Colors Fallout

Wanda Coleman’s quasi-poetic attempt at an editorial is so rife with misdirected anger that I don’t know where to start. But, because she hides behind a thinly veiled curtain of art, one, I imagine, is supposed to back off.

How dare she blame me, or my two white roommates--or, perhaps she meant to blame our fathers--for introducing drugs to the black community.

This chicken-or-the-egg nonsense serves no purpose. Following her guide I should then blame Peruvian Indians for discovering the qualities of their coca trees, or God for making them. Doesn’t help, does it?

My white sunburnable skin is her scapegoat. She should only see how I live. If only she would allow herself to see that she (or more truly, the blacks she condescendingly portrays) and I are so much more alike than I (white man) and the “jive talkin tall walkin kings” (white men), she writes about, are, then we might have something.

Meanwhile, she makes her green, fanning this black-white Halloween, pointing a finger, all the way to the bank.

FRANK McCOY

Van Nuys