Recycling Black Dollars Is Needed

I thoroughly enjoyed the article on Recycling Black Dollars (Times, March 10). The response by W.A. Thompson (Letters, March 21) shows the insensitivity and ignorance that many Americans have toward anybody of African descent. In many instances, there is no recycling of black dollars due to a lack of black businesses in the inner-city urban community. There is no need to recycle white dollars (to a greater degree) because white America is in control! Most major businesses in America are controlled, owned and operated by whites.

Yes, many are ingenious entrepreneurs but a great number have been eating the fruits from 400 years of black oppression. For a white man not to patronize a black business just because of race is racist. If a black man patronizes another black man’s business it is by no means racist, but supporting and building up himself, his impoverished community and helping to remove the shackles of oppression that have existed for centuries. Just 30 years ago, blacks had to fight to get an equal college education. Nothing can really amend the heinous atrocities of the past but if all Americans would support black argonauts and patronize them to the umpteenth degree, the scars would heal and serve as a restitution or reparation for slavery, oppression and the faux pas of the 1960s.

JOHNATHAN J. LEWIS

Los Angeles