ArticleIP_5855.txt

   
   
      
         
            

            
               Address your e-mail to
the editors to [email protected]. You must include your address and daytime
phone number (for confirmation only).
            

            
               A
Complaint From Your Hick Readers
            

            In the Oct. 23 "Today's Papers," Scott Shuger writes of a Washington
Post piece referring to the "Bubba vote" and notes that "this is a perfect
illustration of the truism that there's still one group in this country that
'respectable' people, even (especially?) sophisticated newspaper people, are
allowed to slander--Southern white males. Hey, Posties , time to rework
that style-sheet."

            Having recently read (with
some annoyance) Michael Lewis' Day 3 "Dispatch"
from the Microsoft trial, I had to wonder whether 
                  Slate
               's style
sheet had anything to say about this subject. Lewis described Microsoft's John
Warden as having an "overripe drawl" and being "Southern"--but yet notes he is
from Indiana. Through the rest we get Lewis' sensitive transcriptions of "a
booming hick drawl," culminating in a contrast to Jim Barksdale, who, we are
told, has escaped hickdom--he "retains only enough of the piney woods patter to
offer a passing imitation of a good ol' boy when he needs to." (As an aside, I
wonder how many times the word "hick" recurred in that short piece?)

            Lewis is
most exposed in his transcriptions. At the end of a string of them, he quotes
Warden as pronouncing modems "mode ums." Maybe I'm just another piney woods
hick, but don't we all pronounce it like that? I guess I'll close by quoting a
comment by Lawrence W. Levine (in Black Culture and Black Consciousness )
on transcriptions of 19 th century black speech made by whites:

            Even when the
pronunciation of a given word was precisely the same as that of the collectors,
their desire to indicate the exotic qualities of black speech led them to
utilize such misleading and superfluous spellings as wen for "when," fo'k or
fokes for "folks."

            -- Tom
Freeland Oxford, Miss.

            
               I Love
Lewis
            

            I just wanted to send a clap
on the shoulder to Michael Lewis for his Day 3 Dispatch from the Microsoft
trial. It had me in stitches. What wonderful caricatures he drew of the people
involved; he brought to life the dynamics of the barely sheathed claws of the
interactions in the courtroom. It was refreshing to have coverage that pointed
out, so humorously, the boys' foolishness and one-upmanship that characterize
this case.

            Thanks for
a great read.

            -- Heidi
Housten Bellevue, Wash.

            

               
                  Slate Fouled Up
            

            This morning my "Morning
Delivery" e-mail included the Day 3 Dispatch from the Microsoft trial. The end
of the article features a prominent "F**k you." I have filters that keep me
from being subjected to that sort of language in my e-mail. I expect more from
your publication than the language used by spammers looking to sell me
porn.

            Foul
language is a sign of low intelligence. Your writer went for a cheap, shocking
joke instead of thinking of a clever analogy. You can do better. 

            -- Ann
Porter Lubbock, Texas

            
               The
Inescapable George (H.) W. Bush (Jr.)
            

            Surely I'm
not the first to inform 
                  Slate
                that the governor of Texas is
George W. Bush, not George W. Bush Jr. (See the Oct. 16 "Chatterbox" and "Black Like Whom?" by Brent Staples.) The former president is
George H.W. Bush. Thus Ann Richards' jibe: "He's missing his H."

            -- Dick
Lavine Austin, Texas

            
               
                  Editors' note:
Thanks for the reminder. We've now corrected our error.
            

            
               Black
Clinton Myths
            

            I normally do not write to
the editors of magazines to voice my opinion, because I don't think it will do
any general good, but at this point I can't see what good being silent does. I
am a black American and have found it strange that the media have concentrated
so much on how African-Americans feel about Clinton. It has been my experience
that our community is only brought into the discussion after every other angle
has been covered and, people are being pressured into the "right" opinion. I am
tired of reading that Clinton is somehow black or at least as black as any of
our other public officials.

            As I read Brent Staples'
"Black Like Whom?" I saw at least several assumptions run through his
commentary on my community and public sentiment about us. One assumption is
that at least 91 percent of African-Americans feel the same way about Clinton
for the same reasons: He is black, he is great because he comes from a single
parent home, or he has a similar background, so we can understand him
better.

            We are not a single-minded
community that values or devalues Clinton's private adulterous conduct.
Whatever our general feeling is about Clinton's behavior, why are we being used
at the tail end of the blitz of political inquiry as a rallying tool to bring
more people out to vote, to produce more negative opinion against Clinton, and
to reaffirm the idea that we somehow don't know what is really going on?

            The second assumption that
comes out is that we don't understand what is happening when a political
candidate courts our community on one issue and then targets us on another
issue. Staples runs through a litany of economic gains that have brought
African-Americans closer to some kind of economic stability (what stability
that is or what marker he uses to measure that stability is unclear), which
African-Americans credit Clinton for providing.

            Staples appears to contrast
the middle-class black community from the lower-class community when it appears
to fit his framework but to ignore it when it does not fit within his argument.
It is hard for me to believe that he would ignore the education or criminal
justice facts--or that African-Americans would ignore the dropping numbers of
students in college and graduate school programs, the rising level of blacks
incarcerated, or increasing number of jails. The failure to include the
holistic view seems even more astonishing given our position in this society,
when the author reviews what is being said and who is asked.

            I realize that we tend to be
held up for our nonmainstream views on issues such as the Los Angeles riots,
O.J., Willie Horton, and a million others. We normally will turn the tide
against whomever we advocate for or in defense of, but when it comes to the job
approval rating for the president of United States, it seems like the media
attention focused on us is misplaced. If our opinion were valued throughout
this process, I think the media would have noticed a marked difference in how
we feel about this president, this administration, and the process he has gone
through in order to reach this phase in the impeachment inquiry. On this issue,
I doubt that our approval rating is going to bear on the ultimate question of
whether the entire public will rally around the Republicans as they move to try
Clinton in the Senate. The negative perception surrounding our community was
invoked too late in the game for it to do Clinton's opponents any good.

            I end my
e-mail as I began it, by asking if the author truly believes that a few chicken
wings given to black preachers, a few honorable mentions and awards to a couple
of black poets, or visits and speeches to commemorate historic memorials and
visionaries within the black community are enough to lead blacks to rally
behind a president who has allowed our community to lose whatever gains were
given to us by a browbeaten Congress of the war-torn 1960s. And if he does,
does he think we are gullible enough to buy it as a true understanding by a
president of our collective blackness?

            

               --Genevieve Banks
            

            Odenton, Md.

            
               True
Grits
            

            It was
quite a surprise to read Brent Staples, the self-appointed expert on what it
means to be black in America, say in "Black Like Whom?" that "all
African-Americans have Southern roots." He'd better brush up on history as well
as geography.

            -- Helen Hopps San
Miguel, El Salvador

            
               
                  Brent
Staples responds: Genevieve Banks claims to have read my essay "Black Like
Whom?" but seems to have missed its central arguments. She accuses me of
assuming that African-Americans like Clinton because he is "black." But I argue
from the beginning that black affection for Clinton stems from: 1) a widespread
sense among blacks that the economy is doing better by them than ever before;
2) a deliberate Clinton program to court black churchgoers who make up the
heart of the black middle class; and 3) Clinton's intuitive understanding that
the black middle class is basically conservative on the issues of crime, unwed
motherhood, and welfare. Ms. Banks further accuses me of ignoring black school
dropout and incarceration rates. To this, I plead guilty. Those factors are
irrelevant to black approval ratings with respect to Clinton's
presidency.
            

            
               Helen
Hopps has me dead to rights, however. I did not intend to say that all
African-Americans have Southern roots. But most do. It may surprise you, Ms.
Hopps, but the majority of black people--about 55 percent--still live in the
American South. As late as 1940, nearly 80 percent did. Not much before that,
the ratio exceeded nine in 10.
            

            
               Address
your e-mail to the editors to [email protected]. You must include your address and daytime
phone number (for confirmation only).