Posters Regretted

To the Editors of The Crimson:

Late last week, Peninsula hung posters around campus advertising a lecture we are sponsoring entitled, "Spade Kicks: A Symposium on Modernity and the Negro as a Paradigm of Sexual Liberation."

We realize that the poster--which was provided to us by the symposium's speakers--failed to convey adequately the content of the talk and, as a result, the context in which certain controversial language was used.

The speakers, social worker Gloria G. Hardy and Fidelity magazine editor E. Michael Jones, presented the thesis that the breakdown of the Black family is a primary cause of Black poverty; this breakdown resulted largely from the actions of white liberals of the 1950s and 60s who saw in Blacks a paradigm of sexual liberation. The speakers used to the word "Negro" to place the symposium in its historical context.

The words "Spade Kicks" are an allusion to Jack Kerouac's novelOn the Road. Writing about his own experiences, Kerouac describes Denver's Black community:

At lilac evening I walked with every muscle aching among the lights of 27th and Welton in the Denver colored section, wishing I were a Negro, feeling that the best the white world had offered was not enough ecstasy for me, not enough life, joy, kicks, darkness, music, not enough night. [The Black world offered] just old-fashioned spade kicks, what other kicks are there?

In short, the speakers believe that this attitude, held by Kerouac and others comprising the white liberal eiite, prevented the implementation of plans to strenghten the Black family. The white-imposed stereotype of Black society as a paradigm of "sexual liberation"-the stereotype of "spade kicks," if you will-is the very thing Hardy and Jones blame for many of the problems Black Americans face today.

Nevertheless, based upon responses we have received over the past several days, it has become obvious that the poster provided to us has failed to communicate adequately its intent to those unfamiliar with the speakers' view. In fact, in some instances, the poster has been misconstrued as defending racial stereotypes.

Peninsula regrets the confusion and offense caused among some members of the community by misinterpretation of the poster. We have removed the posters in question and replaced them with ones we believe more precisely convey the speakers' theses. Chris Vergonis '92   Council of Peninsula