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To the Editor:

Whatever my disagreement with Norman Podhoretz's article “My Negro Problem—and Ours,” I believe that COMMENTARY is to be commended for publishing it and thereby helping to open up areas for discussion that have been closed too long.

Like Mr. Podhoretz's ideas or not, approve them or dispute them, subject him and his article to the analyst's couch, the important thing is not the way he rationalizes his experiences or the conclusions he comes to, but the fact that he brings into the open emotionally based prejudices that exist despite intellectual convictions. All people have emotional reactions often hidden and often inconsistent with their verbalizations. Is it possible that we shall ever attain full and satisfying integration without acknowledging—not accepting—them?

This would seem to be the point of this article and I regret that Mr. Podhoretz instead of writing simply of his own personal experiences proceeded to draw from them highly questionable generalizations and by such intellectualization to obscure the validity of this point.

I regret even more profoundly some of the attacks upon Mr. Podhoretz and COMMENTARY for publishing the article. I understand passionate conviction and deep loyalties, but when righteous indignation veers on demagogy it must be deplored. I refer particularly to those who assail Mr. Podhoretz for questioning whether Jewish survival was worth six million innocent lives. A man can be committed to the survival of the Jewish community yet ask the question that Job asks: Is it worth it at such a price? (Incidentally, a question that was never asked of 6,000,000 victims.) High moral rhetoric will not answer the very real problem the article poses. Nor will silence eliminate discrimination and prejudice. . . .

By writing the article, Mr. Podhoretz has afforded us not only the opportunity to evaluate his attitudes critically, but the even greater opportunity of questioning ourselves and the contradictions that may exist between our own utterances and actions. Such self-exploration could be extremely productive. It might even help us to understand why discrimination, however subtle, is practiced today by so many articulate defenders of integration.

Joseph Willen
New York City

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To the Editor:

In the dark all cats are gray. So now in the light should all cats be white? You are saying the only hope for a Negro is to become white. It is cruel and insulting to wish a black man white. Think of pale hordes who risk skin cancer and other afflictions to achieve the “stigma” you would wish out of existence. Wish instead, Mr. Podhoretz, that the black man accept with delight the irony of having no choice.

(Mrs.) Zöe R. Sherwood
Poughkeepsie, New York

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To the Editor:

. . . Mr. Podhoretz's experience would seem to be neither very exceptional nor profitable—to himself or to others. It reveals nothing new about the “love” or “hate” content of the racial nightmare except perhaps that the use of these emotive words can only confuse and obfuscate any reasoned attempt to “solve” the black-white problem.

I was born in a small upstate New York town, and on the right side of the railroad tracks. That did not save me from being beaten up regularly on my way to school by a bigger Negro boy who finally solved my Negro problem for me by teaching me how to win by not fighting fair. Twenty-five years later my son, who had organized the first-graders in defense of the Scottsboro boys (he believed that they were first-graders, too) was similarly educated and emancipated by an equally tough and unscrupulous Negro roughneck in the school yard of the Newton, New Jersey high school.

Neither of us hates Negroes as a result of these experiences, nor thinks that as a race they are congenitally dirty fighters. But neither do we love them, nor they us, although we both continue to aid the struggle for equal Negro rights. I don't love any of the many Negro leaders I have worked with, although it has been my good fortune to like and be liked by most of them.

Again, neither love nor hate will serve to exorcise the racial nightmare, whereas reason and good will can do, have done, a great deal, even in dealing with hate phenomena like the Black Muslims. The latter are unlikely to determine the future of black-white relations, precisely because they base themselves on the Hitlerian mystique of inter-racial “hatred.”

. . . Negroes can fight for the right to be full citizens and whites can help or hinder them, preferably without the emotional complications of love or hatred. The dirtiness, the violence of that fight then becomes largely a matter of tactics, a clear, cold word which can be reasonably argued about.

James Rorty
Columbia, New Jersey

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To the Editor:

The article by Norman Podhoretz deserves no less than all the acclaim it has aroused. How wonderful it is that via this article we can “speak from the heart.” The only hope for moving out of darkness is to bring light to the dark places within us. Congratulations.

(Rabbi) Bernard Kligfeld
Long Beach, New York

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To the Editor:

Norman Podhoretz's article . . . is probably the most honest, straightforward personal examination of the roots of hate and prejudice that I have ever seen. He puts the psychological realities into perspective by juxtaposing them with his own personal experience. He substitutes truth for glibness, honesty for cant, and his soul for the illogical logic of rationalization. And he is right about the solution; the only way to destroy a barrier is indeed to destroy it. This is a classic essay which will have poignant meaning for generations to come.

(Dr.) Harry Levinson
Topeka, Kansas

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To the Editor:

. . . Whatever may be true of Mr. Podhoretz's problem, our Negro problem, so called, is one of justice and injustice, to gain for Negroes in law and practice truly equal rights. This has nothing to do with likes or personal feelings. . . .

I have worked for equal rights for Negroes all my life. When I am asked if I like Negroes I answer “No.” I add, of course, that I don't like whites either. I like some Negroes and some whites, but it never occurs to me to put my efforts at racial justice on the basis of personal likes and dislikes. Would members of the American Civil Liberties Union, for example, put their efforts on the basis of whether they like Communists or members of the John Birch Society?

Alfred Baker Lewis
New York City

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To the Editor:

I was enormously impressed by “My Negro Problem—And Ours.” It is the first time that I have seen an article by a white person that was frank, open, and expressed the concern and upset within the mind of a liberal. I think the tremendous sensitivity that Mr. Podhoretz shows and his analysis of the problem will prove of great value to people working in the field of human relations. . . .

O. Bernard Leibman
Queens College Flushing, New York

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To the Editor:

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