Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!utcsri!utegc!utai!ubc-vision!ubc-cs!andrews
From: andrews@ubc-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Re: Potshots
Message-ID: <885@ubc-cs.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 4-Mar-87 13:36:08 EST
Article-I.D.: ubc-cs.885
Posted: Wed Mar  4 13:36:08 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 4-Mar-87 19:31:45 EST
References: <206@fornax.uucp> <3063@watdcsu.UUCP> <241@pembina.alberta.UUCP> <3077@watdcsu.UUCP>
Reply-To: andrews@ubc-cs.UUCP (Jamie Andrews)
Distribution: can
Organization: UBC Department of Computer Science, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Lines: 33

In article <3077@watdcsu.UUCP> brewster@watdcsu.UUCP (Dave Brewer, SysDesEng, PAMI, UWaterloo) writes:
>	Seeing as this scholarsip is financed from money made by Cecil Rhodes 
>	in South Africa at the turn of the century on the backs of black 
>	workers, should people who are offerred this scholarship see the 
>	situation as a moral dilemna, if so what should they conclude, should
>	the Canadian government disallow this extremely indirect support of
>	apartheid ?  

     These are good questions (amazingly :-)).  I don't think you can say
whether someone "should" consider a situation to be a moral dilemma.  If I
were offered a Rhodes scholarship (fat chance) I would see it as such.
If enough people felt there was a strong enough connection to discrimination,
there might be enough momentum to get the government to disallow it.  But
I doubt that would happen; the link is just too far removed, unlike (say)
goods imported from SA, which many people believe serve to directly support
the present discriminatory situation there.

     America was built to a great extent on the backs of Black slaves, but
the connection to present-day America is tenuous enough that I don't boycott
American goods.

     BTW, I happen to think that the comparison made by the Manitoba Native
tribe between their situation and the SAfrican "homelands" is EXCELLENT.
I'd be the first (well maybe not the very first :-)) to admit that the
sanctions issue is motivated to a great extent by faddishness, when we
have very similar problems here in Kanada.  However, unlike some others
I think we should try to combat ALL of these problems rather than combat
none of them.

--Jamie.
...!ubc-vision!ubc-cs!andrews
"Are you by any chance Brewster?"
"Oui, je suis Monsieur Bruste`re." -- Nabokov, _Lolita_