Racism on Campus

To the Editors of The Crimson:

Last January, Currier House student and bell desk attendent Johnathan O. Williams '88 was targeted by a "Negro hit squad." Now we learn that one racist punk, Gregory H. Williams '88, has been exonerated by the Harvard administration, first by receiving a slap on the wrist probation, then by being allowed to play football. For the well-heeled bigots who run this bastion of race and class privilege, Black students are obviously less important than Crimson pigskin and this is nothing new.

The Harvard Spartacus Youth Club agrees with Kyra C. Armstrong '89 and Shannah V. Braxton '88 of the Black Students Association that, "The University has issued a dangerous invitation to its students to commit acts of racial harassment with ever greater intensity until they find the limits of impunity" (The Crimson, October 13). Here at Harvard it is anti-racist and anti-imperialist protestors who are punished, while apartheid ministers like Duke Kent-Brown and contra murders like Adolfo Calero who are welcomed with open arms. Following last year's protest of arch-racist South African vice-consul Kent-Brown, 14 students were placed on probation. While the administration makes a frontal assault on antiracist protestors, their message to racists is "play ball."

The attack at Currier House reminds us that racist terror in America is not confined to the mean streets of Howard Beach and Forsyth County. There has been a dramatic increase of racist violence on college campuses, including elite colleges like the University of Chicago, Columbia, Tufts and Harvard. Taking a cue from the Klan-endorsed president in the White House and the Dixiecrats in Congress, racist punks have taken aim at minority and gay students. As Ms. Armstrong and Ms. Braxton wrote, "For many Black students at Harvard, every day involves a test of one's tolerance of racial harassment, from the Black male who must constantly produce his bursar's card for the HUPD, to the Black female who must suffer repeated abuses of racial slurs and sexual innuendo." And Harvard's racist arrogance is well known in this city. Last year eight Black teenagers filed a $2 million civil suit against Harvard police after campus cops threatened them.

Only a mass, integrated anti-racist response can stem this tide of racist violence. Racist terror is an integral feature of capitalism and it must be smashed by the social power of the working class united with the intended victims of race terror and all anti-racist fighters.

The hideous massacre of Philadelphia's MOVE household, the surge of executions on Jim Crow death row, the gutting of busing for desegregation--these are emblems of a visciously racist ruling class gearing up for war. As American capitalism continues to rot, both Republicans and Democrats know they cannot conduct any war--against Nicaragua, Cuba and ultimately the Soviet Union--without the subjugation of the working classes and all the oppressed.

Tom Cowperthwaite '88,

Harvard Spartacus Youth Club