A LAMENTABLE REFERENCE

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

In an otherwise laudable editorial your reference to Paul Robeson as a "traitor to the good name of the American Negro" was unfortunate. After all, the word "traitor" is a pretty strong one to apply to an individual who holds views that are unpopular. If Robeson and his co-fellow travelers of Communist double-think are ever judicially determined to be traitors, then they will be such not to any ethnic or religious group, but to their country. Why, it is as silly to refer to Paul Robeson as a "traitor to the good name of the American Negro" as it would be to refer to Frederick Vanderbilt Field or Corliss Lament as "traitors to the good name of the American Anglo-Saxon."

It is about time we stopped thinking about the Bunches and the Robesons as credits or discredits to their race. If they are anything, they are credits or discredits to themselves and their country. It is the frustration of being thought of in purely racial terms that leads men like Robeson to reject the ethics of democracy for the false promises of communism. The individual Negro wants nothing more than to be accepted as an American with the same freedom from race labeling that all other Americans enjoy. Walter Carrington '62, 1L.