Racism

To The Editors of The Crimson:

I write in response to two items in Monday's Crimson--1) report on campus racism conference at Yale, and 2) Glenn Orenstein's letter. The Yale campus-racism conference was very good news, for there is clearly a twisted-neurotic racist virus abroad among some White students--mainly White-ethnic newcomers to the middle classes--and, while this neo-racism is essentially different from old-racism, it must be met and fought head-on, and the pressure must be kept on college administrations across the country. What is especially important about the Yale campus-racism gathering is the upfront role of middle-class Asian-American students in putting it together. Patrick Cheng and Lucy Tsang--I tip my hat to you.

I tip my hat also to Glenn Orenstein for his critique of Matthew Joseph's silly suggestion that Jesse Jackson is intrinsically barred from a presidential race. Jackson's campaign is constitutionally legitimate and is essentially a campaign to further political inclusion of weak and marginal strata, Blacks being prominent among them. Such presidential campaigns are hardly new in American politics. Furthermore, Jackson is hardly the only presidential candidate of significance who never held elected office as governor or congressman; neither Grant nor Eisenhower held these offices, and at the intellectual level they were boobs compared to Jackson.

Orenstein, however, is a bit too polite in characterizing Matthew Joseph's putdown of Jackson as "condescending." I prefer characterizing it as neo-racist. Martin Kilson   Professor of Government