Once again, Kake Walk tries to rear its ugly head, and in spite of the humanistic stand taken by UVM students last fall, there appears to be a number of people in the white community who exhibit the same insensitive, ignorant, disgustingly-racist behavior which characterizes so much of America.
To understand the objection to Kake Walk, one must understand the attitude of white racism. White Americans, in order to justify black slavery, invented the image of the Negro -- the so-called Magnolia Myth which stereotyped the black man as an inferior being. He was viewed variously as criminal, coward, comic, congenital rebel or as the happy-go-lucky, shiftless, national banjo player.
This myth has remained to become embedded in the national character. In America, a way of life has been developed -- an American ethos -- a national style which contains the assumption that blacks are inferior. Black people are not condemned in America because they are poor, uneducated or even black, but rather because they a re Negroes...that is, because of an idea, an image of the Negro, and that Negro´s place in the white American mind. This myth remains as a pervasive influence in this society and is supported by public information media, textbooks, schools, and other major institutions. True history has taught us that this is in fact a myth; yet, most Americans cling desperately to there wish-fulfillment fantasies.
Kake Walk was conceived as an extension of this racist thinking. To anyone who has researched the subject, the derogatory stereotype is obvious. for example, early references to the event in the Cynic and the Alumni Weekly refer to "coon," "darky," "coal-black mammy ushers" "Koonville," "the danciest culled pusson," "black-faced pickininnies," ....words and phrases straight from the magnolia myth of the happy, shuffling, darky slave. Irrespective of later modifications, the entire concept of kake Walk merely reinforces this image.
Today the black man is involved in the continuous process of winning for himself his goal of true equality out of the whole syndrome of white power, culture, prestige and wealth. This upheaval toward the realization is largely on the levels of dignity, pride, and respect. Much of this is based on repudiation of the great myth.
We blacks do not ask that you eradicate the myth...our days of begging are over. We fully intend to allow no injustice to go unchallenged. This means that we will do whatever has to be done to free ourselves from this systematic destruction. On the other hand, it would seem that white Americans might ask themselves some questions. Why this need to continue the myth?...the debasement? What kind of people invent the perpetuate words like Gook, Chink, Whop, Kike, Coon? Why this terrible emptiness when they no longer have their niggers to trod upon?
White can no longer hide behind the cloak of innocence...news media are all too omnipresent to allow such ignorance. Nor is it acceptable to cry that white rights are being violated. All questions do not have two sides; there is a level of morality which supercedes majority rule. The fact that Hitler´s extermination of Jews may have had popular support does not make it any less a blight on humanity. Further, the chant of artistic freedom is invalid; such freedom is not all inclusive but is limited by good taste and humaneness. Nor is tradition a valid excuse for this event. Black progress in this country has been delayed continually on the grounds of tradition. Lynching, I might add, has a very long tradition in America. So what?
More importantly, we blacks do not need white people to determine for us what is offensive. Unfortunately, many whites have the arrogance to think themselves greater authorities on blacks than blacks themselves. This is just another example of their racist thinking.
The point is, Kake Walk is offensive to us, and America has not earned the right to play upon the very myth about blacks which it has used and still uses as a basis for denying us access to society. Perpetuation of this myth would be wrong in any setting, but in a University....in a community of scholars, in this day, such activity is unthinkable. The presence of black students is irrelevant; whites should find their racist needs despicable even without the presence of blacks.
The final specific task for the white citizen is to undo his diabolical inventive destruction. The great alterations must emerge from the side which generated the entire distorted history.
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