Letters to the Editor

Race dialogue will benefit 'U'

To the Daily:
The upcoming week will be an important time for race dialogue on campus. President Clinton's Initiative on Race gives U of M a national spotlight in which we can set an example for the rest of the nation. It is important to promote understanding, not hinder it with ignorance, apathy and hatred. That is why there will be events on campus participating in the President's Initiative.

On Tuesday, April 7, there will be a Town Hall dialogue on race at 7:30 in the Union Ballroom. There will be extensive discussion of race relationships from the standpoints of students, faculty, and administrators. Affirmative action won't be the subject, but existing relationships and their future will be addressed.

More information on these events can be obtained from the Michigan Student Assembly Website at http://www.umich.edu/~msa.

Will Youmans
LSA sophomore

Do not give the Klan the attention it wants

To the Daily:
I have a request for the "slam the Klan" groups that will inevitably spring up before the Ku Klux Klan's next visit to Ann Arbor: Let them have their rally in peace and isolation. Last time, the groups gave the Klan exactly what they wanted. They got national news coverage, a lawsuit against the city, a bunch of people angry and most important, they got the right to claim the role of victim. Don't give that to them again.

Does that mean you should let them have their rally and not do anything about it? No. Plan a counter-rally, but plan it anywhere else in Ann Arbor but City Hall (or wherever the Klan's rally is going to be). Plan your rally on the Diag, in the stadium, in front of Rackham or on Main Street - anywhere else. Have speakers on unity, have games, have a cotton candy machine for all I care. Make it a fun, positive, uplifting affair away from the hate of the Klan.

Then, when the national media comes to town, as we all know they will, they will have two things to cover. On one hand, several hundred young vibrant students having a party in celebration of unity, and on the other hand, 25 overweight, middle-aged hate mongers talking to themselves. That will hurt the Klan far more than any amount of shouting, chanting and rock throwing.

Whatever you do, don't stoop to their level and give them what they want. Deny them the very thing they are coming here to get - attention. Let the Klan have their rally in isolation.

Steven Clarke
Rackham

Anti-day of action logic is not racist

To the Daily:
I've read some letters to the editor that contain some rather thinly veiled suggestions that I am a racist, because I think the first day of action was misguided. And with all the insinuations, no one has been able to give an answer as to why it's a good idea to disrupt University business when the University is the strongest proponent of affirmative action in the country. This isn't racism -this is logic.

It's also logical to believe that the day of action would have been more successful if University organizers would have postponed it until after midterms: Fewer fence-sitters would have been alienated, and more people who support affirmative action would have been able to attend.

It's also logical that to facilitate an end to racism and ethnic tensions, we need to get away from splitting ourselves into such groups and demanding rights and privileges for one group and denying the same rights to other groups. We need fewer labels, fewer classifications; why support something that perpetuates these labels? How can the letter writers think that something that, by its very nature, divides us will bring unity?

I call it logic. Some call it racism. Po-ta-to, po-tah-to, I guess.

Jason Mailloux
LSA junior

Letter was 'propaganda'

To the Daily:
I found Julian Heilig's letter printed in the March 23 Daily to be insulting and ignorant ("Minorities are affirmative action's main supporters"). Heilig says, "In fact, some of the people closest to my heart are white ... the white majority is going to have to search their hearts and continue to champion the plight of people of color and women." No person should ever think that they deserve any kind of praise for having friends of another race. No person should ever do their friends the disservice of classifying them according to race. Race labels are outdated, and I would think that by this time in American history, we should be able to think of people as something other than a race. This statement becomes even more disturbing when Heilig refers to the "white majority." Quite simply, there is no such thing.

People have many different reasons for supporting or opposing affirmative action. We must realize that a black person's motive for supporting affirmative action could be anti-white just as easily as a white person's reason for opposing it could be anti-black. Heilig indicates that there is an underlying note of racism inherent in all opposition to affirmative action. This is the same ignorance that is calling all who oppose affirmative action "resegregationists." This is a ridiculous tag that stinks of propaganda.

Further, Heilig makes a mistake in saying that we should champion the "plight of people of color and women." It seems to me that the purpose of this movement should be to champion the plight of the disadvantaged. Until education at the high school level is improved, the number of disadvantaged students will always be the same. If everyone living in a poor school district is disadvantaged because of the education they receive, what difference does it make if the district is 90 percent white, 90 percent black or 90 percent Asian? The same number of people are still being screwed by the American education system because we continue to focus on racial discrimination. Most of the people who oppose affirmative action do so because they are against racial discrimination of any kind. There is no plight to speak of other than the plight of humanity. I will never accept the notion that the rights of a poor black person, a poor white person, a poor Asian person, a poor woman and a poor Hispanic person are unequal. I wish to help them all.

Tim Courtois
LSA first-year student

What is with all the 'K's?

To the Daily:
OK, maybe I am just a little oblivious of what it going on around our campus, but this is getting a little ridiculous! What are are these 'K's that I see everywhere? Now at first, I thought they were from some sort of hate gang or cult or something. But I have found an ever more concerning trend that these little 'K's seem to be hand written by little kids. It was rather pleasant for me to head to the bathroom and see a 'K' scrawled with smiley faces and the word "service" underneath it on a dry-erase board. Walking down that hall, I saw that the same combination appeared quite frequently.

As a concerned student of this University, I would just like to know why I am seeing this 'K.' Is this another Daily or Michigan Student Assembly ploy to make us vote for something? Service what? It would be nice to just have some answers.

Kelley Kozma
LSA first-year student

04-07-98