Racial Divide Over Teacher

* I was angered by Leslie D. Harris’ article “How Race Can Make a Difference in Teaching African American Studies” (Campus Correspondence, Oct. 16). Harris correctly asserts that African American history is frequently posited as unimportant and peripheral. Too often, the history and issues of Africans in America are reduced to one lecture in a semester-long class. It is for this reason that we must do everything possible to encourage the establishment of African American studies as a legitimate discipline. It must be accepted as a vital and relevant academic subject.

Harris’ characterization of African American studies as exciting and useful only to black students is arrogant and ignorant at best. According to Harris, qualifications and training alone cannot adequately prepare a person to teach African American studies. The assertion that “(i)t takes a special gift that not everyone possesses”--i.e., being born with black skin--is a destructive and racist idea. Any attempt to deny the rampant discrimination plaguing people of color today would be naive, but encouraging divisiveness and separatism is not a constructive solution to this problem.

CHRISTINE HAGAR

San Diego

* Howard University student Leslie Harris mounts a spirited defense of Cal State Northridge Pan-African studies students’ protest against the hiring of a white female professor of English for their department. It is fascinating to see an upper-division student at a major university turning the fundamental tenets of the civil rights movement upside down to argue for special privileges in the area of racial exclusivity.

Don’t I remember that an integrated educational setting is more effective? Doesn’t a white female professor help create cherished diversity? Don’t we judge people on the content of their character rather than on the color of their skin? Isn’t the concern Harris expresses about white teachers of black students an example of the stereotyping she deplores?

It is ironic that this misguided essay appeared on the same page as an interview with Deval Patrick, assistant attorney general for civil rights, whose responsibilities include fighting job discrimination. In an ideal world we would not need an entire subdivision of the Justice Department devoted to civil rights, and everyone has a role to play in striving toward this ideal. Students in black studies programs can contribute by placing a higher value on the basic principles of civil rights than on the racial purity of the faculty.

WILLIAM R. SNAER

Pasadena

* I cannot ever recall having been so heartened about the future of race relations in America as with the revelations in Gayle Pollard Terry’s interview with Deval Patrick.

Among his many other attributes exhibited in the interview, his clear-eyed distinction between affirmative action and quotas is a model both of logic and of evenhanded justice. And his explanation of the Piscataway case makes clear that Patrick is no mere doctrinaire dispenser of “justice,” rather an upright man whose attitude and thinking should be noted and listened to with care by the ranters and ravers on both sides of the aisle. America would enormously profit.

KAY E. KUTER

North Hollywood