Letters, Mar. 7, 1977

Roots’ Reach

To the Editors:

I look forward to some future date when Roots [Feb. 14] will be followed by Fruits, the story of the descendants of Alex Haley, when they achieve full independence and can move into the White House.

(The Rev.) Ken Vogler

Carmel, Ind.

In seven years every other little black boy in the first grade will be named Kunta.

Carol Stearns

Arvada, Colo.

Ever since I was old enough to see movies about “Africans,” I felt shame and embarrassment about my ancestry.

Roots showed me that my ancestors weren’t stupid, ignorant savages just a little higher than monkeys. It helped me understand that my ancestors were not always slaves.

Yvonne Tyson

Jersey City

Now we can lay the Super Fly-pimp image to rest.

Latona Merchant

Chicago

I am an ordinary, middle-class black housewife and mother. My reaction to Roots was emotional.

It was a feeling of superiority that allowed whites to think they should go to another country and remove its people for their own use; it was then necessary to somehow dehumanize these enslaved people so that there was no need to feel guilt about such an outrageous presumption. That is why whites can still confront blacks with comments like “Africa didn’t really have any culture of any significance,” and “Blacks are hurting their own cause now with this rioting and everything.” My response is this: If you hadn’t kept us ignorant so long, we could have been making contributions that would have benefited us all. If you hadn’t trapped our masses so that only the very gifted could escape, you wouldn’t need to be so fearful of our “coming out.’

(Mrs.) Lilia C. Huguley

Pittsburgh

I am a seventh-grade English teacher. All my students watched Roots. The effect on them was not a step toward interracial unity. They were confused and upset, and reacted by calling one another “Masser” and “Nigger.”

Many people, educated and literate, came away from Roots with positive feelings, but there are at least 150 seventh-graders who came away from the show with a sense of degradation, brutality, cruelty and hate, which they did not have before.

Catherine P. Ware

Franklin, Ky.

As a white cement mason in a local where the majority are black (10 to 1), I can testify that Roots was a social phenomenon. Normally, at the union hall, men huddle together in small groups talking privately. Roots changed the place into an open seminar.

The depth of insight that Roots inspired was always within these men —usually shown only in small asides or jokes. Roots brought it all up front.

“It makes me proud. That’s me I am watching. That’s my roots,” someone would say.

“We would be better off if this [slavery] hadn’t come down—if we were left alone,” a young man commented.

“Whoa there, brother,” an older man answered. “You make a pretty good wage, man.”

A union hall at 7 in the morning is hardly a forum for such a thing. But Alex Haley did it.

David J. Clark

San Francisco

Granted, slavery was abominable. But have not the descendants of American slaves fared better than the descendants of the blacks left in Africa?

Shirley C. Bourque

Beaumont, Texas

Intellectual Chutzpah

Reflective believers know that “reason is not itself the source of truth, but rather an ‘instrument’ given by God to discover the truth that God has communicated,” as Carl F.H. Henry says [Feb. 14].

However, any attempt to go from there to claim Christian Scriptures as the only source of God’s truth requires a leap of faith. For millions of Jews, Moslems, Buddhists, Hindus and others, religious truths that equally explain the meaning of individual existence permeate their literature. The attempt to carry Evangelicalism outside the Christian community is intellectual chutzpah that we can well do without.

Nathan M. Landman, Chaplain

Wright-Patterson A.F.B., Ohio

Hustle to Judgment

The recent conviction of Hustler Publisher Larry Flynt [Feb. 21] is most abhorrent.

Freedom of speech—by definition —must not be standardized by what is the fashionable opinion of the public. We must hold to the conviction expressed by Voltaire: “I disapprove of what you say, but I defend to the death your right to say it.”

Richard J. Miller

New York City

My faith has been restored in American justice.

Larry Flynt got seven to 25 years, and Claudine Longet got 30 days. At last we have our priorities in order.

Bill Allen Jr.

Farmington, Mo.

Passion Yes, Violence No

Re your story “Really Socking It to Women” [Feb. 7]: When is that archaic theory that all women share an innate need to be humiliated and abused by men going to be laid to rest?

You failed to explain that most women, in their fantasies, know their “assailant,” and that it is being done in the name of passion, not violence. I have yet to meet a woman who would take pleasure in being strangled by a telephone cord, wearing a harness or having her head forced into a toilet bowl.

Patricia Sullivan

New York City

For years I have suspected that haute couture has been nothing more than simple hostility ventilated toward women by threatened designers (mostly male) who manage to persuade even the most beautiful women to make themselves ugly. The violence vogue not only corroborates my theory but shows how our more liberated times have made these men desperate enough to show their true colors.

Martha Caflisch

Bern, Switzerland

Young in Africa

Most of us agree with Andrew Young about not trying to “run other people’s affairs” [Feb. 7]. But the Rhodesian-Zimbabwe situation is an international affair.

The U.S. must act now to ensure that what the Zimbabwe people are fighting for—freedom of choice and majority rule—is the outcome. If we don’t, AK-47s and Soviet-backed Cuban soldiers will occupy yet another stretch of land, and Fidel Castro will be that much closer to obtaining his goal of leading the Third World, not through virtue but by force.

Steven Laney

Portland, Ore.

Young has said that Castro’s Communist troops in Angola bring “stability and order to Africa.”

Communist troops would almost certainly add stability to New York City, Washington, D.C., and even to Atlanta. Shall we invite Castro’s heroic troops in to secure stability for our country?

J.K. Layton

Paint Lick, Ky.

So Andrew Young says the U.S. has had more than its share of trying to run other people’s affairs.

Does that mean he’ll leave us all alone for a change?

Peter Devereux

Johannesburg

Kisser’s Complaint

I am disappointed that Mr. Carter has given a lead to indiscriminate kissing [Feb. 7].

This custom of affection previously reserved for nearest and dearest is being cheapened by being conferred on all and sundry. Society will soon require some other way to express real love. I suggest the venerable Maori custom of rubbing noses.

Jean Waterworth

Napier, New Zealand

The British weren’t always reticent about social kissing. The great humanist scholar Erasmus noted a “great kissing epidemic” in England while on his first visit there in 1499.

In a delightful letter to a friend in Paris, he wrote: “There are in England nymphs of divine appearance, both engaging and agreeable. And there is, besides, one custom which can never be commended too highly. When you arrive anywhere you are received with kisses on all sides, and, when you leave, kisses are shared once again. If you should happen to meet, then kisses are given profusely. In a word, wherever you turn, the world is full of kisses. If you too, Fausto, once tasted the softness and fragrance of these same kisses, I swear you would yearn to live abroad in England . . . all your life long.”

Keith Glenn

Alexandria, Va.

Here, the number of kisses depends on where you are. In Rio, you kiss a person twice, once on each cheek. In the city of São Paulo, you kiss a person only once. But in the interior of São Paulo state, you kiss three times, alternating cheeks. The third kiss is for luck in marriage. This gets to be a problem when you leave a party and have to kiss 50 people goodbye!

Linda Hoffman

Rio de Janeiro

Mr. Morrow says “American men rarely kiss other men, unless they are father and son, or unless they are homosexual.” Obviously, Morrow has not attended an Italian-American wedding.

Rosemary Mollica

New York City

You forgot the biggest kissers of all —the Spanish.

Diane Fitzpatrick

McLean, Va.

Let God Choose

Do we in the Roman Catholic Church really believe that a vocation to the priesthood is a call from God? If we did, we would avoid the need for arguments to support a ban on women priests [Feb. 7]. We could leave the priesthood open to all, and then the Almighty could choose whom he wished.

Allan Campbell

Christchurch, New Zealand