Racial Chauvinism

Ms. Njeri strikes the nail squarely on the head when she dares to write, “Too much of Afrocentrism reflects a dangerously romantic nationalism.” I’m black, but take no particular pride in being black as I don’t consider my blackness a personal accomplishment of any note; it’s merely genetic coding for which I have no understanding or responsibility.

It’s academic to me who reared the pyramids, black men or white men. I don’t need to embrace the “Eve theory” or the argument that Cleopatra was black in order to feel valid. Fact is, this black man is from Upstate New York--about as far from Africa as Mongolia. My ethics, politics and aesthetic are fundamentally the same as every other American’s, born of and shaped by a synthesis of myriad influences: Plato and King; Christ and Freud; suffragists and Freedom Riders; Praxiteles and Picasso; Ellington and Scarlatti.

Racial chauvinism ultimately leads to a dead end. The hope of all the peoples of America, indeed, all the peoples of the Earth, lies in the meld.

And could anyone, please, definitively explain to me what is an African-American? When and whence sprang this new being? Is there a creation mythology to accompany the spontaneous generation of this new being--for instance, was he shaped from the Earth, formed of the rib of man, or is he, perhaps, some higher metamorphosis of what were formerly “Negroes”?

RICHARD BOYCE

Los Angeles