Arizona Western College - El Matador Yearbook (Yuma, AZ)

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,g,1,ggm....::::.2i::: '2x 'ft -...U ' ' 'u. '1'!,:p. ........,. ., , yv ,, .. El Matador: Throughout your lecture yOU Spoke In generalities and you were vague at times. Why do yOU use so many generalities? Gregory: Like what? n El Matador: For instance, the numbers you cited. You kept using the statistic 98 per cent this, 98 per cent that quite a bit. Where do you get your figures? Gregory: You mean 98 per cent of everybody Wh0 drinks alcohol in America started out drinking milk? El Matador: Yes. Where do you get the 98 per cent statistic from? Your alcohol-milk parallel is used quite a bit, you know. 166 Gregory: I said 99 per cent. Documented evidence. That was in Newsweek -magazine. Anybody can get that. Let me say that in this interview, I hope the things that you didn't read don't have to make mine vague generalities. El Matador: No, sir, except that your repeated refer- ' ences to these statistics made us wonder where you had obtained your information. Gregory: It was 78 percent of all the drivers that get killed from drunken driving: if you listened to my speech, it was 98 once, 99 once, 78 once. Third highest cause of death in this country comes from sclerosis of the liver. The first highest cause comes from cancer, second comes from heart trouble. These are facts anybody can get, if you expose yourselfto them. El Matador: Do you think that the black man will ever become socially equal to the white man? Gregory: Definitely. El Matador: Why do you say so? Gregory: It,s heading that way now because we are -not going to permit anything else other than that. He could keep me unsocially equal here as long as I per- mitted it. Once I stop permitting it, it is over. El Matador: The white man has a role to play in this because he is part of the total population. What role -'does the white man exactly have in getting the black man to be equal to the white man? Does he have a role or is .it just the black acting alone? Gregory: He has a role as he wants it, but we've no- 'ticed that he wrote the Constitution, not us. And it seems like we are the ones that have to implement it. Itis just like if you depend on me to feed you to the extent that you get to believing that if I don't feedyou, you can't eat. And then one day when you decide that if I don't feed you, you gonna go on out there and get your own food, then I realize that I ain't got nothing to do with con- trolling if you gonna starve to death or not. The only -way I can control that is when I can make you believe that your livelihood and 'everything depends on me. -'And once you decide that it don't, itis a different ball game. And if for some reason I change my attitude to- ward you, once I realize if you don't have to depend on me for survival. And that's what seems to be happening in this country today. But when we rally behind our blackness, there is more integration in this country in the last six months under Dick Nixon than in any of the Democratic Administrations not because of Dick Nixon, but in spite of Dick Nixon. And what's happening in this country today is because of my attitude. For a hun- dred years we have been depending on white folks to do it. Because when I flex my muscles, it's when his attitude changes. His white police never stopped them from lynching me. And so consequently, the whites can play 5 terrific role in this country. You know, they can get it over night. Not just for us but for everybody in the country who hasn't got this Cequalityj. El Matador: The white man is obviously afraid that if he lets you have the freedom that you're entitled to, he 'will not be in the same position that he was before. I-Iow do you overcome this apparent fear the white man has? Gregory: That's the way Nature works. El Matador: Yes, but how do you overcome it? Gregory: You don't.That's a condition and the price he has to pay for that condition. You see, this is the only white man in the history of man that fell in love with his skin. Every white man in the world will tell you I'm an Irishman, I'm an Englishman, I'm an Italian. But in this country, the cat say he a white man. Look where he came from, he wasn't nothing but a tramp. He wasnit nothing but a jailbird, a criminal when he came here. Kicked him out of all of Europe and he came here to settle. He had nothing going for him so he reached back and got us. And the only reason he had his head together was because he had a nigger. And now when he ain't got no more niggers, man he really in trouble. That's what his thing is. And so consequently what is happening now is we can't worry about his fears anymore. Because I see how he acted with his fears. I see what he did to the lunch counter, I see what he did to the buses, and so what is happening in this country for a hundred years we've been busy worrying about his attitude. Why and how is this going to affect Martha? Instead of wondering about how do it affect me? And that's the way it's going from here on end. How do it affect me? If it had been different when I tried to work with him hand in hand: if he could have dealt with us, come on brother let's talk about it. He don't want to, so now I got to worry about my thing. I got to worry about them black folks in the ghettos, that's dying six years younger than white folks in this country. I got to worry about the infant mortality rate in this country, which is twice as high in the black communities as it is in the white community. For every one white baby that dies in childbirth, therels two black babies that die. I can't even worry about his fwhite manj fears. The highest suicide rate of any race of people in this country is the Indian. The Indians start committing suicide at SIX years old. That's what I'm worried about, not white man's fears. I'm worried about the conditions that create .these monsters. And so. consequently, you know, I think ': :1:.' f1gf,11arWZ.T f'g-W:.::,-yr-5'-L-L fp-ya-7'-1-9 , , ,V . . , Q 7 Q :fw-'--'..-.txztzixx23'-'ll-i7l!r:rl7::::!iEif5?2'iell1.2'.ar1:-:ly-like-:La.4z:..tir..--.grew.....f:..: -.:...:'g:- .. .i ., , I .