Black and White, Cont.
Where does Harriet Dickey get her data on the feelings toward blacks of the “average white person” (Letters, Aug. 8)?
My experience as an interracially married man is that most average white people could care less about “blacks and whites intermingling.” To the contrary, most average white people are like most average any people: far too busy trying to make ends meet and provide for their families to be bothered by the bourgeois calamities and frivolous concerns of Tinseltown.
SHANNON CREAM
Chino Hills
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Dickey wrote that “there are over 200 black writers in the Writers Guild who are, for the most part, unemployed.”
In my own guild, the Screen Actors Guild, only little more than a third of the 96,000 members earn more than $2,000 in any given year. Our bare-bones health plan requires that an actor earn $7,500 in a year; fewer than 25% do. An employed writer, like an employed actor, is a contradiction in terms. Nobody asked us to do this work, nobody invited us to the party. Does Dickey know how many talented black writers there are out there who can’t even get into the Writers Guild?
Blessings, count them, and then get back to the computer and write the next “Waiting to Exhale.”
TERRENCE BEASOR
Santa Monica
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It is most frustrating and sad to find ourselves still struggling with the “race issue.” I look at people like Howard Rosenberg and see an angel (“The Invisible Man, Alive and Well,” July 25).
My own experience with race has been very complex. I have experienced it from within the “community” and of course without. If we are underrepresented on TV (which we are) then we need to stand down. We need to stop buying the products and we need to turn the channels. Simple. This time I feel it will happen.
We need to level the playing field. We need self-responsibility. We will never be considered anything more than a needy race if we accept blaming them for our problems. There is no enemy out there. It is us. We can accomplish a miracle if we unify.
RAE DAWN CHONG
Los Angeles