_______________MULATTO MILLENNIUM BY DANZY SENNA(07/24/98)
	I read Danzy Senna's original essay in "Half and Half," and I came away reaffirmed in my belief that a "black" identity in a physically Caucasian or otherwise non-Negroid person can only exist through emotional child abuse and a lack of self-esteem. Senna was brought up to believe that her European ancestry is too good for her. If her "white" mother truly loved her children, how could she teach them that? By all standards of affirmative action, Senna has the right to call herself "Hispanic," yet her father taught her that her Mexican ancestry is also too good for her (perhaps she doesn't know that Mexicans are also descended from the black slaves the Spaniards brought to colonial Mexico). Senna is a sick woman from a sick family. Salon Magazine has published several articles by so-called blacks attacking multiracial and white identities in persons "unfortunate" enough to be "tarbrushed," as Southerners used to put it. I note that there appears to be an "escape hatch" for Latinos (almost all of whom are at least partly descended from blacks), Arabs and suspiciously mulatto-looking Southern Europeans, not to mention Jews with "Afro" hair. I assume that if one of your "black" writers tried to claim persons from those groups, she would be quickly "put in her place." Salon has never published an article in favor of the multiracial movement or invited one of its leaders (Charles Michael Byrd, Susan Graham, etc.) to write an article explaining the goals of the movement. You have never invited writers such as Maria Root or Naomi Zack to explain the importance of freedom in the choice of "racial" identity. Have you invited N. Brent Kennedy of the Melungeon movement to describe how white Southerners are increasingly embracing "mixed race" roots? Why not? Ever since the multiracial movement started challenging the "one drop of black blood makes you black" myth by pointing out that "whites" and "blacks" totally ignore it when it comes to Latinos and other less "American" groups and individuals, the black elites and their "white slaves" such as Danzy Senna have desperately tried to come up with new myths that redefine a stigma into a "choice," "shared history" and other nonsense. Rest assured, it is the same old "ethnic rape" it always was. Finally, note that, in her original essay, Senna describes the following people as "Black Folks Who May Not Know They Are Black": Johnny Depp, Paula Abdul, Carly Simon, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kevin Bacon. The next white person claimed as "black" might be you. Let's put a stop to this "one drop" myth once and for all! -- A.D. Powell High praise for Danzy Senna's article. How funny, yet poignant and searing. It's a shame that the article on Jennifer Lopez's "back" failed to convey the same complexity of emotions when dealing with race in America. Speaking as another woman who considers herself black yet is mistaken for white (both my parents are light-skinned blacks; it's not a biracial thing), Senna's experiences parallel my own. Moreover, she made me realize that the last time someone asked me what my "nationality" was, I answered "creole" instead of "black," as if "black" is too simplistic an answer in this day and age. And I have answered "everything except Asian and Hispanic" when too tired to answer with three races and five nationalities. When the day comes that my Chinese-American husband and I have a child, I will let the child determine its own race, or take the lazy route and choose what race it most resembles. By then, our child's racial waters will be so muddied that true miscegenation will be accomplished. "Other" on the census form simply neutralizes that beautiful reality. -- Adrienne Eng I must take issue with the "Mothers Who Think" conceit. In the first place, it assumes there is a whole category of mothers who do not think, which may be the case, but is a bit insulting. But, in the second, and more important place, many of the articles under this heading aren't mother-specific at all. Today's for instance, "Half and Half," may be written by a woman who happens to be a mother, but the article isn't about raising mixed-race children, it's about her lifelong decision to call herself black. What's that got to do with being a mother? Do you really want to reduce all women to the biological fact that they have children? I'm sure you don't want to alienate your readers who, like me, are women but do not have children. Or maybe you do. I feel very excluded. Please, big tent me. -- Ellen McDermott New York Who didn't do their homework? The federal Office of Management and Budget decided not to offer a "multiracial" category in the upcoming census in favor of allowing people to mark as many categories as they wish. I suppose acknowledging that fact would have ruined the author's self-righteous and self-absorbed ranting. -- Robert Imes
_______________TOTAL WAR BY GARY KAMIYA (07/24/98)
	How dare your reviewer give away the final scene of the film. This is a film that many people have been waiting all summer to see, and now we know how it ends because Gary Kamiya was carried away by his purple prose and no editor was bright enough to point out that he violated what is basically the only rule governing film reviewers: Give the audience a chance to experience the film for themselves. Don't make this mistake again, ever. -- Kurt Wm. Hemr It's about time combat was shown for what it is. I was a Marine on Okinawa when I was 19 years old. The general public has no idea how we hated that draft-dodging fraud, John Wayne. -- Brad Mallory As responsible editors, you should have made sure that your best film critic, Charles Taylor, reviewed "Saving Private Ryan," even if he didn't want the assignment. The review you published was precocious -- and a disservice to readers who looked forward to a trenchant piece of writing (in tone and substance) from Salon. Instead, you gave us a review[er] of nauseating self-regard. This was one of the cultural events/movies of the summer and you wasted your at-bat. -- Barry Kaplovitz, Boston
_______________JUST SAY NO BY SALLIE TISDALE (07/23/98)
	As a mother who thinks, I think Sallie Tisdale and those "experts" like her who enjoy castigating today's mothers as naive, overprotective, self-involved (read that working mothers) and incompetent do not belong on a page for mothers who think. I do not think I need to read on these pages about how bad today's mothers and their "undisciplined" children are, and how much better off we all were in the '50s when mothers stayed home and beat their children. I can get that from the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal. There are scores of conservative media outlets these days, and I was rather hoping that this site would provide food for thought, not yet another forum for those eager to chew us out. -- Susan Barry SALON | July 29, 1998

R E C E N T L Y+| THE YEAR OF DREAMING DANGEROUSLY BY STEPHEN TALBOT

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