God, this just gets worse. I don't have time to read this shit. Harry were you here in 1954? Keith did you ever experience Apartheid or Segregation? Did you ever have to be so on alert with every move you made in society that to make the wrong action could get you killed for being threatening? I knew segregation and my skin is light so I got into the light society and listened. The issue is not balance but justice.
People who have arrived lately don't deserve to talk because they have paid little for what they have. They haven't earned it. I went through the Civil Rights wars and was in Washington when the attitudes of the Dixiecrats killed Martin Luther King. Even the white dominated OSS and later CIA bragged that the only reason that the great black opera singer Leontyne Price got into the Metropolitan was because the Soviets were pressuring America about racial justice and using segregation as a tool against American interests abroad. Its all about power boys. And the beast rises again and being an apologist is beneath both of your humanities. America is not Britain and Blacks weren't immigrants and they weren't full citizens once the whites discovered that their liberated overseer slaves were able to run the state government quite well and more liberally than the whites. The whites were the minority in a Black South and so invented the clan and killed them. Lining them up in rows to see how many they could kill with one bullet. "Haste makes waste!" I still remember the last hangings. I remember when my people were put in jail for praying. But we weren't colored. When we couldn't vote, but we weren't colored. When we had no standing in the courts but we weren't colored. That was in my lifetime and I studied voice with the two greatest Black voice teachers in America in the only town where they could make a living and live amongst their own people. Washington, D.C. Even then police were murdering uppity black children for jay walking when I was there. Before that, they drove Paul Robeson to Russia because he had an affair with a white actress. I remember when they hired Frederick Wilkerson to teach in a prominent Southern University Medical School because no one knew any more about vocal anatomy than he in the country. When he went to the restroom he had to go several miles to a black school because there were only "white restrooms" at Duke University. They would put down newspapers if he wanted to sit on a sofa. They thought it "rubbed off" maybe? I know the stories. They taught them to me as well since I looked light skinned and sang in the Baptist church. Indians weren't "colored." We sang in the Met in 1926. "Don't touch that, you never know negroes might have drank off of it!" "They do have a different smell don't they." "Their houses are always dirty." "Just look at their skin but the inside of their hands are white just like monkeys." That was what I was taught by White Folks about blacks. How funny it was to learn the concept of "Gadje" (unclean) from another group. You should watch a white cop when he's told that he is unclean and so he must not search or even touch a woman from that group or no man will marry her. Recently a group won over a million dollars for white police women strip searching that group's young women and then the families losing the Bride price because no one would marry someone touched by someone from a group who was "unclean." You go to their houses and sit in a chair and they will dedicate that chair to Gadje and no group member will sit in it ever again. They shake your hand with a silk scarf covering and give you the scarf as a gift but they don't touch someone who would "bath with the same wash cloth on their head and their bottoms." Yes, prejudice is wonderful. That group's people who deal with white folks must forever give up being upper class members of the community because they have dealt with the Gadje. Of course that is fundamentalism going the other direction and you can find members of that culture who are not fundamentalist. Their prejudice is however a little different. Their love and respect for freedom is so great that they would never try to legislate their sense of uncleanness on the rest of us Gadje. And they also pay their debts if they have not been cheated. They have a strong sense about that and even warn their enemies before they do something to them. I couldn't imagine them ruining Iraq for example. That group hasn't given in to you. But Black folks have. They have given up their culture, their languages, their religions, the genius of their ancestors and they now are Christian and learning to be just like you. You took everything from them and made them black white folks and then excluded them for being dark and not White enough. You should remember Blake's "Little Black Boy" who's skin was dark but whose soul was "white as the driven snow" and who would one day be white just like you when he was around the feet of Jesus. Aren't you a little bit embarrassed? Not to mention ashamed or do you believe that the cultural and linguistic heritage that you carry within your bones is without sin and stain? Or maybe Jesus saved you and now you are clean to demand that Black folks be White again? America owes Black people and their grandchildren a debt and the white Bible says that it is down to the fourth generation. I realize that little embarrasing translation is ignored but remember American Indian folks say down to the seventh generation. That is how much we owe for such a horror when we perpetrate it. Ask the Aztecs who just finished their seven generations of hell. They are now clean and free to go on and they are different. Today with America this is less than two and these thugs are yelling foul. What kind of culture is that? Maybe the Gypsies are right. How does it feel to be talked to in the way that White Folks talk to and about Black folks? Or maybe we should just peel the scars over those wounds open and remind ourselves "never again." I hope not. REH ----- Original Message ----- From: "Keith Hudson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Harry Pollard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: "Selma Singer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2003 9:44 AM Subject: [Futurework] Another injustice in the job stakes > Harry, > > Besides the necessity of affirmative action in the case of American blacks > at university and job selection and perhaps in the army and politics, too, > perhaps we ought to have affirmative action in the case of another > unfortunate inequality which affects people's prospects in life. > > I refer to the gross injustice of being short in stature. There is > compendious evidence that if you are tall you not only tend to be better > than average at basketball and tennis, you also get the best chicks in > teenagerhood, and the best jobs in adult life. I think we ought to consider > the necessity of injecting carefully measured aliquots of growth hormone > into young boys at puberty so that all males grow to be exactly the same > height when they become adult, so that the "coming through the door effect" > when attending interviews is equal for all. > > Indeed, the beginning of this new Orwellian scenario might actually be > happening now -- as you can read in the following NYT article by Natalie > Angier: > > <<<< > SHORTCHANGED > Short Men, Short Shrift. Are Drugs the Answer? > > Natalie Angier > > Hail America, land of the speedy and home of the shaved, where the list of > short things we love keeps getting longer. We love brief wars and > abbreviated weapons, instant messaging and prescient gratification. A > duchess said you can't be too trim; editors say the same about stories. > > But the one thing we don't like short and never have is our men. There is a > harsh rule of thumb about male height, and it measures six feet and > counting. As study after study has shown, tall men give nearly all the > orders, win most elections, monopolize girls and monopolies, and > disproportionately splay their elongated limbs across the cushy unconfines > of first-class cabins. By the simple act of striding into a room, taller > than average men are accorded a host of positive attributes having little > or nothing to do with height a high IQ, talent, competence, > trustworthiness, even kindness. > > And men who are considerably shorter than the average American guy height > of 5-foot-9 1/2? These poor little fellows are at elevated risk of dropping > out of school, drinking heavily, dating sparsely, getting sick or > depressed. They have a lower chance of marrying or fathering children than > do taller men, and their salaries tend to be as modest as their stature. If > they are out striving to make their mark, they are derided as "Little > Napoleons." Call them whatever you please, and chances are you won't get > called on it, for making fun of short men is one of the last acceptable > prejudices. > > Small wonder, then, that an advisory panel for the Food and Drug > Administration has just recommended that the agency approve the use of > genetically engineered human growth hormone for healthy children who are > "idiopathically" short - that is, children who are at the bottom-most tail > of growth curves, yet who, unlike a small subset of very short children, do > not suffer from growth hormone deficiency. Children with innate hormone > deficiency are given hormone shots to very noticeable effect without the > treatment, they would be true midgets, perhaps under four feet tall as > adults; with the shots, they are brought up to low-normal heights. > > Yet ever since the biotechnology business began synthesizing potentially > limitless supplies of the drug 20 years ago, doctors have been using it in > off-label fashion to treat children who for unknown reasons are quite > short, maybe in the lowest three percentiles of their age group. The > results have been what might be called whelming, in some cases adding as > much as 3 1/2 inches to a person's projected final height, in others maybe > no more than an inch and change. Still, the scientists on the advisory > panel were persuaded > enough by the hormone's relative safety and measurable if modest effects to > recommend all-around treatment for the seriously subcompact among us. > > Whether the F.D.A. takes the advice will not be known until later this > summer, if even then. Yet already the moral trichotillomania has begun. Why > are we so obsessed with height, particularly among men? Women, after all, > often like to be called petite, though women in law, business and other > high-powered professions who are below the female average height of > 5-foot-5 claim that their diminutive stature makes it hard for them to be > taken seriously. > > ARE we really willing to subject our kids to buttock or thigh injections > three to six times a week, year after year, just so that the local Dudley > Dursley will taunt them about their big ears and good grades, rather than > their stature? Aren't people like the Dutch, among the tallest populations > on earth, with an average male height of over six feet, really the human > equivalents of SUVs, barreling heedlessly along, sucking up more than their > fair share of precious resources like oxygen? And who will pay for the > treatments anyway, which can run $20,000 a year? > > "If the F.D.A. approves the drug for wider use, insurance companies won't > have to pay for it, but it may be harder for them to say no," said John D. > Lantos, associate director of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical > Ethics at the University of Chicago. "Then the cost of the treatment ends > up being collectively subsidized, and we have to wonder, is this the best > way to spend limited health care dollars?" > > Can't we instead tell our short child, listen, Brunelleschi, the founding > architect of the Italian Renaissance, was short, and ugly too; Picasso was > only 5-foot-4 and Voltaire an inch beneath him; and one way to stand tall > is to do stand-up? > > "There's some interesting data that short men are overrepresented among > comedians," said Henry B. Biller, a co-author of "Stature and Stigma The > Biopsychosocial Development of Short Males." > > To which this 5-foot-3 1/2-inch woman can only sigh, Ha! The data in favor > of lofty stature is too mountainous to ignore. For every extra inch of > longitude, a man adds 2 percent to his yearly income. Maybe 60 percent of > American chief executives are six feet or taller, and according to Nancy > Etcoff of Harvard Medical School, author of "Survival of the Prettiest," > only 3 percent are 5-foot-7 or shorter. American presidents are also big > offenders, a tradition begun by George Washington, who at 6-foot-2 loomed > by at least eight inches over most of his contemporaries; and since then, > nearly half of our presidents have been of Dutchly dimensions. Famously, > the taller of two presidential candidates nearly always wins the election. > Carter beat the taller Ford in 1976, but couldn't dodge Reagan's three-inch > advantage four years later. > > Tall men certainly know the allure of their height. In the personals of a > recent issue of New York magazine, for example, fully half of the men > seeking women described themselves as tall. Women, by contrast, if they > mentioned their height at all, tended to give an exact measurement, perhaps > to discourage men below that mark from writing in. Dr. Etcoff notes that in > one study of married couples, less than one-half of one percent of the > women were taller than their husbands. > > Yet ultimately, height may be as much a matter of attitude as of altitude. > In one recent study, Andrew Postlewaite, professor of economics at the > University of Pennsylvania, and his colleagues Nicola Persico and Dan > Silverman, determined that what really counts for a man's professional > success in life, heightwise, is not his adult height, but the height he was > in high school. > > "If you take two people who were 5-foot-6 in high school, and one grew to > 5-foot-7 and the other to 6-foot-1," said Dr. Postlewaite, "there would be > no predictive difference in their adult income." Whether that is because > one's physique in those critical years of puberty sets the thermostat of > self-confidence and swagger, or whether short teenagers, who tend to avoid > sports and other group activities, fail to master the nuances of team > spirit considered crucial throughout most of the business world, Dr. > Postlewaite > cannot yet say. "Clearly something happens in high school that has > important long-term effects," he said. > > Maybe you can't go home again, but with homeroom, you can never leave. > >>>> > > New York Times 22 June 2003 > > > > > > Keith Hudson, 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath, England > > _______________________________________________ > Futurework mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
