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UNCA forum reflects on landmark civil
rights case
By Susan Pepper
Mar. 1 (AGR)— A dozen students joined a dozen or more faculty
members for a brown bag lunch roundtable discussion about the landmark
civil rights case, Brown vs. the Board of Education on Wednesday, Feb.
25. The discussion was part of a series of various lectures and theatre
and art shows that WNC has offered throughout February in honor of Black
History Month.
Dr. John Wood, the head of the Anthropology Department at University of
North Carolina, spearheaded the discussion about Brown vs. the Board of
Education and its legacy in order to stimulate a dialogue about racism.
“We need to talk more about race in this country…,” Wood
said. “This is meant to be just one piece in an ongoing dialogue.”
Brown vs. the Board of Education was the landmark civil rights case that
on May 17, 1954 legally dismantled segregation. In Topeka, Kansas, where
segregation in public schools was mandatory, Linda Brown had to walk a
mile through a railroad switchyard to get to her black elementary school,
even though a white elementary school was only seven blocks way. Linda’s
father, Oliver Brown, enlisted the support of the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and sued the Board of Education
claiming that the “separate but equal” ruling, legitimized by
Plessy vs. Ferguson in 1896, was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment
that protects children from discrimination based on race. He argued that
segregation created a stigma for black children that had a detrimental
effect on their ability to learn and to excel in society. In the early
1950s, there were similar lawsuits taking place across twenty-one states
where segregation in public schools was in place. In 1951, Brown vs. the
Board of Education was brought to the Supreme Court. When it passed in
1954, Brown’s victory overturned Plessy vs. Ferguson and set a new
precedent that separate was not equal.
The faculty and various community members at UNCA commended the efforts
of Brown and other NAACP lawyers who strategically overturned Plessy vs.
Ferguson. However, various participants stressed that legislation alone
did not guarantee equal educational opportunities for black children.
Furthermore, there were loopholes and ambiguities in the ruling. Other
academics substantiated arguments that Brown vs. Board of Education had
a negative impact on the fiscal resources of black communities and supported
a negative presumption that black students needed to be near white students
in order to obtain a quality education.
According to Keith Bramlett, Professor of Sociology, figures about the
numbers of integrated schools can be misleading. As long as one black
child attended a white school, it could represent itself as an integrated
school. Furthermore, Bramlett suggested segregation continued on the playgrounds,
in cafeterias, and in other arenas of daily life. Bramlett concluded,
“While many schools were desegregated, very few were integrated.”
Dr. Dolly Jenkins-Mullen, Professor of Political Science, described her
experience as a token black student in a newly integrated white school.
The white school had greater financial resources and more advanced curriculum
offerings than the school for black children she had previously attended.
However, Mullen resented the presumption set by Brown vs. the Board of
Education that blacks needed to be close to whites to get a good education.
Mullen commented, “as if by some kind of osmosis, we would become
smarter.”
The desegregation of the schools, according to Bramlett and many other
sociologists, resulted in a loss of power to the black communities. Bramlett
explained, “In black communities, teachers were the “backbone”
of the middle class. While black teachers were joined by clergy, undertakers,
doctors, lawyers, etc., they were proportionately a substantially larger
group, especially in the South.” Many black teachers and administrators
in the public sector lost their jobs or were demoted over time when many
black school boards merged with white ones.
The long-lasting disparity between the power of white and black administrators
in the schools can be seen as recently as 1985, when it was estimated
that only fifty out of 17,500 school districts across the country were
headed by black superintendents. Additionally, historical and sociological
analysis estimate that the desegregation of schools represented a quarter
billion dollar loss to Black communities.
The roundtable was framed to include issues about race today, especially
those that affect students at UNCA. A student originally from Trinidad,
Gennem Jagden, talked about how, on the basis of her ethnic background,
she struggled to gain admission into advanced classes at her high school
in New York that would put her on the “college track.” At UNCA,
she does not feel a sense of community. “I can be proud of the education
I get and the academics at UNCA but I do not feel part of the community,”
said Jagden.
A young man volunteered to share his experience as part of the youth.
He identified that a cultural gap exists between white teachers and black
students, which often leads to misunderstanding, fear and the inability
for white teachers to successfully manage the students. He also claimed
that less privileged whites get stuck teaching at impoverished black schools.
A multitude of topics were covered during the discussion ranging from
white flight to the suburbs and racial discrimination in the issuing of
mortgages to general reflections about the political consciousness of
Americans today. Out of the entire discussion, however, only two youth
spoke up, while many more were present. While it is important to revisit
the past and for older generations to pass on their stories to today’s
youth, it is equally important that we allow the voice of the youth to
be heard.
The next discussion about Brown vs. the Board of Education will occur
on Tues. Apr. 20 at 7pm at the YMI Cultural Center in downtown Asheville.
Dr. Dwight Mullen, a political scientist, will give a talk about the case,
followed up with testimonies of Asheville residents about their related
experiences.
Tradition versus survival
By John Lapp
Mar. 1 (AGR)— “Hay Kola, or in your language I said
‘welcome, friends,’” Bruce Two Eagles greeted the crowd
of about 45 high school students in A-B Tech’s small Simpson auditorium.
Two Eagles and elder, Don Merzlack hada driven from Tennessee to educate
this small group of students on Native American issues, and to drive
home the fact that Native Americans are a living people.
Both of these men are part of the American Indian Movement (AIM), which
produced such historic events as the Indian occupations of Alcatraz
and the site of the massacre at Wounded Knee. The two men have been
part of the struggle for Native American rights and freedom since AIM’s
troubled, but memorable heyday of the 1970s. Their AIM shirts showed
their pride in the movement that had given Native Americans a voice
for the first time since the original Indian wars.
After giving the crowd a warm greeting Bruce began the task of “re-educating”
a room full of high school students on what has often been presented
as fact in the American classroom.
“Can anyone in this room name five great Indians and what tribes
they come from?” Silence filled the hall, except for the hushed
laughter from a small group of boys in the back, who appeared not to
care about what these men represented.
“But if I asked about explorers you would tell me of Columbus and
Diaz, Cortez and Coranado,” he said. “You haven’t been
taught American history, you learned European History.”
The issue of the “discovering” of the Americas was next addressed.
“When Columbus came over he said, ‘We discovered you, los
indinos.’ And we said ‘damn we’re discovered.’”
Soon the two men brought up the subject that they clearly felt was the
most important to convey to the students: Native Americans are people,
not mascots that dance around in red face paint for sports fans’
entertainment at half time.
“How do you think Catholics would feel if the [San Diego] Padres
had a man dressed like the Pope who did somersaults at half-time and
the spectators all had gigantic plastic crucifixes and waved them hysterically
every time the Padres scored?”
Two words that the men kept using were, “respect” and “dignity.”
“The claim that they [schools and professional sports teams] are
honoring Indians by using our eagle feathers and our images; well, we
don’t need white people to honor us,” Two Eagles said. “All
we ever wanted was for them to leave us the hell alone.”
A US history teacher asked the two men about the recent Outkast Grammy
controversy, in which the band stole a sacred Dine song and performed
their set wearing blue mock-Indian costumes.
“Back in the 50s restaurants and other industries used to use the
images of Sambo and Tar Babies, and these were degrading and wrong,
you don’t see people wearing black face anymore,” Two Eagles
responded. “How is it any different for a rap group to come out
of a space age looking teepee wearing blue and green costumes with fake
eagle feathers run around the stage and objectify the women on stage?”
Merzlack added that no Native American anywhere in the world would let
themselves be subjected to that sort of humiliation. “What you
have to understand, is that we come from a matriarchal culture,”
he explained. “This is much different than the culture you live
in, women are at the tops of society, not objects like they are here
[in US culture].”
Another teacher asked if Native Americans hate the use of sacred images
by sports teams, then why do groups like the Cherokee have contracts
with the Atlanta Braves?
Two Eagles explained that for a long time the Cherokee were living in
despicable poverty, which is often the life on the reservations, and
so the only way to survive was through making contracts with sports
teams, and selling themselves out. He added that now that there is a
casino in Cherokee, many people feel that the contract should be voided.
He cautioned that this balance between tradition and survival is one
that any true Indian walks all her/his life. Merzlack added that despite
the fact that poverty is so high on reservations and education so low,
many Native Americans choose the miserable life on the reservations
because it is all that Native Americans have left.
The two AIM members also addressed the topic of the animated Disney
film Pocahontas, telling the group that John Smith was a rapist and
a pedophile and that his “wife,” Pocahontas, was only 11-years-old.
Responding to a question about Native American activist Russell Means
doing a voice-over in the Disney film, Two Eagles said, “Russell
is nothing but a Hollywood Indian.
“I am part of the society of the warrior. To be a warrior means
to put the life of the people before yourself, people like Russell and
[Native American author] Ward [Churchill] have forgotten the people.
Don’t get me wrong -- they started off meaning well, but the fame
has gotten to their heads.”
The men ended their presentation by saying that while the students may
have come into the room ignorant, that is not a bad thing. But now if
they choose to still not recognize Native American rights and issues,
the students are no longer ignorant, but are “stupid.”
When asked how he personally felt about groups like the Zapatistas —
an indigenous people in Chiapas, Mexico who have armed themselves as
a part of having thier voice heard — Two Eagles said, “I support
anyone who fights for Indians anywhere, of course I do. I mean, I have
children.”
‘Mr. Ferrer can’t be with us
tonight’
Artists from all over the world are being
refused entry to the US on security grounds
By James Verini
Feb. 18— In the spring of 2003, the celebrated Iranian
film-maker Jafar Panahi was traveling to South America from Hong Kong.
He did not intend to stop in the US, but his flight path took him through
New York’s John F. Kennedy airport. There, Panahi, a winner of
the Golden Bear award at the Venice film festival who had visited the
US several times, expected to while away a few dull hours. Instead,
he was detained by officials; because his fingerprints were not on file,
he was handcuffed and held in custody for several hours. He was so incensed
at his treatment that he vowed never to return to the US. Panahi’s
experience is extreme, but not rare. According to organizations connected
with film, theater, music, opera, and dance, new American immigration
and visa policies are making it extremely difficult, sometimes impossible,
for foreign artists of all sorts to come to the US to perform and show
their work.
No one, it seems, is exempt. Last week at the Grammy awards, the Cuban
guitarist Ibrahim Ferrer was supposed to have received an award - but
he couldn’t get into the country. The 76-year-old was cited as
a security risk. A Peking Opera company had to cancel an 18-city tour
because the American consulate in China claimed not all of the musicians
could adequately prove that they intended to return home after the tour
ended. The South African anti-apartheid leader and singer Vusi Mahlasela
had to cancel a good chunk of a US tour because his visa took months
to get approved, as did the Spanish guitarist Paco de Lucia.
And in late 2002, in a disheartening precursor to the Panahi case, the
Iranian film-maker Abbas Kiarostami, a Cannes Palme d’Or winner
and one of the Middle East’s most acclaimed film-makers, couldn’t
get to the New York Film Festival (NYFF) to show his latest work. “It
really harms our image -- not only in the Muslim world but around the
world,” said Richard Pena, director of the NYFF and a professor
at Columbia University. “Someone like Kiarostami is not just anyone;
not letting him in is going to have a negative reverberation for America’s
image around the world.”
Artists from Muslim countries and Cuba seem to have the most difficulty
-- since the 1980s, Iranians traveling to the US have been fingerprinted
-- but the trouble extends across the continents. Pena said that Polish
film-makers have refused to come to his festival because of the way
they were treated on previous visits. And according to Marc Scorca,
president of Opera America, opera directors from countries as uncontroversial
as Italy and Spain have begun avoiding US engagements.
“They don’t want to put up with the hassle,” he said,
“which then means that American opera singers are not getting the
work abroad they used to.”
While the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001 have, understandably,
raised America’s concerns about border security, the visa problem
did not begin then. Inconsistent standards and opacity seem to have
been in place at least since Congress passed the Immigration Act of
1990, which set out a labyrinth of classifications and sub-classifications
for visas. Foreign artists had to prove themselves to be of “extraordinary
ability” to obtain an 01-type visa, or of “international renown”
to get a P2. Few of them could tell exactly what those numbers and letters
meant, much less those qualifications, and the same feeling, it seems,
went for most of the examiners at the Immigration and Naturalization
Service (INS). The rules were often benignly neglected.
Nonetheless, by the late 1990s, waiting periods for visas had gone from
about two weeks to a month or more. In June 2001, the INS introduced
a “premium processing” service, targeted mainly at Silicon
Valley and its planeloads of south-east Asian and sub-continental computer
programmers, whereby applicants in a rush could pay an extra $1,000
to ensure their visa would come through quickly, a fee few artists could
afford. And then Sept. 11 occurred. It did not escape the government’s
notice that several of the hijackers had been living in the US on expired
student visas. With astonishing haste, Congress passed the Patriot Act
and the benign neglect came to an abrupt halt.
Lengthy security checks were required for all those travelers unfortunate
enough to be from countries stamped “State 7,” which denotes
“known state sponsors of terrorism,” or from “countries
of interest,” of which there are dozens. Interviews were mandatory
for every temporary work visa, whether the applicant was a basketball
player with his team, a computer programmer, or a bass tenor. The fingerprinting
of Iranians and people from other Muslim countries, previously avoidable,
was strictly enforced.
Making matters worse, when the Patriot Act went through, the INS (renamed
the US Citizenship and Immigration Service and known as USCIS or, by
its detractors, Useless), was in the midst of a computer overhaul. According
to Jonathan Ginsburg, a Virginia immigration lawyer who specializes
in the arts, its systems were in “miserable condition.” However,
the main problem now, he said, is the FBI, which has the right to take
passports and hold up visa applications for as long as it sees fit.
The insanely cumbersome process of entering America now goes something
like this: first, the manager or producer or venue who wants to book
a foreign artist must petition one of four USCIS service centers. They
must prove the artist is unique, extraordinary, or renowned, and that
he or she intends to return to their home country after their work is
done. If the petition is accepted, it is then sent to the artist in
their home country, and the artist in turn brings it to the US consulate,
where he or she is fingerprinted and interviewed.
After the interview, the waiting begins, as the consulate sends the
application to the Department of Homeland Security and “all interested
agencies.” It may take seven weeks, it may take seven months, and
here the Kafkaesque institutional absurdity really takes hold, the law
says that visas can be applied for, at the earliest, only six months
in advance. Waits of up to 10 months are not uncommon. Nor are visa
applications that are never returned. “A case can disappear into
the ozone,” says Ginsburg. The entire process normally runs from
$2,000 to $4,000 per artist, depending on lawyers’ fees, and that
does not include travelling expenses to and from consulates. In Iran,
there is no American consulate, so someone like Kiarostami must travel
to Syria and back -- twice. “We want people to come to the US to
enjoy what we have,” says Chris Bentley, a USCIS spokesman. “But
we need to balance that with ensuring that we don’t compromise
security.”
The results of all this seem pretty clear. As Opera America’s Scorca
puts it: “These procedures are leading to diminished exposure of
American audiences to great artists and making it harder for US artists
to get work abroad.” But the stakes, many believe, are even higher
than that.
“Art is cultural diplomacy,” says Sandra Gibson, president
of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters in Washington, which
lobbies Congress and USCIS on behalf of hundreds of members. “And
it’s just as important as it was during the cold war. It’s
as important as when [pianist] Van Cliburn went to the Soviet Union
to perform and changed Khrushchev’s mind about the United States.”
Source: Guardian (UK)
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