NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/alt/politics/homosexu/10447

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-28 | 5.2 KB

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From: [e-mail] (Andrew Molitor)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.homosexuality,alt.discrimination,nmsu.general
Subject: Repost:  warning about *Heartlands* (fwd)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 26 Jan 93 21:30:14 GMT
Sender: [e-mail]
Organization: Department of Mathematical Sciences
Lines: 96
Originator: [e-mail]


    This was rearranged with the power of sed. I read nmsu.general,
but none of the other groups listed. This is a public service.

    Andrew Molitor

-------------- Start Repost -----------

Andrew Werling   [e-mail]   [e-mail]
"Books are burning/ I hope somehow, this will allow/
A phoenix up from the flames" ---XTC

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 93 14:14:05 MST
From: Gabriel Lampert <[e-mail]>
To: Andrew <[e-mail]>
Subject: warning about *Heartlands*

I am one of the people who was interviewed in the compilation of Darrell
Yates Rist's new book, *Heartlands*.  This post is to warn people about
some defamatory inaccuracies that appear in the description of my hometown.
I want to make clear that I am not objecting to how I myself was portrayed,
because (1) it wasn't so bad, and (2) I had known from the start that an
interviewer's assessment of his/her interviewee is always subjective.

In the book, I have the name Iosh Levy, and the section in which I appear
starts on page 201 at the bottom.  There are two particular errors I want
to correct.  First, on page 202, the book reads:


        A recent bishop in this Roman Catholic diocese had often
        preached against the Jews as *asesinos*, Christ killers.

In actuality, the Bishop never did anything like this.  In fact, he visited
our synagogue to preach a sermon on reconciliation between Christians and
Jews, in the course of which he was willing to accept that perhaps
Christianity's past anti-Jewish preachments may have been partly responsible
for the Holocaust, a position few Christians have been willing to take.  It
was after his sermon that *I*, Gabriel Lampert, mentioned to him that the
word *asesino* was still in the Spanish vocabulary.  Apparently, Darrell's
notes were quite sketchy, and he never got back to me to verify how he
reconstructed them.


Immediately after this passage, the book reads:

        Not long ago the local university where Iosh taught math
        had placed an ancient Navajo symbol on the front of its
        yearbook.  It resembled a swastika, though for Indians it
        evoked brotherhood, not nazism.  A Jewish student had
        protested, bringing separate painful histories into conflict.
        A barricade of police vans had had to be stationed at the
        synagogue.

Here is what really happened:  The New Mexico State University yearbook
had been called The Swastika since 1907, and it is true that the symbol
was taken from a Native American symbol (though the word Swastika is
South-Asian Indian).  The Native American tribes in New Mexico had dropped
the symbol around 1940 because of the Nazis, but the school kept it.  In
1983, the Hillel organization here asked that the school change the title
and symbol of the yearbook.  The Native American organization on campus
(as well as representatives from elsewhere in New Mexico) actually sided
WITH the Jews, so it was not a Jew-vs.-Native American fight.  The opponents
were Anglos who simply wanted to keep an old tradition going.  It turned out
that the African-American students at the University of Mississippi were
also protesting that year, asking that the Rebel flag be dropped as Old Miss'
school flag, so both issues made the national news.

The result was that the Governor ordered the NMSU Regents to change the
name and symbol, which they did.  It is true that there was some police
security around the synagogue that night, but it was intentionally not
very visible.  It certainly was not a barricade of vans -- I don't know
if the Las Cruces Police Department had enough vans to make up any kind of
barricade.

These inaccuracies are quite painful to me.  They not only rake up old wounds
but portray them as being far more evil than they were, and totally distort
and ignore some of the fine ways that people here have taken great steps
toward getting along.  I was sufficiently upset by reading this section that
I have read very little else from the book.  Darrell Yates Rist is known for
his adversarial depiction of people and organizations, in *The Nation*,
*Christopher Street*, and elsewhere.  If he wanted to show how much at each
other's necks we are, then he should have written a novel.  Correction:  He
did write a novel, but is calling it non-fiction.


Gabriel Lampert
Box 4455
Las Cruces NM 88003

[e-mail]    <----internet
g9348712@nmsuvm1             <----bitnet

THE READER IS AUTHORIZED TO TRANSMIT THIS POST TO ANY OTHER BULLETIN BOARD
OR LIST, BUT PLEASE TRANSMIT IT AS IS.  THANK YOU.
Gabriel Lampert     [e-mail]  1/24/93 warning about *Heartlands*