Word: racism
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...letter continued: "Despite the attempts of many to overly intellectualize this matter, the basic issue is straightforward and simple: Should the University honor the memory of those who fought to preserve a system based on slavery and rooted in racism...
Attacks on the capacities of African Americans and other minority groups are as pervasive as they are historic. Institutionalized disadvantage still circumscribes our best efforts to gain a foothold, let alone credibility, within American institutions. Professor Mansfield would trivialize the persistence of racism in this country by propagating the absurd notion that unqualified minorities are swelling the ranks of Harvard and decimating its standards as a result...
This is why I say the black community is stuck in the past. Many members of the black community, along with all the other ethnic groups I have mentioned, have a sense of historical identity that is simply too strong and too negative. I wish to forget about racism, prejudice and discrimination, all of which I presume to be ills of the past. Because of negative historical identity, we think we have standing grievances which need to be addressed, grievances for things which happened years ago but cannot be resolved. Basically, because of our negative sense of historical identity...
...only way to destroy any malignant racism that we see hurting the African-American race is to change our frames of mind. You cannot change other people's minds when it comes to things that they strongly believe in, such as abortion or race relations, be as it may that their opinions are formed or a rational or irrational basis...
...would probably be impossible to write a musical about gang warfare, racism, police brutality, and attempted rape. Drive-by shootings aren't the kind of thing out-of-towners spend $50 to see on the Great White Way. But Leonard Bernstein's "West Side Story" comes from a more innocent time, when a knife fight could seem a natural subject for a ballet, and a line like "got a rocket in your pocket" didn't automatically provoke knowing winks from the audience. To present that musical now, without turning it into pure kitsch, requires a daunting level of sincerity...