PL436000@BROWNVM.BITNET (Jamie) (02/08/90)
A couple of people have responded already to the Stimely paper clipping on racial attacks at Brown. I have agreed mostly with what they said, but was a little surprised at omissions. Tim said: > Not to speak for Larry, but it seems that what he was trying > to say was what you expressed ever so well. Whenever there is > an attack on black students by white students, it is labelled > as racially motivated without a second thought. However, when > we find blacks attacking whites, instead we try to hide the fact > that race could have been an issue. We are uncomfortable accusing > blacks of racism. That may be true in general, I don't know. But I did not notice it happening in this case. The ProJo and NY Times both raised the issue of racism. Gregorian (our liberal President) said they were racially motivated. Race is an obvious factor, but so is class. Arguing about which was REALLY at work strikes me as sort of silly. There are indeed a lot of Portugese people in Fox Point. But according to the Providence police, the attackers did not come from Fox Point, they came from South Providence. No one else from Brown (to my surprise) has pointed out the distortions in the Stimely newspaper [NB: When politicos and writers accuse newspapers of "distortions", it usually means they do not like what was written but can't find anything false. But that's not what *I* mean. I mean there are outright falsehoods in the excerpt.] 1. There were no "brutal beatings". Of the sixteen attacks (which were not 16 separate incidents, but 16 white students involved in a few incidents), most were verbal assaults and threats. 2. Gregorian did not ask the Justice department to investigate the incidents. The article is conflating (deliberately, no doubt) Gregorian's response to the threat of Ku Klux Klan organizing at Brown with his response to the September assaults. Think about it--wouldn't it be pretty absurd to ask the US Justice department to investigate harassment of white students by black kids? I know you will all be relieved to hear that all us Brown whities are safe now. The Providence police handled the cases efficiently. Tim even walks around by himself after midnight. Only we leftists ask for escorts--el pueblo unido, and all that.... Jamie