Commentary
Tuesday, April 18, 1995 Page 5
Right, wrong still our choice
Our country is falling apart and
it’s all because a whole bunch of us
are moral degenerates, or so says the
leaders and prophets who are
waging war to help us destitute
individuals become better Ameri
cans.
Aaaahhh! Isn’t that so thoughtful
of them?
This idea or newfound cause of
curing our nation’s moral ills might
possibly be one of the worst
arguments to come out. Stop me if
I’m wrong, but I thought that moral
issues would be and should be
determined by the individuals
themselves, and not by outside
influences.
Good ol’ Webster even states
that morals are “relating to, dealing
with or capable of making the
distinction between right and wrong
in conduct.” More or less, our
morals are the choices between what
we feel we should do and what we
don’t want to do.
In fact, our own moral beliefs
might be the one true extension of
our individuality. What else is more
sacred than the choices we make
between what is right and wrong?
But lo and behold, a new group
of people have decided that we
citizens can’t make these decisions
for ourselves; thus, these people
have set up their own moral code of
what they believe, and if we
disagree, we’re wrong.
If morals are the decisions of
what we believe is right and wrong,
how can they say we’re morally
wrong when we have made the
distinction that we’re right?
Nothing will ever get solved
because somebody will always
disagree with another person’s
morals. Who is right and who is
Robb Goff
wrong, then? Regardless, the choice
and the ability to choose is all
important.
This is the United States of
America, the greatest country in all
the world, the same one that was
built on the principles of freedom of
speech, the press, religion, and all
those other neat little freedoms that
few countries have.
Sure, there are those moral
wrongs that few condone. Things
such as murder, theft, rape and
greenspace are universally disliked
and thus should not be included in
this argument. But it is a general
truth that beliefs like abortion,
animal rights, gun control and
capital punishment have two
separate sides, with each believing il
is correct. These are some of the
problems that bring up this so-called
moral decay.
But who is right and who is
wrong? Nobody knows and nobody
should tell the other side it is
morally wrong, because that’s an
individual’s choice.
So, those of you who want to
create this moral code that all
people should follow and live under
why don’t you go set up your own
country and eat marshmallows and
graham crackers while Big Brother
watches your every move to make
sure you don’t commit any moral
crimes?
Quite frankly, I’m happy with the
way our country is, because we have
the right to choose our own morals
and live the life we want to live. So
if I decide to strap on my Colt .45
and walk down the middle of O
street wearing a fur coat, smoking a
cigarette and wishing Bjorklund and
Joubert a fun trip aboard Ole Sparky
at the penitentiary, then I can do
that. Why? Because this is the
United States, and I have that choice
to do so. And I don’t want anybody
telling me I can’t.
Individuals should have the last
word on what they believe in, not
some lobbyist, presidential candi
date, right-wing activist or tree
hugging environmentalist. If a
person wishes to support a cause,
then great; but if not, don’t label
him or her as being morally wrong.
People need to wake up and
join the ’90s — the 1990’s — and
live with the fact that times and
attitudes change, and Ward and
June Cleaver are only TV charac
ters. So please stop with the
“people didn’t act this way when I
was growing up” routine. If you
lived in that era, congrats, and let
me welcome you to the ’90s and
Generation X, a group of in-debt
twentysomethings who are about
to change the way people look at
things as a whole, and who cherish
the idea of making up their own
minds on moral decisions.
And for those of you who still
believe you are God and want to
dictate our thoughts and values, give
it up. Frankly, you’re not very good
at it, and anyway, the job is already
taken.
Goff is a senior secondary education
major and a Daily Nebraskan columnist.
Your brain: Use it or lose it
harlier this semester, I went in to
renew my driver’s license. It was
painless enough, I guess. All I had
to do was wait in line for an hour or
so, take my eye test, pay my money
and twitch my nose when the picture
was taken. It was, to use a popular
phrase, a “no-brainer.”
When I finished with all that
stuff, I was asked if I planned to be
an organ donor. I figured, “What the
hell?” and signed the card. Again, a
no-brainer. Later, I felt kind of bad
about it, because actually, in the
event of a catastrophic accident (as
opposed to a pleasant, warm, fuzzy
accident, I guess), the boys at the
lab aren’t going to find much good
stuff in me.
Lungs: questionable. Heart: who
knows? Liver? forget it. Maybe my
pancreas will be in good, working
order, but I haven’t heard about a
horrible nationwide pancreas
shortage lately, so maybe I should
have saved them the trouble and just
left the card blank.
But it was done, and life (knock
on wood) goes on.
Last week, I heard some things
that brought the organ-donation
issue out of the dark recesses of my
memory. I heard that Jeffrey
Dahmer’s brain was being kept in a
jar in some lab for future scientific
tests, and that his body was being
preserved in a refrigerator until after
the trial of the man who allegedly
killed him. What they’ll do with it
after that remains a mystery to me (a
cookout, maybe?).
It seemed like poetic justice. But
I digress.
Just the other night, I heard a
CNN report on the shortage of
brains donated to science. Scientists
have been unlocking the secrets of
the human mind rather successfully
Doug Rotors
in recent years, the report said, but
their efforts were being hampered
by the dreaded brain shortage.
Tragic, what with all those
perfectly good brains out there that
aren’t being used.
Anyway, it got me thinking: If
only medical science could just
borrow brains, all our problems
would be solved. Say, for ex
ample, I was getting ready for my
summer job of watching paint dry
for $1.93 an hour. Before I went
in, I could drop off my brain at the
lab and collect a nice fat rental
check.
A true no-brainer.
Meanwhile, I could still work my
summer job and, in the evening, I
could still enjoy and comprehend
almost all cable programming.
Ah, yes, ignorance is bliss.
The possibilities of the detach
able brain are spectacular.
The members of both houses of
Congress, for example, could easily
give up their brains before sessions
begin, and science could benefit—
with no distinguishable loss in the
quality of government.
A trace could be put on calls to
radio and TV talk shows, and the
callers could then be contacted
about the possibility of brain
donation. That would work well:
Most of the callers to those shows
haven’t used their brains in a long
time.
A brain-donation system could be
set up like jury duty or the National
Guard or something. For a week or
two out of the year, each citizen
could yank out his or her brain and
take it in to be poked, prodded and
analyzed. We could establish a
national brain-donation day, the
“Great American Brainout.”
I mean, really, who’d miss ‘em?
That’s pretty much what it comes
down to. Most of the things we do in
our everyday lives, sadly, require
only a rudimentary nervous system.
You know the game: stimulus,
response, stimulus, response. Hit the
feeder bar when the light comes on
and drool like a fiend at the sound
of the tuning fork.
Even when we are forced to use
our brains — I mean really use them
—we can tap into only a tiny
percentage of their actual capacities.
A lifetime of no-brainers.
Looking at it that way, it seems a
shame to waste such a wonderful
piece of machinery on a species of
hairless (relatively) apes that just
recently came down from the trees.
So I have decided to donate my
brain to science (after I die, that is).
I hope lots of other people do, too.
If scientists can study donated
brains and figure out how to unlock
the full potential of the human mind,
perhaps we will have a chance to
pull our world out of the tailspin of
violence, destruction, hate and all
around stupidity in which we now
find it.
Perhaps all of that can be done
simply by using our brains.
In the meantime, however, they
make nifty doorstops.
Peters Is a eradiate stadeat aad Daily
Nebraskaa coiaauist
Color lines trouble
for New Americans
He arrived at the Masters
Tournament with all sorts of
monikers, statistics and expecta
tions attached to his name.
Eldrick Woods was Tiger, the
golf “phenom,” the prodigy, the
amateur champion playing for his
first time with the pros.
The 19-year-old from Stanford
University was also, the sports
writers all calculated, the fourth
black to play the white-bread golf
event in 20 years, the first black
in seven years. He was compared
to Jackie Robinson, to Willie
Mays, to Michael Jordan.
But before Tiger Woods had
left Augusta, Ga., in time to make
a 9 a.m. Monday history class, he
had firmly and repeatedly parsed
his identity in his own way. He
was not the designated black hope
of a white sport. “My mother is
from Thailand,” he said. “My
father is part black, Chinese and
American Indian. So I’m all of
those. It’s an injustice to all my
heritages to single me out as
black.”
These were not the words of a
young man trying to “pass,” to
deny his heritage, to reject the
shade of melanin that would have
categorized him as “Negro” under
not-so-ancient race laws. This
was a voice from a new genera
tion of Americans who resist the
cultural pressure to make one
choice, who say I am the sum and
the son of many parts.
For too long, slavery and
racism have left a legacy in
America that author Shirlee
Taylor Haizlip calls either “an
anxiety about authenticity or a
paranoia about purity.”
We look at the diffuse range of
skin tones, hair types, eyes, noses,
lips and try to force them into a
handful of allotted races. More
often than not we ask some of
some subtle shading, some
“exotic” feature: “What is he?”
“What is she?” Not who, mind
you, but what.
Today our country may be
more of a genetic melting pot
than at any time in history. Yet
we are often and oppositely as
obsessed with ethnic and racial
categories as any 19th century
census taker counting
“octoroons” for his country.
Racism has been the natural
enemy of a multiracial reality. It
insisted that one drop of “African
blood” made a white man black,
although a drop of “white blood”
didn’t make him white.
To this day, there are blacks as
well as whites as well as Asians
as well as Hispanics who uphold
this code, insisting that college
freshman “choose” which lunch
table they will sit at, which
sorority they will join. Children
of diverse backgrounds are asked
Ellen Goodman
to choose sides as if race were a
team.
Multiracial children can be
caught in a kind of cultural cross
fire. But increasingly, they are
also the ones helping to create a
demilitarized zone.
Finally, we’ve begun to hear
the stories. In “Life on the Color
Line,” Gregory Williams has
written a memoir of his child
hood, “the true story of a white
boy who discovered he was
black.” In “The Sweeter the
Juice,” Shirlee Haizlip has written
about her search for and discov
ery of kin who “passed” into the
white world, disappearing,
leaving her own mother bewil
dered and abandoned.
Such stories reflect the pain
created in American lives by
color lines. But they also call into
question the meaning and
meaningless of race as a concept.
As Haizlip writes after her
own search, “Genes and chromo
somes from Africa, Europe and a
pristine America commingled and
created me.... I am an American
anomaly. I am an American ideal.
I am the American nightmare. I
am the Martin Luther King
dream. I am the new America.”
The voices of these new
Americans include many of the
age of Haizlip’s children who
have increasingly turned from
pain to pride, less torn by racial
heritages and more comfortable
in two or three or four worlds. It’s
the Irish-Italian-Russian-Ameri
can. It’s the African-Asian
European-American.
For their own sake, they
struggle against the pressure to
pick one of the mothers, fathers,
grandparents on their family
trees. And in that struggle they
become a natural force against the
divisions of race.
One of these new Americans is
19-year-old Tiger Woods, who
says matter-of-factly, “All I can
do is be myself.” One-quarter
black, one-quarter Thai, one
quarter Chinese, one-eighth
American Indian and one-eigjhth
white, his greatest natural asset is
still the astounding ability to hit a
golf ball 340 yards.
© 1995 The Boston Globe Newspaper
Company
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Mike Luckovlch
