Letters to the Editor
ELYDOG
Published Letters: 498 Editor's Choice: 43
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Where Does One Begin?
[Read the article: Is race dying? ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]1.) Mr. Kamiya, read Ashley Montagu. There are no separate "RACES" there is one race, the human race, and within it various ethnic divisions. If some African Americans understand they are NOT a 'separate' race, perhaps it actually shows they understand genetics better than you and the survey takers do.
2.) There is a black 'working class' not just poor blacks and middle class blacks. You disappeared them. Most black people are in the working class, hung between the very poor and the doctors/lawyers/educators of the 'talented' 10th or 20th now...
3.) Class has been an issue among blacks since Harold Cruse's 'Crisis of the Negro Intellectual.' (and actually before...) Any black Marxist could have told you that years ago. And any ordinary black working person could have told you that too. They have intimate contact with drugged-up thugs. They don't need Bill Freakin' Cosby to tell them.
4.) Hispanics have become America's largest minority in the meantime, and, from Lou Dobbs on down, they are the new target of respectable discrimination and hatred. Thank God black people did not come across the border recently... Prejudice isn't going anywhere, it is just being transferred. The black (and white) poor have been long forgotten, as you point out. Isn't that institutionalized racism?
5.) In slavery, if you had a drop of black blood, you were 'black.' In the real world, ethnic intermarriage means that there are all kind of transitions, and that 'color' and ethnic background are variable. I think the survey shows some 'black' people understand this scientific fact. It doesn't necessarily mean that black consciousness is dead. Jumping to that conclusion says more about you than anything else.
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Paying attention
[Read the article: The Citigroup who stole Christmas]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thanks Mr. Leonard for being the only person on Salon consistently paying attention to economics.
You might not feel sorry for shmucks who somehow get a $625,000 mortgage on a $150,000 house, but unfortunately this subprime crash is going to affect the whole world economy... the value of the dollar, the employment rate, interest rates, loans, 401K stock value, your mutual fund if you have one, etc.
Pay attention. Then you realize the whole capitalist economy is one big crap shoot, run by greedbags, and you might think that an economy owned and run by regular people might not be such a bad thing.
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Banks shaky
[Read the article: The Citigroup who stole Christmas]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Just spent a little time looking at CNN Money and they report sub-prime lender Countrywide is in hock to to a federal or semi-federal agency to the tune of 55 Billion. The agency doesn't want to call the loan because it would put 'banks at risk.'
When they got rid of the Glass Stegall act, which was instituted for a VERY GOOD REASON during the depression, they hooked, again, the risky markets with the banks. Democrats and Republicans did this under Clinton I. This was part of 'deregulation,' which has been an on-going disaster.
IE, the same thing could happen and the banks could be at risk. We saw the giant English bank, Northern, recently go bankrupt, the first bankrupty they have had in over a 100 years.
I think the Mexicans are prepared for collapse, which is why they don't use loans. A good 'hedge' might be buying a home safe for cash.
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I've been waiting for this device
[Read the article: Amazon's Kindle won't spark your e-book fire]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...but I'll wait some more. Too expensive and clunky. Perhaps they should have two page screens, like a real book? The price of the books could be lowered as well, as there is no binding, no printing, no shipping, no freakin' nothing but electronic dots.
We should buy or load the books as little plug ins, like a flash drive, and be able to sell or give them to others, instead of being dependent on an over-controlling Amazon website, which seems to be the case here.
Also, how deep is the back catalog? Nil? Probably only new books right now. Still, right direction.
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Blame the Victim
[Read the article: Fantasies in black and white]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The philosophy that some writers use here is an old standby - 'blame the victim.' Oppression oppresses, which seems obvious, but is not, especially to the clueless. Class is the major indicator of success in the U.S., and African Americans on the whole do not have the requisite economic and social backgrounds to become doctors and lawyers, no more than Hispanic fry cooks or white janitors do. Inherited wealth is an immense benefit. Our class structure over the Reagan-Clinton-Bush years as become ever more stratified, and conditions have actually become worse for large segements of the working class community.
As to working hard, the blue collar working class has been decimated, their unions almost destroyed, and the remaining semi and unskilled work is low paying and unprotected. If you think busting your ass is enough, you are fooling yourself. I notice the biggest issue among my black friends is health care. People are dying too much - by violence, by heart attacks, by every cause under the sun. Dying too young, dying without health care, or dying with inadeaquate health care. Drug and alcohol use are a symptom that has become a cause.
We need a full-employment, full health-care economy and without a major revolution in American politics, we will continue to have the present situation without end. I repeat, without end.