Hateful Ideas

The First Amendment protects not just the right to advocate love and sunshine, but also the right to advocate racism, sexism and many other obnoxious things. To dramatize that point, the American Library Association, whose members are often in the center of such controversies, produced a film entitled The Speaker. The 42-minute color movie describes a fictional controversy that develops when a high school student committee invites a scientist to explain his belief that blacks are genetically inferior to whites. The speaker, who is never actually seen or heard, is finally banned by the school board.

Fictional controversy has become real. The group's sponsorship of the film angered many of the 35,000 members at the A.L.A.'s annual business meeting in Chicago. Detroit's public library director and past A.L.A. president, Clara Jones, condemned the film as "highly unsuitable, insensitive, in poor taste and skillfully racist." But the film's supporters have been equally vociferous. Said Atlanta Head Public Librarian Ella Yates, who is black: "I don't believe in squelching the Ku Klux Klan, the Nazis or any racist who wants to talk. The only way to deal with hateful ideas is openly." The A.L.A.'s 130-member governing council seemed to agree: it rejected a bid to cancel A.L.A. sponsorship of the film or to limit its distribution (some 250 copies have been sold so far).

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