Polaroid Announces 'Experiment' To Help Blacks in South Africa

The Polaroid Corporation, which has been under fire recently for its dealings in South Africa, yesterday disclosed the details of a one-year "experiment" to improve the salaries, job opportunities and education of blacks there.

The proposal immediately came under fire from a group of Polaroid workers demanding more radical action.

The Cambridge-based firm announced its plan Tuesday and published the proposal yesterday in full-page advertisements in newspapers in major cities across the country. The ads also appeared in 20 black weeklies.

Polaroid officially condemned apartheid, South Africa's policy of rigid segregation, and announced plans to have its distributors and suppliers in South Africa "improve dramatically the salaries and other benefits of their non-white employees." It also pledged to "train non-white employees for important jobs within their companies."

Legitimate Questions

Robert Palmer, manager in charge of community affairs, said the proposals were the result of a study set up in response to what he considered legitimate questions raised by the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers' Movement, a group of dissident company employees.

Last October, the group organized demonstrations demanding that Polaroid withdraw from South Africa, state its policy on apartheid, and turn over its profits to black groups fighting the South African government's racial policies.

Caroline Hunter, an assistant photographic scientist at Polaroid and a spokesman for the protesting employees, last night called the company's proposal "an insult to black people and all right-thinking people." She said her group would continue to encourage consumer boycotts against Polaroid.

"If they say they're going to workwithin the apartheid law, then they're going to do nothing," she said.

Polaroid responded to the October protests by establishing a 14-member ad hoc Committee to Study South Africa.

The committee included seven blacks as well as worker and management personnel. It did not include members of the Revolutionary Workers group.

Many Walks

The study group sent a four-man team to South Africa in December. According to the company's statement, the group talked to "more than a hundred black people of South Africa" from "many walks of life."

In its statement, the company pledged to underwrite scholarships for 500 black students for study "at various levels from elementary school through university" and to commit profits to the "black-run Association for Education and Cultural Advancement [ASECA]."

Hunter said ASECA is a government-run agency which "has changed curriculum to insure that blacks get an inferior education."

'Indoctrination'

Richard Suzman '64, a Social Studies tutor originally from South Africa, commented, "It's a rather naive or dishonest report if it doesn't talk about the Bantu education which is in fact indoctrination and rejected by blacks in South Africa."

The company said in its statement that its business in South Africa amounted to less than 0.5 per cent of its world-wide business. Palmer said this amounts to about $1.5 million.