Coalitions Make For Bad Company
By David Yeagley
5-8-2002
A year ago I posted an article called “Don’t Walk The Black Man’s Path.” I advised Indians not to imitate the ‘shakedown’ racial tactics of black civil rights leaders like Jesse Jackson, or Al Sharpton. From what I observed at the University of Northern Colorado symposium I recently attended, my advice has fallen on many deaf ears.
I thought the symposium (April 26) was going to be about Indians, but it was all about coalitions, about “teamwork,” about oppressed groups uniting to accomplish similar goals of social advancement. Indians are supposed to work with Blacks, Hispanics, Feminists, Homosexuals, and Earth-niks.
When Solomon Little Owl (Crow) and his “Fighting Whites” basketball team brought national attention to UNC, the other groups moved in quickly. The message of the national symposium was clear: Indians are not to work alone. The Indian mascot issue is part of the civil rights movement, and therefore owned by ‘minority enterprises’ in general. Mascots are just one especially productive “rights” franchise.
Black civil rights leaders seem to dominate any racial based coalition. Black leaders feel they are the authority on oppression. I have also found that activists of all types tend to have a free-wheeling concept of integrity and truthfulness. In other words, they say whatever suits.
In my article about the “Fighting Whites” I mention one Prof. George Junne, a black professor who sat next to Solomon Little Owl (Crow) on a stage panel, and spoke before Solomon. (White female Prof. Sally McBeth was also on that panel.) Prof. Junne took offense at what I said about him, and posted a response.
In his few short sentences, Prof Junne displayed exactly the kind of character I find unworthy of Indians, and indeed, unfit for anyone as a role model, yet not unusual in the rank and file of Leftist-trained activists.
He first accuses me of blatant error when I said he introduced Little Owl. “I introduced no one,” he says. Well, Little Owl was the star of the show, and Prof. Junne was sitting next to him. When Junne spoke first, describing the “background” of the Fighting Whites issue, I called that an introduction. But Junne wants off on a Clintonian technicality, on the definition of “introduction.”
He next suggests that “Yeagley has something against Cherokees.” He thinks I must have somehow confused him with an Indian. An Eastern Cherokee man, Beau Washington, introduced the whole panel, Little Owl and Junne included. But Junne does not look remotely Indian. He looks perfectly black. And Beau is twice his size, and half white. Junne’s remark is completely false and manipulative, clearly willing to set one Indian tribe off against another. (Indians, take note of this demeaning attitude of a black professor toward our people.)
When I said Junne was “contemptuous”, I was talking about a private conversation I attempted to have with him over a lunch buffet table. In that conversation he laughed loudly at me, at the thoughts I sincerely expressed to him. He acted like some arrogant back porch philosopher, scoffing at the naiveté of anyone who could possibly disagree with him.
Perhaps Junne, and McBeth, were innocent of my suggestion that they felt “needed” in order to give the full context of the Fighting Whites story of Little Owl. But somebody obviously thought they were needed. Somebody decided to surround the team with Junne and McBeth, a black man and a white woman. I don’t recall an Indian professor on the panel. Maybe UNC doesn’t have one. Well, what a shame.
Finally, Junne writes “[Yeagley] pulled me aside to explain why the book Little Black Sambo was so good!” Nope. I simply informed him that the Sambo book I grew up with was not about an African boy, but a boy from India, with a turban, and a neru jacket. The story is all about tigers, and shouldn’t a professor know that tigers are from India, not Africa? Sambo is Asian Indian. I asked how and when did he become Africanized? It was a legitimate inquiry.
But Junne was too contemptuous to respond rationally. He disdained to converse. He was too offended that someone like me, who believes in warrior mascots, was even at that symposium.
Instead, he posts lies, at least four, not counting his distortions of my intentions. Now, do we write him off as crippled, prejudiced, incompetent thinker, or as a devious, dubious subversive professor? Either case, should any student pay to be subjected to this kind of attitude in an adult?
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