About Andy Rooney

Howard Rosenberg’s defense of Andy Rooney’s statements (“Is CBS Guilty of Andy Rooney-Bashing?,” Feb. 10) on blacks is misleading at best and borders on racism. In the first place, he quotes Rooney as stating, “Blacks have watered down their genes because the less intelligent ones are the ones having the most children. They drop out of school early, do drugs, and get pregnant.” Rosenberg then responds, “This is merely a blunt, coarse way of stating an essential truth. . . .” An “essential truth” Mr. Rosenberg? On what basis can you make such a statement?

Rosenberg goes on to state, “aren’t these comments and the disputed quote in the Advocate another way of putting what civil rights leaders and other thoughtful citizens have been preaching for years about poverty and despair being passed from generation to generation?”

Well, maybe they are for people who believe poverty is passed on through the genes or culture of the poor. But other “thoughtful” civil rights leaders, scholars and citizens believe poverty is not passed on through the genes or the culture. If one is serious about understanding and eliminating poverty, the answer is in attacking first, the root causes of poverty (i.e., lack of jobs, and racial, class, and gender discrimination) and then, the symptoms of poverty (i.e., dropouts, teen-age pregnancy, drug abuse). We all too often focus on the symptoms and either ignore or minimize the roots of poverty.

Here are two pseudo-social scientists claiming to know the causes of problems they obviously know little about. Please, Messrs. Rooney and Rosenberg, stick to commenting on things you know.

To use your own quote, Mr. Rosenberg, “there is no defense. Unless denseness is a defense.”

DANIEL G. GOLORZANO, Asst. Professor, Sociology, Cal State University, Bakersfield