speech and respect - College of Social Sciences and International ...

Taking Sides
first director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American
Indian, declared: "No other modern museum has so self-consciously
sought focused input of special concerns from a user population." 12 of
the 25 governing board members must be Indian. "We're part of the 'we,'
not the 'them.' " A pre-opening show in New York, "Pathways of
Tradition," was shaped by the recommendations of 28 "culturally based"
artists, religious leaders, educators, and museum administrators. New
York Times s.2 p.53 (September 13, 1992).
91 New York Times M (March 2, 1992).
Many African Americans have condemned Huckleberry Finn as racist,
deploring Mark Twain's use of the word "nigger" (200 times) and urging
its exclusion from schools and libraries. Now a white literature professor
has found an 1874 article in which Twain identified a 10-year-old black
boy as the inspiration for Huck's speech patterns. Henry Louis Gates Jr.,
an African American professor of literature at Harvard, commented:
"What we discover after all this time is that it is the black American
linguistic voice which forms the structuring principle of the great American
novel, and that ain't bad." New York Times A1 (July 7, 1992); Fishkin
(1993).
92 New York Times B9 (December 1, 1989), B2 (December 4, 1989).
Evanston, Illinois, planned a public service announcement on television,
created free of charge by a Chicago advertising executive. It began with a
neo-Nazi giving the Sieg Heil salute while a voice over said "If they gave
a medal for killing black people, this gang would win a bronze" for 12
murders in the last decade. Then the hooded Ku Klux Klan appeared with
a torch while the voice over said: "This gang would win the silver" for 20
murders in the last three decades. Finally a young tattooed black man
wearing a baseball cap, cutoff shorts, heavy jewellery, and a tank top
appeared with sounds of gunfire in the distance while the voice over said
"But this gang would win the gold. If you're in a gang, you're not a
brother. You're a traitor." The screen showed 1300 murders in 1991
alone. A black city councillor condemned the ad, while the head of the
Police Department gang unit endorsed it. New York Times s.1 p. 10
(August 23, 1992).
93 A judge has since held that the Alderman violated the student's constitutional
rights and ordered the policemen to stand trial. New York Times A9
(August 12, 1992).
In Negrophobia, a black author wrote the story of a white teenager
transported to a world where the most bigoted stereotypes prevail. A
white artist designed the cover, showing a scantily clad white girl with the
shadow of an oversize black caricature peering over her shoulder. A
black woman employee of the publisher was enraged: "it gives credence
to the old stereotypes that too many people still believe." The publisher
had anticipated that "less hip" readers might be "turned off" but concluded
that "this was an appropriate reflection of the parody in the book."
The author explained:
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