To the Editor:                                                                

Regarding Al Calloway’s column in last week’s edition, Where does black leadership go from Troy?, I like being optimistic in most instances. But, somehow, the issue of justice for Africans in America eludes me. I see the problem as twofold: first, Euro-Americans have no desire to live up to their promises of equality for African Americans, Native Americans, Latino Americans. That's just that. Their progeny will say, “We had nothing to do with slavery. That was our ancestors.” But they are the ones benefitting from the privilege that slavery afforded, specifically, economic privilege, although the playing field is balancing out, since corporate and government leadership has duped the general public in such great numbers.

The second issue is that immigrants from the Caribbean, South America and even Africa hold African Americans in such disdain that it is impossible for African Americans to fight such a huge battle.  You go into banks, supermarkets and other business establishments and it's hard to find African Americans working, anymore. They are accused of being lazy and uneducated, when it was their ancestors who fought, bled and died for the right of immigrants of color to even come into this country.

Being of Cherokee and Arawak extraction, I'm baffled at the way African Americans have been downgraded by outside factions. Is it their disunity that others see? Yet, their unity is what made this country buckle under the strain of inequality.

It's a real dichotomy that may never be resolved.

JOAN CARTWRIGHT
Executive Director
Women in Jazz South Florida Inc.