Letters
Editors: Nicolaus Mills (Affirmative Action Symposium, Fall 1995) is correct to point out that "[t]he left needs to acknowledge all that affirmative action cannot do..." and that "liberals...
...Affirmative action programs, or rather the need for their continued existence in some form, are disturbing and painful reminders that we have not achieved the racial equality—much less the racial harmony—we wish we had...
...0 CORRECTIONS We regret the errors in the credit line of the photo of Emanuel Geltman in the Winter 1996 issue...
...Among the films that spring to mind are The Law of Desire, Dona Herlinda and Her Son, Desert Hearts, Okoge, For a Lost Soldier, My Beautiful Laundrette, Zero Patience, The Incredibly True Adventures of 2 Girls in Love, Grief, Go Fish, and the films of Derek Jarman...
...Editors: What was Eric Foner trying to accomplish in his review (Winter 1996) of Dinesh D'Souza's book The End of Racism...
...Graff writes, for example, that among required readings in nineteenth-century literature, the noncanonical author most frequently added—in 15 percent of the cases— was Harriet Beecher Stowe...
...The reference was to the number of English courses in which each was taught, not the number of departments...
...But since the era of Cruising gay people have gained something rather than lost it, in the movies and elsewhere...
...In 1924 it supported Robert La Follette (in California, for example, La Follette ran only on the Socialist line), and then in 1928 began running Norman Thomas as a perennial candidate...
...If we were to develop an affirmative action-type program for recent immigrants based on the inequities that they face, we would end up with a program very similar to those that exist for "native" African-Americans...
...They can be found in all the independent films produced by lesbian and gay filmmakers the world over...
...This is like claiming that Jews benefited from the Holocaust because it contributed to the creation of the state of Israel...
...Not only did we get Manny's name wrong, but we misidentified the photographer, who was the late Chalmers K. Stewart (not Stuart...
...Although de jure segregation has been eliminated, segregated schools and public facilities have been declared unconstitutional, and affirmative action goals have been pursued, de facto segregation remains intense in public schools across the country, African-Americans remain hypersegregated residentially, "minority" contractors are still under-awarded contracts, and managerial and executive positions remain largely in the hands of white men...
...Was Cruising "deeply homophobic at the conceptual level" (gay film critic Vito Russo in the 1987 edition of his book The Celluloid Closet) or "one of the most candid films ever made about gay America" (Kirp...
...But organizational longevity is not, by itself, a virtue...
...D'Souza's own view is that "slavery was an institution that was terrible to endure for slaves, but it left the descendants of slaves better off" than their kinsmen in Africa (emphasis in original...
...Not because we have allowed affirmative action to "take on burdens it cannot bear," but because the legacy and impact of racism and discrimination are consistent and persistent...
...One can agree or disagree with what one encounters, but there is a space in which meaningful dialogue is at least possible...
...We reserve the right to edit letters down to fit our space and to choose which shall be printed...
...His suggestion assumes that a different kind of racism affects recent immigrants...
...Eric Foner Replies: Curtis Crawford's letter misrepresents both Dinesh D'Souza's book and my review...
...Let me respond to just a few of his points...
...But the People's party, formed in 1892, died in all but name four years later...
...According to the review, D'Souza describes racism as nothing more than an opinion...
...One can turn on television and see dramas or documentaries about different aspects of gay history...
...Mills would exclude immigrants who have come in the last twenty years from affirmative action programs...
...Second, the Socialist party ran presidential candidates five times in a row, beginning in 1900...
...How clever of him to place such thinkers with himself in a comfortable position that is ostensibly neither here nor there...
...Today one can open publications not particularly aimed at lesbians or gay men and read intelligent articles about gay issues...
...SPRING • 1996 • 127...
...The gay-friendly attitude shown in Jonathan Demme's Philadelphia would have been inconceivable without the protests many gay people voiced about the homosexual psychopathic killer Demme depicted in Silence of the Lambs...
...However, at this time, we still need some form of remedial program...
...No doubt that space exists within fragile political boundaries, and no doubt it needs to be enlarged...
...Part of the problem lies with D'Souza himself, whose arguments, as I wrote, are frequently incoherent and self-contradictory...
...q Editors: In his defense of political correctness, Todd Gitlin ("The Demonization of Political Correctness," Fall 1995) further distorts by misquotation my half-sentence about Shakespeare and Alice Walker that Gerald Graff earlier wrenched out of context...
...Turning liberals into conservatives has, depressingly, been the chief accomplishment of academic radicalism since the end of the Vietnam War...
...And as Kirp's anecdote about the recent screening of Cruising in San Francisco without gay protest indicates, those opinions often change with time...
...Can questions like these be answered definitively...
...The larger point, however, is that Gitlin accepts Graff's supposed refutation: Shakespeare was taught far more often than Walker at Northwestern, therefore the canon thrives...
...At the end of his article Kirp asks, "But what about all the untold tales, accounts of gay lives less perfect than the hero of Philadelphia, less hilarious than the drag queens in Wong Foo...
...The book does assert that racism in this country has "declined" and that it is not "the main problem facing blacks today...
...But if his purpose was a reasoned demonstration of the book's flaws, his mode of attack made success impossible...
...He frequently and substantially misrepresents what the book says...
...The book: "Schools and colleges should provide...an authentic multicultural curriculum that...would expose students to 'the best that has been thought and said' not simply in the West but in other cultures as well...
...Summarizing this and similar statements, D'Souza writes that "Washington's argument...is that slavery...brought Africans into the orbit of modern civilization and Western freedom...
...Eugene V. Debs received 6 percent of the presidential vote in 1912...
...Anyone who cares about accuracy in polemics can find the original piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education, January 13, 1988...
...That's more than William Lemke in 1936, Strom Thurmond or Henry Wallace in 1948, and John Anderson in 1980, all of whom are included in Kazin's list of "serious independent candidates...
...q Editors: David L. Kirp's "How Gays Lost It at the Movies" (Winter 1996) brings to mind not only vivid memories of the protests in the gay community that greeted William Friedkin's pre-AIDS-crisis movie Cruising by many who viewed it as exploitative and antigay, but the more recent complaints that even when Hollywood does produce progay films (Philadelphia...
...They were not meant to be a permanent fixture in the social landscape...
...Absent affirmative action, for example, they will still face a residentially segregated housing market...
...According to Foner, D'Souza claims that discrimination based on a belief in biological inferiority has disappeared...
...As for what is taught and not taught in English composition, I would far sooner see students study Shakespeare than Walker in school, but if reading Walker helps them learn to write grammatical sentences, let them read Walker...
...Julie Newmar) it manages to water gay life down into "fluff' and something "unthreateningly make-believe," to use Kirp's words...
...To Letter Writers • We welcome succinct letters from our readers...
...As a gay writer who has interviewed dozens of lesbians and gay men on dozens of topics over the years, I have come to doubt they can...
...One can see movies made by both gay and straight people about gay lives...
...Indeed, they should be phased out...
...I found in the course of writing this letter that I disagree with more of David Kirp's article than I realized at first...
...What is Jarman's erotically charged Edward II if not a fable about the possible horrific consequences of antigay prejudice under the right political conditions...
...I find it astonishing and deeply revealing that, at least for purposes of this controversy, people on the left consider Northwestern and similar schools to be the norm in American higher education...
...The book: "[T]he Maya, Inca and Aztec civilizations were impressive for their sophisticated knowledge of the seasons and stars, an advanced calendar, elaborate techniques of weaving and ornamentation, and architectural brilliance...
...First, the Populists ran a presidential candidate only in 1892...
...For many years I was a third party advocate, starting when I worked in Henry Wallace's 1948 campaign...
...Inequalities of access and of opportunity still exist...
...There are two things wrong with this...
...Hasn't anyone ever told them that most students attend public institutions where the English department teaches little besides composition, and that The Color Purple was a huge favorite among composition instructors in 1988...
...Likewise, no openly gay screenwriter like Douglas Carter Beane would have been allowed to produce the script for To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything...
...The list of misrepresentations could go on...
...JAMES WEINSTEIN Chicago, Ill...
...Immigrants of color come to a society that distinguishes between black and white, with no gradations of color or ethnicity in between...
...Where is the wake-up call, the art that challenges consciousness, the Cruising for our times...
...But, as Kazin suggests, it seems to make more sense to follow the example of the Christian right and put our efforts into gaining a voice in the coalition known as the Democratic party...
...If he conceded that they strongly oppose the phenomena he is defending, the premises of his argument would require him to stigmatize them as conservatives...
...The review: D'Souza believes that American children should study other cultures, but only as horrible examples of barbarism and injustice...
...During its short heyday, the People's party threatened to bust up the two-party system—and wielded a big chunk of power in several states in the Deep South and Great Plains...
...To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything...
...If he hoped to dissuade people from reading it by describing the book as absurd and bigoted, he probably succeeded...
...The SP never had that kind of clout...
...Although overt racism is frowned upon today, nepotism, institutional and unconscious racism and discrimination, deliberate racial steering in the housing market, discrimination in lending, and race-based presumption of qualification (or lack thereof) are all present...
...Todd Gitlin Replies: My error (Professor Clausen did indeed write "courses," not "departments") was both innocent and innocuous...
...In 1932 he received about a million votes...
...We are unable to acknowledge letters...
...I question this...
...The review: D'Souza fails to understand that racism arose not simply to explain difference but to justify conquest, colonization, enslavement, and economic domination...
...The book: "Mlle ideology of racial superiority, which originated to explain civilizational differences, became consolidated in America as a convenient rationalization for continuing oppression...
...I leave it to readers to evaluate Professor Clausen's own error, this one of omission: he fails to mention that I cited from Professor Graff not only the Northwestern curriculum but national surveys of what is taught in English courses at various universities, showing that revisionism is kept at bay...
...That art has already arrived— and in a form so mature some people may not recognize its existence...
...Nonetheless, Crawford fails to demonstrate that my review was unfair or misleading...
...Gitlin, who was a sociologist at a public university (albeit Berkeley), should know better...
...Julie Newmar without considerable changes in Hollywood attitudes in recent years, and I doubt those changes came about because the Hollywood Heterosexual Caucus voted one Tuesday evening in favor of greater gay sensitivity...
...The statement is not only historically meaningless (since it ignores the dire effect of centuries of the Atlantic slave trade on African society) but morally outrageous...
...An absurd claim, but not D'Souza's...
...The book defines racism to include both the belief that racial differences in intellectual and moral capacity are innate, and the will to discriminate accordingly...
...The impact of these inequities is no different for recent immigrants of color...
...He may praise the Maya and Aztecs for their SPRING • 1996 • 125 Letters achievements, but his account of world history and how it should be taught is based on what he calls "Western cultural superiority...
...Then too, political conditions today no matter how menacing for gay people are definitely a few cuts above those of a mere forty years ago, when lesbians and gay men had no one to speak up for them in the face of child custody losses, dishonorable military discharges, imprisonment, incarceration in mental institutions, castration, and lobotomies carried out by ignorant or spiteful doctors, politicians, commanding officers, judges, or family members...
...Editors: Michael Kazin's piece on third parties (Winter 1996) was a valuable contribution to the discussion of recent developments on the left, but it contained a truly astounding error...
...The second point the article overlooks is the highly viable gay cinema gay people have created for themselves outside of Hollywood in the last ten to fifteen years...
...Kirp's comments miss two very important points about what he calls the "ever-shifting and ever-contested terrain of gay self-identity" as it relates to the movies...
...and that "liberals [should] worry more about...undoing [the past] altogether [rather than compensating for it...
...Paul Butler, in his concern for discrimination against immigrants, conflates affirmative action compensations with civil rights protection...
...They lose their ethnic identity and are given only a racial identity...
...No one—not even distinguished professors of history—can refute assertions that may be reasonable by changing them into assertions that are not...
...Not so...
...It seems to me that in the context of an article on third parties, the Socialists deserve at least honorable mention, especially in Irving Howe's old magazine...
...Affirmative action, we must admit, was meant to redress the effects of past discrimination, and was supposed to be temporary...
...The famous black educator Booker T. Washington is quoted as declaring, "Notwithstanding the cruelty and moral wrong of slavery, we are in a stronger and more hopeful condition, materially, intellectually, morally and religiously, than is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of the globe...
...Although they do not share the same history as the "African-American who can trace her ancestry and victimization back to the seventeenth century," they do inherit some of those burdens and they must battle the same inequities...
...How many instances of misrepresentation must a review contain to make it unacceptable for publication in Dissent...
...Before World War I the Socialist party had some two hundred thousand members in five thousand locals across the country, ran candidates for all offices, and elected more than three hundred and fifty municipal officials, dozens of state legislators, and two members of Congress, one from Wisconsin, the other from New York...
...Letters will not be returned to senders unless they are accompanied by stamped, selfaddressed envelopes...
...Were they deliberate or the unwitting products of haste and bias...
...So if you want to write about something that you like, or dislike, in or about Dissent, please do it quickly...
...But because we have a long "lead time for each issue, you have to send us your letter within three weeks after getting an issue of Dissent in order to get it into the next issue...
...They are not given special consideration in the awarding of contracts...
...Was Philadelphia a sentimental effort "to efface the controversial" aspects of gay sex practices (Kirp) or a sympathetic portrayal of a gay man trying to assert his dignity in the face of an employer's homophobic reaction to AIDS...
...None of this is meant to say that I disagree with Kazin's estimate of the efficacy of third party politics...
...True, Populists ran for offices across the country in several years, and in 1896 Tom Watson was on the ballot in some states as William Jennings Bryan's vice presidential running mate...
...Thus, they are often perceived as "native" African-Americans, with all the negative racial implications attached to that identity...
...He presents the end of racist discrimination as a desirable and attainable goal, not an accomplished fact...
...The review: according to D'Souza, all one needs to know about Aztecs is that they practiced human sacrifice...
...Ideally, once affirmative action programs were successful, they could be phased out...
...Not a bad idea, as far as that goes...
...That's a disservice to everyone, and in these conservative times, a fatal political strategy...
...D'Souza's entire argument rests on his distinction between traditional racism, based on belief in the biological inferiority of blacks, which he claims has been "marginalized in American society," and discrimination today, which he calls "a rational response to black group traits" such as, according to his account, criminality, laziness, and generally deficient "civilization...
...He should also not downplay the fact that the most telling academic opposi124 • DISSENT Letters tion to political correctness has come not from the right, which can be dismissed with a sneer at Northwestern or Berkeley, but from liberals of one kind or another such as David Bromwich, C. Vann Woodward, James Coleman, Jean Bethke Elshtain, and John Searle...
...Letters must be kept to about 500 words, typed, double-spaced, and carry the full address and name of the sender...
...The review: D'Souza makes the outrageous assertion that blacks owe American society a debt of gratitude for slavery...
...Michael Kazin Replies: I apologize for neglecting the old Socialist party, whose reputation Jimmy Weinstein has, over the years, done so much to revive...
...Nicolaus Mills Replies: Affirmative action with its group preferences is designed to make up for historic wrongs—especially in education— that civil rights law alone cannot remedy...
...The book: no debt is mentioned, but the claim is made that out of evil has arisen some good...
...After recounting all of what he considers to have been the major independent presidential campaigns in this century, Kazin writes that "not since the 1890s has there been 126 • DISSENT Letters a national third party with any sustained appeal to voters," and that "the last alternative vehicle to run candidates across the country in more than one election was the People's party, a full century ago...
...The first is that over the last two or three decades lesbians and gay men have created a space in which to define themselves even within the constrictions of Hollywood sensibilities...
...He also comments: "Amid all the gay fluff on the screen, there's no way to detect the political threat, so much more menacing now than during the era of Cruising...
...But that is part of my point...
...It does not matter whether Booker T. Washington or Dinesh D'Souza originated the claim that slavery brought blacks into the orbit of "Western freedom" and left the descendants of slaves better off than those who remained in Africa...
...nor are they perceived as any more qualified for access to the boardroom...
...There are as many gay lifestyles as there are gay people, and probably just as many opinions among the gay population on what is or is not acceptable about gay lives for movie makers to portray...
...If it is to be meaningful—and sacrificed for—affirmative action cannot be defined so broadly as to be nothing more than a permanent minority entitlement...
Vol. 43 • April 1996 • No. 2
