Separatist Trend

* Re “Black Attitudes Shift Away from Goal of Inclusion,” news analysis, Oct. 30:

Sam Fulwood III shows how history suggests that blacks recurrently waver between a desire for inclusion and a desire for independence on. One element in the current pullback from inclusion that he neglected to mention is the intellectual community’s program of multiculturalism. For about the last 15 years university and college campuses have been teaching that we are separate but equal, that we are many different cultures that happen to inhabit a geographical space and that not one culture should dominate the other. The idea of assimilation became anathema to the intellectual community because they said that some of the cultures would lose their identity. This has resulted in a spate of separate cultural entities on campuses such as black dorms, Hispanic and black graduation ceremonies and a number of other institutionalized services which are financed by the schools or the state.

The intellectual community’s teaching against assimilation is now being embraced throughout minority communities. They fear that not only will they lose their identity but also will lose some already institutionalized incentives for remaining separate. While Fulwood did a service by pointing out some of the reasons for the current separatist feelings among blacks, I think he left out one of the most important elements.

SUSAN B. CLAYTON

Goleta