Claim that minorities have more opportunities is false

Editor:

I write this letter to apologize on behalf of Jeff McCuen ("Minorities should just stop whining," Sept. 10). Mr. McCuen, the seemingly omniscient history freshman, cannot, and must not, be held accountable for his assertions. He lives in a dimly lit world illuminated only by the light that is his manifestly limited intellect. His breadth of knowledge is restricted by the narrow parameters of his experience.

I would like to take this opportunity to address Mr. McCuen's erroneous claim that minorities have more "rights and opportunities" in this country than do whites. Dr. Kwame Appiah, an eminent professor of African American culture at Harvard University, (Jeff, Harvard's a really big school somewhere east of Phoenix) elucidates in his work, In My Father's House, the fact that there is a negligible disparity between the genetic composition of the different races. Inasmuch as this is indeed the case, to what factors can we attribute the current rate of poverty, incarceration and violent death of minorities?

Mr. McCuen, the legacy of one of the greatest crimes in the history of mankind lives on. Its very existence is a reality inextricably connected to the struggle that minorities face on a daily basis in this country. Until you come to understand the nature of the world in which you live, you will be condemned to dwell shrouded in the darkness that is your ignorance.

David M. Shumsky
English senior


(NEXT_STORY)

(NEXT_STORY)