Johnson’s Interview Not Exactly Magical for Many Readers
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When Magic Johnson talks about blacks in business (May 16), he makes many good points, offers many factual statements and proves he is quite capable of being a part of the solution to racial problems reflected in the riots.
But Johnson, like too many others, makes the mistake of placing black people always in Position One: with nothing. That is wrong, very wrong!
Black people have always owned businesses. More than a few black-owned businesses, including the Broadway Federal Savings & Loan Assn, Golden Bird fast-food stores, Rod Davis’ Firestone tire store, and the Aquarian Bookshop, were burned, as Golden Bird’s Zelma Stennis said, to “crumbs.”
The point is not that black people don’t own any businesses, but that black people don’t swim strongly enough in the mainstreams of business and industry. That’s a difference!
A.S. DOC YOUNG
Los Angeles
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