Letters to the Editor
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Where Does One Begin?
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.