Lecturer Discusses Racial Problems

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30916, 24 November 1965, Page 29

Lecturer Discusses Racial Problems

“Think seriously about New Zealand,” Dr. J. R. Flynn, a political science lecturer at the University of Canterbury, told a conference of sixth-form pupils in Christchurch yesterday.

Christianitj’ and race was the theme of the conference, attended by 250 pupils from 20 Christchurch schools and

organised by the Student Christian Movement

Relating the problems of the American Negro to those of the Maori, Dr. Flynn said Maoris in Auckland were mainly engaged in unskilled work.

Unemployment threw off the unskiTled worker and

created a traditional pattern for the under-privileged, with a vicious circle of unemployment and slump environments producing bad schools, unskilled workers and further unemployment, said Dr. Flynn.

New Zealand had not yet faced the challenge of automation and large-scale unem-

ployment. Unemployment might cause a race problem because when jobs were hard to get people looked after their own, said Dr. Flynn. Negroes were given new hope during the Second World War. Serving in the United States Army, they observed societies with very little racial discrimination. In 1954. the historic decision of the Supreme Court which outlawed the segregation of public facilities gave them ground for optimism. Ironically, the year coincided with a decline in the American economy which hit the Negroes harder than whites. Tlie most important thing about the Supreme Court’s decision was its frustration in practice, said Dr. Flynn. Automation threw thousands of unskilled workers out of work. In an automated society it was impossible to

find employment with “a bare literacy,” which was all that Southern schools provided. When jobs were short racial

bias came to the fore and even industries which had

been nondiscriminatory, such as the auto industry’, dismissed Negro workers. In Detroit, Negroes made up 10 per cent of the population and 61 per cent of the unem-

ployed. Integrated areas with a

strong maddledass Negro population, such as Washington D.C., were rare. Chicago provided a classic example of Negroes subject to the traditional pattern of the underprivileged with discrimination in jobs and in housing.

Non-violent integration, led by Martin Luther King, had set the pattern for construc-

tion, said Dr. Flynn. Because Negroes were a minority, nonviolent integration was partly a matter of self-defence, but it also helped to create a new image of the Negro. Two traditional stereotyped images of the Negro were the “violent rapist” and the “happy-go-lucky child.” Negroes had shown tremendous self-discipline in carrying on their non-violent policy. Whether America could solve its own problem remained to be seen, said Dr. Flynn. He could see no solution without a massive manyfaceted programme involving large-scale assisted housing projects and vocational training schemes for Negroes.

Multi-Tone. —British drivers are not permitted to fit twotone horns, but any horn with three or more tones (alternating between the notes) is permitted.