Middle-Class Blacks

I was happy to read your article "Between Two Worlds" on middle-class blacks ((LIVING, March 13)). Successful blacks increase the prosperity of America. The underclass is everyone's problem, and with an integrated and unified society we can all help solve it.

Jennifer S. Slechta

Shrewsbury, N.J.

My African-American family has been middle class since the 1700s and deeply involved in the fight for black equality. You brilliantly describe what it feels like to make $150,000 a year, pay high taxes and yet have a white woman in a supermarket line who assumes you are on welfare turn to her husband and say of the porterhouse steak in your basket, "Thanks to us, see what they can afford?" This piece should be required reading for every American.

Ellen Holly

White Plains, N.Y.

I found your report shallow and condescending. Success and failure are not determined exclusively by one's business title or encounters with insensitive or ethnophobic individuals. Many of us are functioning well and resent being continually portrayed as consumed by self-pity.

Laurin Hogans

Corona, Calif.

As a 20-year-old black student and a middle-class American, I sometimes experience the type of racial discrimination you depict. Unfortunately, I more often encounter prejudice among members of my own race. I am seen as trying to be white if I excel or show ambition. I am even criticized because of the way I speak. We are defeating ourselves when we condemn one another for achievement. Healthy competition among blacks may be just the medicine our ailing race needs.

Ruth-Ann Kimbrough

Miami Lakes, Fla.