SKINHEAD.BLK

                       Chicago Tribune
                      February 24, 1994

                         Mike Royko

             Security contract doesn't bar hate

     After dozens of old people were robbed, beaten, raped
and murdered at the Sunset Homes, the large public housing
complex on the Far North Side, a new security company was
hired.
     The new guards are big, strong, stern and tough.  With
their thick necks and shaved heads, they have a menacing
appearance.
     And in a very brief time, criminal thugs decided that
it was risky to prey on the residents of the housing for the
elderly.
     Because of the presence of the new guards from the
Quick Hurt Agency, there has been a sharp decline in the
crime rate at Sunset Homes.
     However, a problem has arisen.
     It turns out that the Quick Hurt Agency is owned by the
controversial Adolf H. Glutzz.
     As you probably know, Glutzz is the head of the Nation
of Blue Eyes.  Actually, his organization accepts people
with eyes that are brown, hazel, green and other eye colors,
so long as their skin is white.
     If you have heard him speak, you know that Glutzz is a
spellbinding orator.  But his message troubles many people.
     In the hundreds of speeches he has made at colleges and
meetings of his followers, Glutzz repeats his slogan, "If
yu're white, you're all right.  If you're black, I'll give
you a whack."
     Glutzz blames most of society's problems on African-
Americans and often describes them as "kinky-haired devils,
good for nothing but having babies and slam-dunking
basketballs."
     He aroused outrage in a recent speech when he ridiculed
prominent blacks, described the late Harold Washington as
"Mayor Fat Boy," Oprah Winfrey as "somebody who ought to be
on a pancake mix box" and the late Martin Luther King as "a
man whose name in an insult to a good white Lutheran."
     After Mr. T, the muscular television actor, bought a
home in a wealthy suburb and cut down dozens of trees,
Glutzz said: "Because of his African ancestry, Mr. T has a
genetic fear of what might be hiding in trees: snakes,
leopards, apes and such.  That's why you will never have
beautiful trees in the inner city."
     What many people find most alarming about Glutzz is the
enthusiastic response he receives from white college
audiences.  They stand and cheer when he says: "If God
wanted us to have dark skin, why did God give us suntan
lotion?"
     However, his defenders say that despite his provocative
views, he has redeeming qualities.  They point to the many
scruffy young white men--bums and other social outcasts--who
join the Nation of Blue Eyes.  After their heads are shaved
and they learn kung fu and how to scowl and click their
heels, they become exemplary citizens.
     But his critics say that his dangerously incendiary
views outweigh any social good he might accomplish.
     To which he says: "I am a victim of a conspiracy
between blacks, liberals, the NAACP, the Urban League,
Asians, Indians and all the other racial off-brands who are
bloodsuckers taking over all the federal entitlement plans."
     So there has been an ear-splitting outcry over a Glutzz
company receiving a government contract to provide security
service at the Sunset Homes.  Politicians, civic leaders and
the media have been in a rage.
     But the officials who gave the Glutzz company the
contract say: "All we know is that they are getting the job
done.  And that's what counts."
     It is possible that you have never heard of Glutzz, his
movement, or any of the above.
     Sure.  That's because it is a lot of nonsense and I
made it all up.
     But if it were true, you'd know it.  By now, there
would be so much public outrage that Glutzz would not have a
contract to guard public housing, and those who hired him
would be in deep remorse.  All of which would be justified,
since it would be unthinkable to give public contracts to
someone from a bigoted, despicable movement.
     Yet, in real life, there was little more than a public
murmur when the Chicago Housing Authority gave a guard-
service contract to an outfit that is part of Louis
Farrakhan's Nation of Islam.
     By now, just about everyone knows that Farrakhan is this
country's most prominent bigot.  He baits and appears to
hate Jews, Catholics and anyone else who happend to be born
white.  When his top deputy made an incredibly hateful
speech to cheering black college students, Farrakhan said he
didn't like the way the speech was phrased, but he didn't
disagree with the message.  Case closed.  Farrakhan is
little more than a black Nazi.
     But Vince Lane, the head of the CHA and a man for whom
I once had great respect, says there is nothing wrong with
hiring a branch of Farrakhan's movement to guard the CHA
project.  They get the job done.
     What bunk.  The Gestapo got the job done.  Adolf
Eichmann got the job done.  Stalin got the job done.  The
KGB got the job done.  A lynch mob can get the job done.
     And my fictional racist Glutzz and his skin heads would
get the job done.
     There are others who can get the job done, and they are
not professional hate-peddlers.
     On less moral terms, we're also talking about txpayers'
money.  As someone who pays taxes, I don't want it spent to
give employment and, even worse, the veneer of
respectability to anything connected with a smirking hater
like Louis Farrakhan.
     The U.S. House of Representatives just passed a
resolution denouncing the Farrakhan deputy's speech.  It is
the first time in this country's history such a resolution
has been passed.
     But in Chicago, we put Farrakhan's mugs on the public
payroll.
     And we thought the Al Capone legacy was an
embarrassment?