My Kaduchas And Yours

In a recent issue of Commentary, Norman Podhoretz published an article called “My Negro Problem—and Ours.” In it he told about the time a bunch of Negro kids clobbered him when he was a little boy in Brownsville, and how he didn’t squeal on them, and how he grew up to believe in full justice for the Negro, intermarriage and everything, but how he could never get over a residual fear or distrust of Negroes—so that while he would not forbid his daughter to marry a Negro, he wouldn’t be happy about it either. Commentary received an absolutely staggering amount of letters which have been published in three successive issues. Except for a few dissenters like the playwright Lorraine Hansberry, most of the letters we...