From: barnhart@netcom.com (Aaron Barnhart)
Subject: Anti-Gang Ad Controversy #2: Letter to the Editor
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 92 01:48:52 GMT
Organization: Netcom
Reply-To: barnhart@netcom.com

Letters to the Editor
Evanston Review / August 13, 1992

TO: Mayor Joan Barr, City Manager Eric Anderson, Evanston Human Relations
Commission, and the Evanston Review.

We are cognizant that gangs in America go across ethnic, race, and
socio-economic groups.  We agree that black-on-black gang violence
cannot be tolerated, and that all gangs, including but not limited
to: African-American, Asian, Hispanic, Mafia, etc., need to be
deglamorized.

However, your proposed advertising campaign strategy using images of
the Ku Klux Klan and Nazis/Skinheads to deter gang violence in the
African-American community is not acceptable for the following 
reasons:

*	The campaign skews historical truth by not addressing the
	attempted destruction that the KKK aggressively engaged in
	against the African-American community.

*	By associating the atrocities committed by the Nazis/Skinheads
	and the KKK against African-Americans with black-on-black offenses,
	systematically feeds into mainstream America's stereotypes, that
	all black males are either gang members, criminals, or at least
	suspects.

*	The ad message implies that there is an equal connection with the
	purposes of these groups.

*	The long-term impact of such an ad provides for the transference
	of responsibility for the brutal treatment of African-Americans
	historically.

*	It is disturbing that this process did not include in its conceptual
	phase a psychodynamic appraisal by a learned committee from the
	black community.

The creators of the ad campaign are advocating overlooking the negatives;
however, an advertising campaign strategy to devalue the existence of all
gangs, in particular black gangs, should be a balanced advertising campaign
that includes the contributions made by hard-working African-Americans in
this great country.

Constant negative advertising and media reporting of minorities, encourages
white Americans to cling to inaccurate stereotypes.  Moreover, if Evanston's
Human Relations Commission were to sanction a negative, unflattering,
stereotypical portrayal of other nonminority groups in any context -- it
would create an outcry that would shake the walls of the Civic Building.

We need an advertising campaign that is balanced -- one that promulgates
hope, opportunity, optimism; rather than violence, hopelessness, and
despair.

Consolidated Committee of Concerned Black Men is ready to meet with you
to expeditiously resolve this ad campaign debacle.

Yusef Ali
Carl Hampton
Bennett Johnson [former NAACP head]
William Logan [former Ev. PD chief]
Jim Nichols

Copyright 1992 Pioneer Press, reprinted w/o permission.

More installments coming in the Evanston anti-gang ad controversy,
so keep watching s.c.a.a.

------

/CORRECTION/ to installment #1, paragraph 5, which should read:
"White people already think that black people are no good.  You don't
                      ^^^^^ [not "thing"]
need this," Dollie Martin emphatically told the council members
yesterday.  She advised more job training rather than the campaign
against gangs.

/NOT A CORRECTION/ namely, the use of "Klu [sic] Klux Klan" in same, paragraph
7.  The Evanston Review is in many ways a very poor-quality newspaper but you
will agree it devotes a lot of column inches to local issues.

-- 
Aaron (Barnhart@netcom.com) -- posting from Evanston, Illinois