HYPHEN-AMERICANS

Wanda Coleman misses the point and becomes just another duped player in the racial-manipulation game created by politicians (“Afro-American Like Me,” Three on the Town, Sept. 5).

Americans come from all ethnic, racial and religious groups. The category that gives them all equal status and opportunity is American . Any inequalities that may exist are created by categories that dilute and detract from the category American .

V. B. SCHOENFELDT

Ventura

Coleman’s tongue-in-cheek column is insulting. Being a bald black man of the “blacks-of-slave-origin” group, I feel that she is mocking me in naming me an Afro -American, and I demand a separate group name. I suggest “follicularly challenged black-skinned American.” That should help avoid confusion.

RUSSELL ANDERSON

Lucerne Valley