ABSENCE OF DIVERSITY AT OAKMONT A BLESSING TO BLACKS, HISPANICS SPARED THE HEAT DURING U.S. OPEN LAST WEEK

EDITORIAL BY THE HONORABLE RUFUS PECKHAM - An astute KDKA talk show host last week referred to the U.S. Open as an event for "rich white guys." I can attest to the accuracy of this assertion because I heard Durham County, North Carolina District Attorney Mike Nifong say the same thing.

I normally decry the absence of diversity in any organization. It is well known that in the 1960's, I marched in protest in Tuscaloosa, Alabama against the Ku Klux Klan's policy of excluding blacks from their organization. The result was a rule change that opened the doors to persons of color. To this day I am regarded as the Branch Rickey of the KKK.

In this case, however, blacks and Hispanics should be on their hands and knees thanking the "rich white guys" at Oakmont for insuring they were largely excluded from the U.S. Open last week, and you heard it here first. You see, earlier this year, Oakmont's Council of Bishops, or whatever their governing tribunal is called, decided to remove thousands of trees that formerly lined the fairways, transmogrifying a pleasant golf course into a cauldron that could smelt iron ore on a hot summer day.

Can anyone seriously maintain that we should subject blacks to heat reminiscent of the Georgia cotton fields of the 1850's? Or force Hispanics to experience once again the searing Latin temperatures from which they have illegally fled? The question scarcely survives its statement. This is one time when diversity would be a terrible, terrible thing. I have the sunburn to prove it.