Letters

Readers respond to an interview with John McWhorter about his new book "Authentically Black" and to a review of Amy Chua's "World On Fire."

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Jan 16, 2003 | [Read the review of "World on Fire."]

Amy Chua's thesis in "World On Fire" is ridden with problems. It assumes that only in democracies do governments have to feed mass bigotry and encourage racial and ethnic violence. That would be news to the Jews under the czar, the Turkish Armenians, the Jews in the Nazi-occupied Ukraine, the Chinese in Indonesia during the 196Os, the educated Cambodian victims of Pol Pot, the Kurds of Iraq, and today's Israelis, blamed for all the problems of Arab dictatorships.

The sad reality is that any form of government can find it beneficial to encourage groups to envy, fear and hate one another. It distracts them from their government's incompetence and corruption. Bigotry is the politics of fools.

We can learn from our own history how to deal with "malfactors of great wealth" and the huge gaps between rich and poor. These countries need journalism brave enough to expose corruption, anti-trust laws to keep the big from crushing the small, and a vigorous and effective education system that is open to all and funded, in part, by progressive taxation.

First and foremost, we need to make life difficult for any politician, democratic or authoritarian, who wants us to blame others for our failures. We need to take responsibility for our lives.

-- Ike Perry

I haven't read Chua's book "World On Fire" but intend to, based on your reviewer's assessment of its contribution to understanding the boilings over the world is experiencing. However, nothing in the review, which at its conclusion touches on the "clash of civilizations" point of view, suggests that professor Chua takes into account the political ramifications of women remaining culturally and socially cut off at the ankles, so to speak, in most (if not all) of those recent global hot-spot areas. That's where the perspective embodied in the "clash of civilizations" truly has meaning. The likelihood that women in those areas will be protected in their basic human rights by whatever notion of democracy-with-markets takes root is nil. She can cast her ballot but cannot go out the door to the polling place to drop it in the box because of family-societal-social restrictions.

-- Linda Russell

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