Word: denton
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...necessarily lead to the grotesque and barbaric consequences for excluded groups as Nazism did for Jews.) Moreover, in the case of the Negro's use of particularistic norms, a more serious neglect of history by contemporary liberalism is apparent. Thus the minority editorial statements of Stephen Jencks and Herbert Denton reveal not one clue that it was the historical relationship of white American society to the Negro which has left the latter little more than the particularistic fact of his blackness, his Negritude--and all this implies--as a means to grapple with his backward and demoralized status in society...
Finally, I should like to comment specifically on Herbert Denton's minority editorial in the CRIMSON, May 14th. Though Denton's facile style gives the appearance of knowledge about what he writes, the content of what he writes is quite misinformed. There is not space to elaborate this as I would like, but let me note several brief points...
Whether the basis of this idea is essentially phoney, as Denton intimates is no doubt an important query. But I would appreciate seeing the kind of evidence Denton has to indicate that the idea has no meaningful relationship to the historical fact of the type of relationship Negroes (in Old and New World) have had with the technologically advanced societies of the west...
...both in Africa and the Americas have referred to the situation of Jews as being quite comparable, though not identical. They have also argued, however, that given the fact that Negroes are black, their experience at the hands of technologically more powerful white societies has been essentially unique. Surely Denton must be aware of the fact that white societies which have dominated Negro groups for some three centuries consciously created institutions, myths, and ideologies that rendered the Negro a particular kind of oppressed person within these socities...
...Finally, I for one do not adhere to the view Denton says he received from his Negro friend in Harvard College that whites qua whites cannot grasp the essentials of Negro experiences in modern times, and assist in eradicating the consequences of these experiences. However, from Denton's article it is clear that he himself is in no position whatever to answer this view-point one way or the other. Despite the fact that he is himself a Negro, Herbert Denton possesses a pitifully superficial understanding of the Negro's experience, both past and present. Martin Kilson Lecturer on Government...