Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR SEGREGATION Sidney Hook's special section on "Democracy and Desegregation" (NL, April 21) has prompted me to a few reflections on the subject. For all its grave and obvious faults,...
...There is no program which is right everywhere...
...It may be true that in quoting the Cardinal's message directly after pronouncements of the Front of Moral Renewal, I created an impression of cooperation between the Cardinal and the Pax group—although earlier in my article I refer to the Cardinal's opposition to Pax...
...While immediate equality would have pulled the whites clown to the Negro level of 1865, segregation allowed the Negroes to adapt themselves to the higher standards of the culture in which they lived...
...When segregation is considered in this light, two facts become evident...
...It was, to be sure, an inferior status, but it enabled them to advance culturally without destroying the existing civilization by sheer weight of numbers...
...It is surely significant that the same writers and artists are attacked by the "Front of Moral Renewal" and by the more reactionary elements in the Communist party...
...The "naivete" of Polish "moralists" consists in ascribing it to Hlasko or Sagan...
...Segregation was instituted of necessity...
...Charleston, W. Va...
...reducing all modern literature and art to "blemishes and dirty blotches," to a confusion of "indeterminate sensations...
...What does disturb me, is that the Front of Moral Renewal is used by Pax to end its moral isolation, and that Pax has succeeded in luring many Catholics—otherwise independent from it—into cooperation with the Front...
...Yet it has not prevented Negroes from becoming ready for full participation in society...
...It is unjust and ridiculous to deny opportunity to a person solely because of his skin pigmentation...
...DEAR EDITOR SEGREGATION Sidney Hook's special section on "Democracy and Desegregation" (NL, April 21) has prompted me to a few reflections on the subject...
...To make blanket assertions upholding or condemning all segregation is a mistake...
...1 maintain my point that Cardinal Wyszynski's message was formulated in Zhdanovian terms...
...Wherever Negroes are still culturally inferior, segregation is simply the necessary recognition of an unpleasant reality...
...It cannot be condemned for denying by law an equality which does not exist in fact...
...No one can deny that the Southern Negroes of 1865 were unready to assume the responsibilities of equality...
...Such an adaptation by the Negroes was prerequisite to any sort of stable society based on equality...
...Each case must be judged on its own merits...
...R. F. WELLES POLAND After reading M. E. Royek's letter in the August 4-11 issue, I must conclude that he has not read my article on "Reaction in Poland" (NL, June 23) carefully...
...It has kept whites and Negroes separated at a time when intermingling would have generated conflict and endangered civilization itself...
...of segregation to keep the Negro forever in a subservient position...
...It certainly would have been absurd to speak about an "alliance" in Poland between the Catholic Church and the orthodox wing of the Communist party...
...The desirability of segregation in locality depends upon the relative cultural status of the races in that particular place...
...Once segregation results in arbitrary discrimination against capable people because of their color, it constitutes a violation of individual rights, and must be abandoned...
...First, segregation is not necessarily evil...
...One point in Royek's letter incites me to an apology...
...But what I tried to imply is that the present moral disintegration in Poland is the result of five years of Nazi occupation and ten of Stalinist terror...
...Zhdanovism demands that life be "depicted in legible and clear colors...
...Second, segregation is not a permanent institution...
...The sooner leaders of both races realize this and tailor their demands to fit local situations, the sooner will racial animosity and unjust discrimination come to an end...
...We must also reject the use THE NEW LEADER welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...
...An effort to give them equality resulted in the corruption and chaos of carpetbag rule...
...As soon as large body of educated, intelligent Negroes has arisen, segregation becomes completely indefensible...
...What has benefited New York might do untold harm in certain rural areas of the South...
...I merely implied that, in spite of opposing and antagonistic points of view, some elements in the Church and in the Party share the same deep suspicion of any creative or intellectual approach challenging a certain conformist, common sense, optimistic ("constructive") vision of life...
...Negroes were given a separate place in society...
...The race problem will not be cured by doctrinaire solutions...
...Koyek is mistaken in assuming that Zhdanovism consisted merely in denying people their right to individual preferences in art...
...Royek suspects that I am eager to precipitate "moral disintegration" in Poland as a prerequisite for a "revisionist" revolution...
...In the span of a lifetime, Negroes progressed from ignorant semi-savagery to a degree of literacy and intelligence surpassing that of many whites...
...Paris K. A. JELENSKI...
...We must not destroy the civilization of an area in our quest for an abstract ideal...
...For all its grave and obvious faults, racial segregation has performed a valuable social function...
Vol. 41 • October 1958 • No. 32
