Letters to the Editor

Dear Editor:

In your interview with Jesse Jackson ["One-on-one with Reverend Jackson,"
YH 10/27/00], you incorrectly state that school vouchers are unpopular with African-American voters. In fact, nonpartisan studies have demonstrated that vouchers are much more popular with African-Americans than with Americans as a whole. This may be because a disproportionate percentage of African-American families feel that their children are trapped in failing school systems.

—David Stewart, JE '02

Multiculturalism is a response to exploitation

Dear Editor:

Is anyone besides Ken Loiselle ["Cheap labor drives love of multiculturalism," YH 10/20/00] trying to argue that the diversity of the United States has anything to do with a premeditated desire for multiculturalism?

In Farmingville, N.Y. this September, two white men picked up two Mexican day laborers who were looking for work, took them to an abandoned factory, and proceeded to assault them with a crowbar and a knife. Despite their town's established practice of hiring illegal day laborers, the kidnappers aimed to send an unambiguous message to these and all of the other brown-skinned migrants searching for jobs: Mexican immigrants are unwelcome.

This suburb is not the only place struggling with the hypocrisy of its addiction to cheap illegal labor as juxtaposed with its abhorrence of the consequent poverty and ethnic diversity. The state of Iowa, perturbed by the successful economy's "tight labor market" and its aging population, is currently actively recruiting Bosnian and Sudanese labor for its meat packing factories, to a fair deal of undisguised nativist dismay (only among people without direct interest in meat packing). Throughout the U.S. we see a continued exploitation of bottom-rung wage labor, which more often than not means legal or illegal immigrant labor; and, at the same time, in exactly the same places, we hear polemic, often racist and xenophobic, denouncements of "the hordes" coming to sink their fangs into our social services.

Multiculturalism is an ideology that attempts to confront our nation's crude ethnocentric hypocrisy, not deny its roots in economic exploitation. Its humble goal is to humanize "immigrant labor," to give the cultural backgrounds of our recently arrived economic bottom rung the respect and legitimacy needed to be unranked and unridiculed.

—Grace Rollins, CC '01

Article reveals male insecurity

Dear Editor:

In "Reflections on gender: admitting bias, taking blame" [YH 10/20/00], Derek Lomas makes a positively inane statement regarding the state of male-female relations at college. Setting aside the incoherence of his writing style, I find a basic contradiction in his piece. Mr. Lomas' argument rests on the contention that women are "insecure." According to Mr. Lomas, women "look to men for validation" as "the objects of security for which women strive." What group of women is Mr. Lomas referring to? Surely he can't be so ignorant as to believe that all women depend on men to determine their relative worth as human beings. He declares that "women require male attention." Most women are perfectly secure and certainly don't require the attention of their male counterparts. Those women who do look for validation do not seek it only from men. Mr. Lomas states in his opening paragraph that female gossip "pushes women into insecurity." If women can be pushed by other women into insecurity, they must depend on those women for some type of personal validation.

Mr. Lomas makes it clear through his succession of "points" (if they even merit that term) that it is men who are the insecure sex. He bemoans the compulsion of men to judge women solely by their external appearance, yet offers no remedy. Mr. Lomas asks, "Do I have the confidence to date... someone all my friends find ugly?" His question betrays a basic masculine insecurity and the overwhelming need for fellow male approval. He goes on to openly admit to this unease in his description of the discomfort that results from the "guy" discussion of hook ups. "We feel insecure in those situations, because we want to seem really effective," he states. Mr. Lomas, it seems, is the one who looks to men for validation.

Mr. Lomas wrote that I may disagree with his article. I do. I admit to being one of the "haughty" women to whom he refers, so haughty, in fact, that I am offended such an article would even be printed by the Yale Herald. Mr. Lomas prefaces his confused article with a profession of his general ignorance and a willingness to "be open to honestly learn." If men, as Mr. Lomas says, do indeed want to learn, they should begin by talking to women. Ultimately, Mr. Lomas' article does not "admit bias" and "take blame," it reinforces ignorance.

—Adele Bruni, TD '02

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