#2803: Letter to the Editor (fwd)

[Robert Corbett <bcorbett@netcom.com>]

From: P D Bellegarde-Smith <pbs@csd.uwm.edu>

	
Dear Editor:
	
	Loose some, win some. It is ironic that the same issue that brings
my "Letter to My [White] Sisters," on the disaster that surrounds the
issue of the entitlement to plan for a PhD in africology, also brings a
major article titled, "Immune System Voodoo."
	
	What was the author thinking about when she wrote these lines? I
scanned the article and nothing appeared on the religion she obviously
intended to "diss."
	
	I have two books coming out soon on "Voodoo." It is the official
religion of the Republic of Benin, the national religion of the Republic
of Haiti. It is practiced by tens of millions of people around the world,
including Milwaukee. The Department of Africology has two courses on
African religion.
	
	The UWM Post editors need to do a better job to catch these
problems. Would they have allowed the expressions, "being gipped," "jewing
him down," "Indian giver," or any affront made to Christianity, Islam or
Judaism?
	
	By the time your readers will read these lines, I shall have been
a participant at the Latin American Studies Association (with 6,000
members), and the Congress of Santa Barbara, a scholarly organization that
studies Haitian Vodou, and presented two papers on this topic. I am
preparing two books on African religions. Please do not do this again. It
smacks of racism and Christian arrogance!


			Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, PhD
			Department of Africology