Science in Christian Perspective

Letter

"OLE MISS"
Anon.

From: JASA 15 (March 1963): 34

A reader who prefers to remain anonymous has pointed out an error in Russell Maatman's letter which stated that in Mississippi "there is an unbelievably large number of intermarriages generation after generation." Mississippi laws prohibit racial intermarriage, so this is legally impossible. What Mr. Maatman undoubtedly meant was miscegenation, most of which takes place through illicit sexual relationships of white men with Negro women.

In addition, this reader indicates, eyewitnesses of the desegregation conflicts at the University of Mississippi who have different values from those of Professor Maatman report greatly divergent details as to certain of the events referred to in the letter.

As Walter Lippmann stated in his classic, Public Opinion, "We do not see and then define, but we define and then see."-D. 0. M.