From: mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: The Literary Canon
Date: 28 Aug 92 03:18:30 GMT


I find myself, once again, in the uncomfortable position of defending
Clayton Cramer's position.  Uncomfortable, because I have been very
hard on him.  In my mind, I was also fair.  My sense of fairness is
what brings me to his defence on this subject.

It appears to me that he is being attacked because of who he is rather than
what he has said.  Perhaps, because of his history of making outrageous
statements, several people have read something into his statements that
just might not be there.

Clayton used the word "White" in a fairly standard way.  If we replace
the word "White" with the word "Caucasion" his statement turns into
something like "The ancient Greeks were indisputably Caucasion."  Is
there really anyone who wants to dispute this?  I doubt that Clayton
would assert that they are as light skinned as the Irish or the Swedes.
But if anyone out there has proof that the ancient Greeks were something
other than Caucasion, I'm sure that there are Anthropology departments all
over the world that would love to grant him tenure.

Now, if Francis or Mike Morris or I made a statement like "The ancient
Greeks were indisputably Caucasion," I doubt that many people would pay
much attention.  I seriously doubt that we would be ripped apart for the
statement.  Yet Michael Sean Rooney comes dangerously close to calling
Clayton a racist for saying this.  I'd like to be charitable, and say
that perhaps Sean was mistaken in what Clayton said, or that Sean
believes there is some non-stated motive behind Clayton's statements.

If I had been the one to make the statement, and Sean attacked me for
it, I would certainly respond.  I would attempt to take a calm approach,
and would probably not call him an asshole.  But I would probably think
him an asshole.  Clayton did call him an asshole.  This might be viewed
as unfortunate, but I am not so sure it is a completely unresonable
response to being called a racist for making a statement of fact.

danoc@earlybird.Eng.Sun.COM (Dan O'Connell [CONTRACTOR]) takes exception
to this.  It is his right.  I do not agree.

However, Dan also takes a cheap shot at Clayton for his typo -- he
used "statutes" instead of "statues."  As someone who makes a lot of
typos myself (two recent ones were "nave" instead of "navy," and
"tenant" instead of "tenet"), I try not to judge people by stupid
little things like this.  This is a fast medium, where we often
do not have a lot of time to spend doing proofreading.  I always
appreciate these things pointed out, unless it is done in a mean-spirited
fashion.  But Dan O'Connell should realize that if he is going to
flame based on these sorts of things, he had better make his own
work perfect.  He did not.  I saw several punctuation mistakes, one
pretty serious syntax error, and an inconsistent voice (sometimes
referring to Clayton in the third person, sometimes in the second).

I also find fault with Dan's objection to what Clayton says.
He writes:

        This is interesting. What do civil laws have to do with the
        skin color of the inhabitants? Perhaps you meant "statues"
        which is even more ludicrous. Because the statues were white
        so were the people?

If we, again, substitute "caucasion" for "white" this might be more clear.
If we look at the art from a civilization, and the representations are
of caucasions, then I think it is a pretty good deduction that the
society is predominantly caucasion.  Again, I imagine that there are
tenured professorships in anthropology available to anyone who can
find a non-caucasion society where all of the artwork depicts caucasions.


Mark