To the Editor:

Another Roach crawls from beneath garbage. It is not his fault though.

For over 440 years, white men have been telling us what is in our best interest. For over 440 years, white men have been doing things in our best interest. They rescued us from the savage, dark continent of Africa. They relieved us of the burden of taking care of our wives and children by snatching them away. They made the middle passage such a pleasant cruise by making us cozy and snug against each other.

They even had the kind thought of tossing those who complained or died overboard. When our cruise was finished we were cured of laziness by being urged to work from sunup to sun down with no sick days allowed. They civilized us by separating us from our backward cultures. Then they gave us their wonderful version of Christianity which taught us to obey our masters.

During the late 1950s they warned us of a man who was racist, anti-white, and Communist and reassured us that the good members of our race would not follow him.

But as soon as another man rose up with words that stung of truth, Martin Luther King, Jr. became a good leader for us. When King got out of line by protesting the Vietnam War and fighting for the rights of all people, white men were kind enough to end his life for us. That venomous man who made whites endorse King was gunned down three years earlier, thank God!

Yes indeed, white men have always been working in our best interest.

In the book Black Chicago, you can see how they were kind enough to move the red light district to our neighborhood. Thank them for drugs, liquor stores, guns, and prostitutes! Just last year they were kind enough to vote in a wonderful new congress that is tediously working in our best interest.

Yes, white men know best who we should associate with and what ideas will work best for us.

Massah Roach, yous da most smahtest man I evah did meet!

Black men and women, the time for letting white America choose our leaders and agenda is over. Integration was done with no input from African Americans and now we live in a more segregated and illiterate society than thirty years ago.

All of the black owned farms and businesses are disappearing, civil rights laws are being eliminated, and that Carver Scholarship that you worked so hard to get and so hard to keep might be gone in a year.

White America has told us for over 440 years what is in our best interest and it has been wrong almost every single time!

Mr. Roach and others quote 400,000 as the number of participants in the Million Man march. He and the others are greatly mistaken. Participants and speakers at this years march who also participated in the march on 1963 said there were at least four times as many participants in 1995! Besides, I was there from 3:30 a.m. until 7 p.m. and I saw the crowd grow with every passing hour.

The bottom line is that we must control our own destiny. Question everyone and everything to see what is in our best interest. Those who are not registered to vote, register. Black athletes, we need your participation.

We know that your letter of intent waives you from running for office in BSA, but your presence is needed.

It makes no sense that you can run a 60 yard touchdown or dunk a basketball for an institution that makes money off of you, but you cannot support the black students on this campus. I don’t care if Massah Roach doesn’t like that idea.

The time to come together is now. If not you, who? If not now, when? If not here, where?

Gabriel Clausen

ISU Alum