Letters: What makes boxer Bernard Hopkins an expert on who's black?

RE THE

Daily News

article where Bernard Hopkins said Donovan McNabb isn't black enough because he grew up in the suburbs:

What makes Hopkins an authority on who is black?

As the mother of an African-American son, I want him to know that toughness comes from within - not from acting like a jerk with a lot of mouth.

If Hopkins wants to promote his has-been career, then do it without insulting men like McNabb and others who happen to be educated and know how to act their age in public.

You and T.O. are two-of-a-kind insecure trash-talkers with issues.

Patricia Young

Philadelphia

As Marcus Hayes wrote:

"Second, given its convoluted wording and elitist tone, it proved Hopkins' point: McNabb and his brand are fully assimilated into a culture of corporate white America."

Marcus, as a former Phillyite, I agree with your assessment of the statement. But you missed the larger point. Indeed, with your allusion to an assimilation "into a culture of corporate white America," you've essentially acquiesced in it.

But there is no such thing - no matter how much windbags like Bernard Hopkins may claim - as a quasi-Platonic, eternal "black man" any more than there's a corresponding archetype of the "white man."

Those who propagate this myth are nothing more than racialized, egocentric and, ultimately, cowardly demagogues.

We white folks used have a similar type of public figure - the man who'd tell us how much better we are simply because we are white. Today, however, such people are called "bigot" and "racist," and, by and large, no longer permitted to participate in legitimate public discourse.

Further, in this day, "white America" hardly has a monopoly on "corporate" culture: Is Rocawear not corporate, cookie-cutter junk?

What about Snoop Dogg slinging diet swill - "up to [his] knees in zero calories"?

Oh, look, it's Diddy, also a Pepsi alum, hawking a brand of vodka. Even the dead ones: how many Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls T-shirts do you see? (I won't even mention her corporate majesty, Queen Oprah.)

Marcus, I doubt that many

readers expect anything more than your resentful potshot at "corporate white America" generally and McNabb and his family specifically - who were victims of actual, hurtful racism as McNabb grew up.

Stephen Niksa

Washington, D.C.

nolead begins

Poor Arnold, he went and made himself a love child.

He kept the woman in his house as a maid. She even got a pension by working for Arnold for 20 years.

And what did Maria Shriver think after she found out that the child was in the house the whole time - and the woman told her husband that the child was his? Now that Arnold has left office, she can sue him - and get a pile of money.

He messed up California, now he messed up his marriage.

George J. Walton

Upper Darby