Racial Chauvinism

I have read Itabari Njeri’s column “The Chauvinism We Hate Isn’t Our Path, Either” (Commentary, Feb. 28) with great interest and one reservation. With regard to the question whether the Egyptians were black or white, it is a secondary question: The Egyptians were undoubtedly a Hamitic race with some Negroid blood.

But what I don’t like about the article is the author’s assertion that “the origins of Western civilization are not Greek but African, specifically black Egyptians.”

This is a misinterpretation of history. Egypt, in spite of its enormous history behind it, never had what we call the true traits that constitute the source of our Western civilization. The Greeks aimed at freeing the mind from the bond of ignorance; they removed the fear of the unknown by presenting the world as something accessible to reason. These things are not found in Egypt, but only in Greece. This is true history, and to deny this is to falsify the past; once we falsify the past we also falsify the present and the future, and once we build our lives on lies, we are really doomed.

ANGELO A. DE GENNARO

Los Angeles