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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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040389
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04038900.047
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1990-09-22
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LETTERS, Page 6MIDDLE-CLASS BLACKS
I was happy to read your article "Between Two Worlds" on
middle-class blacks (LIVING, March 13). Successful blacks increase
the prosperity of America. The underclass is everyone's problem,
and with an integrated and unified society we can all help solve
it.
Jennifer S. Slechta
Shrewsbury, N.J.
My African-American family has been middle class since the
1700s and deeply involved in the fight for black equality. You
brilliantly describe what it feels like to make $150,000 a year,
pay high taxes and yet have a white woman in a supermarket line who
assumes you are on welfare turn to her husband and say of the
porterhouse steak in your basket, "Thanks to us, see what they can
afford?" This piece should be required reading for every American.
Ellen Holly
White Plains, N.Y.
I found your report shallow and condescending. Success and
failure are not determined exclusively by one's business title or
encounters with insensitive or ethnophobic individuals. Many of us
are functioning well and resent being continually portrayed as
consumed by self-pity.
Laurin Hogans
Corona, Calif.
As a 20-year-old black student and a middle-class American, I
sometimes experience the type of racial discrimination you depict.
Unfortunately, I more often encounter prejudice among members of
my own race. I am seen as trying to be white if I excel or show
ambition. I am even criticized because of the way I speak. We are
defeating ourselves when we condemn one another for achievement.
Healthy competition among blacks may be just the medicine our
ailing race needs.
Ruth-Ann Kimbrough
Miami Lakes, Fla.