An Accurate Trip

Thanks to Frances Williams for “More Apologies for Racism,” in which she accurately analyzed the play “The Colored Museum” as extremely derogatory to African people (“Two Trips Through ‘The Colored Museum,’ ” June 12).

I see the attempt at satire of stereotype as being a failure. Indeed, in my view, the end result is another disaster such as the movies “Hollywood Shuffle,” “She’s Gotta Have It” and the recent “School Daze.”

In those films the makers seem to implicitly insist that they were using the medium of metaphor and satire to relate a sociopolitical message to the world. I maintain that all they really do is to again fill the silver screens with horribly degrading images of black people at which unthinking white (and many black) people laugh loudly and long while insisting that they are really only enjoying harmless entertainment.

If we agree that our black children are being overwhelmingly mis-educated, then how can we expect them to understand purported metaphor and satire, especially when the overwhelming background is so loaded with grotesquely comical and degrading images?

I suggest to anyone interested in correcting the inaccurate, derogatory images of African-American people, that the proper setting would be small community group forums in which we dialogue with each other rather than to an indifferent unloving world.

DAIMA WHITE

Compton