Editor,
In 1982 an editorial in the Daily Lobo led to a student picket against the Daily Lobo. The editorial (October 13) by the managing editor stated that the 1980-81 scores of the SAT exams “proved what everyone knew all along – minorities are academically inferior to whites.”
This infuriated many and over 150 students and representatives from eight UNM organizations who, headed by the Student Coalition Against Racism, held a press conference which led to occupying the Daily Lobo newsroom demanding the firing of the both the managing editor and the newspaper editor and threatening to prevent publication of the next day’s issue of the Lobo.
The managing editor immediately apologized for his “poor choice of words” and resigned. Within a few days the UNM Student Publications Board suspended the newspaper editor. All this led to a deluge of letters to the editor both by readers appalled by the printing of the statement and by those wanting to protect “freedom of speech.”
In an Oct. 29, 1982 Lobo editorial letter, UNM professor Dr. Tobias Duran, after giving examples starting since 1848 of how state and national newspapers wrote insulting and blatantly bigoted remarks about Mexican Americans in New Mexico, stated that “Freedom of the press has been alive and well, so has racism and discrimination.”
He argued that the law of freedom of the press must not be used as an instrument to reinforce existent inequalities related to race, class and ethnicity but rather it should apply criteria “using standards of universality and logic.” “Otherwise,” he said, “freedom of speech masks reality.” (UNM Daily Lobo, Oct. 13- Oct 29, 1982.)
Hate speech is not the same as freedom of speech.
Samuel Sisneros
Daily Lobo reader
