial hatred towards African Americans under the protection of freedom of speech. Thus, although the government’s intention of defending the First Amendment seemed justified, its implementation denied the rights of African Americans.

What then can be done to ameliorate this issue? Given how the current interpretation of the First Amendment is unfairly stacked, violating the Constitutional principle of equal protection under the law, we should begin examining laws, such as those in Britain or Germany, which criminalize persecutory and hateful speech. How can those laws best be applied here? "Words that Wound," Matsuda et al (from which most of these ideas are borrowed) provides a possible framework. If interested in exploring these sorts of ideas further, another excellent text is "Race and Ethnic Conflict," Pincus and Ehrlich eds.

We must translate this theory into action and continue to resist the racisms the white old man represents...

Sincerely,

Patrick Lee

Peter Neva ’00