On Being Black and American

Sir: As I finish my four years of study at the University of Michigan--knowing well what it is to be black in a white world--your special issue [April 6] comes as no less than a revelation. As I read your articles, the only comment that came to my mind was: "This is beautiful, man, just beautiful."

We Americans should take a lesson from the ancient Romans, for when they discovered that most of their problems were internal, it was too late to save their mighty empire.

HERMAN E. WEST

Ann Arbor, Mich.

Sir: Black is beautiful. In our nation's capital we have only to look from side to side for proof. And this is a natural beauty to be envied by all and not imitated by any.

What is there to say but Wow, man, and right on!

CLAUDIA B. NEVINS

Washington, D.C.

Sir: I am looking forward to the day when there will be no need to have an issue such as this. When that day does come, everything will be beautiful.

MICHAEL DYNON, '72

Boston University

Boston

Sir: If blacks ever wake to find the present American nightmare gone, it will partially be due to your efforts to make the American dream applicable to all citizens.

MATTHIAS NEWELL, S.M.

St. Mary's University

San Antonio

Sir: Being Irish, white and poor doesn't make it either.

W. C.SHANNON

Tiburon, Calif.

Sir: What a relief that the black people have shed the myth that they are an ignorant, lazy, do-nothing band of subhumans, as the white race has branded them, and have emerged to show the white world what they really are: a proud race of talented people, determined to receive what they deserve: not civil rights, but human rights.

KATHRYN COOKSON

Sacramento, Calif.

Sir: I trust that, in the spirit of true equality, you will publish future issues devoted in their entirety to Red America, Yellow America, Jewish America, Female America, Poor America, Homosexual America, Under-20 America, Unmarried America and other minority groups who, like the blacks, have been made to feel less than beautiful in this country.

JOHN RICHARD WILLIAMS

Beverly Hills, Calif.

Sir: This issue made me cry, laugh and think. I feel much better after having read it; there is hope again for all of us.

(MRS.) MARY ALICE SORRELL

Whippany, NJ.

Sir: No person deserves anything, whether it be favor or disfavor, simply because of racial or ethnic background. A person is deserving of special consideration only because of his individual and particular needs and accomplishments. To point out, as you have, that there are black people is to admit and emphasize that black people are in some way different. If they are to be recognized as different, then they are open targets for discrimination--and, most likely, in a negative way. Let's integrate, not separate.

GARY A. TUCK

Monterey, Calif.

Sir: This issue makes more valid my intention to emigrate to Australia. It is my opinion that the aborigines in Australia will not reach the point now occupied by American Negroes for at least 50 more years, and by that time I most assuredly will not be around to see it.

H. M. ECKLES

Laurel, Md.

Sir: Bravo! After shooting arrows into the air for the last few years, TIME has hit a bull's-eye in giving Jesse Jackson national attention of a positive nature. All hail the militantly constructive American who can make the strides that Jesse Jackson has made, albeit peaceably, and with the help of fellow ministers. No bowing and scraping to the do-gooder politicians for a man like Jesse, nor faulty accusations either.

(MRS.) MARGUERITE PARCHMAN

West Dundee, Ill.

Sir: I have never been able to figure out why children raised in homes with everything would become promiscuous, resort to drugs or commit violent acts. Whitney Young might possibly be right. Maybe, behind those "bland, sterile, antiseptic gilded ghettos" there really is a sickness, and someone should make a study of this to find out. He might discover that we need black America more than it needs us.

MARTHA LYON

Kansas City, Mo.

Sir: The infuriated blacks have me swaying in doubt, and their insulting, hate-filled names for me make me feel that my fear of them and my aversion to their ways can never change. My ancestors came starving on a boat four generations ago. They made it, and many of them died for the new country that was hostile to them. But none of them, from all over Europe, set themselves up as martyrs, full of self-hate. Believe me, the seeds of unrest are not exclusively the black man's.

File this under Poetry--as undisciplined as any black poet's and as full of fire.

MARY H. STOLL

Winter Park, Fla.

Sir: Under the heading "Can the Suburbs Be Opened?", you state that federal and local fair-housing laws are "notoriously unenforced." As your example, you note that the U.S. Justice Department has 13 lawyers assigned to fair-housing enforcement and that we have "brought 44 cases to court and won 13." The last phrase might easily be construed by the reader as suggesting that we have lost 31, or 70%, of our cases.

The facts are otherwise. Of the 46 separate housing-discrimination suits (many of them against multiple defendants) that we have brought or in which we have participated to date, very few have come to trial. We have lost only two cases, and both of these are now on appeal. Fifteen cases have been brought to a successful conclusion by the entry of an injunction or similar court order against the defendant, either by consent of the parties or after trial. The court orders we have secured usually require the defendants not only to stop discrimination but also to take significant affirmative steps to correct the effects of the past, including solicitation of Negroes, advertising in the black press, inclusion of biracial groups in advertising, requiring employees to sign nondiscrimination pledges, and filing comprehensive reports with the court and with this Department as to the corrective steps taken.

FRANK E. SCHWELB, CHIEF

ALEXANDER C. ROSS, DEPUTY CHIEF

HOUSING SECTION

CIVIL RIGHTS DIVISION

Department of Justice Washington, D.C.

Sir: Psychiatrist Alvin F. Poussaint says: "The color black has been synonymous with 'sin' and 'bad.' " Not necessarily.

Black Beauty--a Children classic

black gold--oil

Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair--a classic ballad

basic black dress--a woman's favorite dress

black tie--a man's prestige suit

black cow--a delicious soda

black bread--rich bread

to be in the black--an accountant's phrase meaning to be in the money, as against to be in the red, meaning to be in debt.

ROBERT MINTZ

Richmond, Va.

Sir: In "Ecology of a Ghetto," you state: "[Leo Watkins] recognized that his inability to read or write was his main problem." With nine children ranging in age from twelve years to seven months, I would venture a guess that arithmetic poses a greater problem.

I am not complaisant about or patronizing about the black problem in America. It affects the white American today and will do so to a greater extent in the future. But my God, even a $40,000 gross annual income does not make the idea of bringing up nine children less prohibitive! It's a big, big forest, and we keep bumping into the trees.

(MRS.) ROSALIE JOHNSON Rochester, N.Y.

Sir: As one thumbs through so many pages, seeing so many black faces and so few white ones, it might dawn on one that for decades blacks have had to thumb through magazine after magazine, seeing mostly whites and few, if any, blacks.

At least you reversed the trend for one issue. Let's hope newsmen, too, read TIME and saw some of the news the media have been neglecting for years.

HERBERT STRENTZ

Grand Forks, N. Dak.

Sir: A portion of your article "Racially Rationed Health" reminds me of the Soviet reporting of a U.S.-Russian dual track meet where the Russians, through a superb effort, finished second, while the unfortunate U.S. team finished next to last.

The portion is that which relates the percentages of nonwhite children v. white children receiving "DTP" vaccine. The actual disparity is 20% v. 8.6%, which is more meaningful and less discriminatory than the apparent gap implied to the casual reader (20% nonwhites not receiving shots--91.4% whites receiving vaccine).

LOUIS ROMITO

Pittsburgh

Sir: After reading the article by Ralph Ellison. I feel like running out into the street, embracing the first black man I see and asking, "Brother, where have you been all my life?" I say this in all seriousness and humility.

JAMES MOONEY

Quebec

Sir: Every morning I enter a world unlike the world you wrote about. I work as an evaluator for vocational rehabilitation in a state school for the mentally retarded. These "eternal children" know no color line, have no prejudices, wake each morning with no feeling of distaste for the boys and girls they will play with all day--though they are a different color.

It's a beautiful world, and it makes me wonder if the Lord feels remorse for having given us "more fortunate beings" healthy minds.

SHIRLEY R. MEUNIER

New Orleans

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