SHOUTING IT LIKE IT IS
We can Solve All the Scandals We Want, but Until We Target Racism, We Are Doomed.
From the Article by Bob Baker
May 31, 1992
"I've been waiting half my life to tell somebody about Leslie Goldman. [ Leslie Goldman, Your Enchanted Gardener ] Always figured I'd way for some desperate moment. Now it's here.
Leslie was a short, white guy with glasses and unkempt hair. He didn't stand out until that afternoon when hundreds of students headed from classrooms toward the building where anti-war activists were distributing get-out-of-Cambodia postcards for students to mail to President Nixon. The students, filled with earnest fury, rushed up a low, grassy hill to the building where the postcards were being handed out. In their path stood Leslie, alone. He was yelling at them.
"Listen!" he shouted. "It doesn't make any difference whether we end the war unless we solve the problem of racism!!" Nobody listened. They ran right by him. The war was the thing. Racism was last year's problem.
You could have frozen the image in time and put in on a postages stamp to commemorate the official and unofficial policy of the United States government and of We,the People. Racism or poverty or unemployment--whatever social problems you want to name--is always Number Two. More transitory problems--the savings and loan scandal, the House banking scandal--always get the attention. The response to Problem Number Two is always, "We'll get to it." The time frame is always tomorrow.
What I hope for now--scratch that. What I pray for now is somebody in authority to step forward and say, dammit, Number Two is now Number One. But that's not going to happen unless we do some shouting ourselves. Our leaders are running up that low, grassy hill, running pell-mell toward the Next Big Issue. They need to be slapped in the ace. What happened in recent weeks got their attention temporarily. But we need, all o us, to position ourselves in their path and to scream at them, as Leslie did: "Listen! It doesn't make any difference unless we solve the problem o racism!"
This is no longer just a matter o misplaced priorities. This is a matter o the city's life and death.
Bob Baker is a Times staff writer.
WHAT WAS PROFOUND ABOUT THIS STORY
I almost missed by 30th High School Reunion. I was feeling as if my life had not amounted to anything. When I attended my friend from childhood Ira Erenberg asked me if I had seen the story in the Los Angeles Times that came out. I had not seen it. It lifted my spirit when I read this story.
FYI Makeda Makossa
http://www.curezone.org/a2.asp?i=1394
