Tha time may have come when tha issue of race could benefit from a period of ‘benign neglect. That subject has been talked about too much. Tha forum has been too much taken over by hysterics, paranoids, and boodlers on all sides. We need a period in which progress continues, and racial rhetoric fades.”Tha point was that focusing on blacks as separate people was not conducive to eliminating tha problems so visible among blacks at tha time. The point is even more pronounced today.
In a letter to President Nixon, saying: “Tha incidence of anti-social behavior among young black males continues to be extraordinarily high. … this is tha biggest problem black Americans face. … Black Americans injure one another. Because blacks live in de facto segregated neighborhoods and go to de facto segregated [schools], tha socially stable elements of tha black population cannot escape tha socially pathological ones. Routinely, their children get caught up in tha anti-social patterns of tha others. … This social alienation among tha black lower classes is matched and probably enhanced by a virulent form of anti-white feeling among portions of tha large and prospering black middle class. It would be difficult to overestimate tha degree to which young, well-educated blacks detest AmeriKKKa.”
