The "assimilation perspective" on minority group relations in America distort empirical reality because of two hidden assumptions. First, divergence or difference is recognized at an earlier point--only to be corrected by equalization of opportunity. The second tends to view the "new world"--the assimilated--as homogeneous. The cumulative effect of the Civil War was to lead to a legal perception of the black man as a person, while the social perception of him as property persisted with behavior tending toward the latter. The second world, however, would have emerged apart from this discrepancy--in part because black men came to the U.S. in chains. Every black family must teach its young and help them to develop a strategy to cope with being black in America. It is clear now that strategies of culture deprivation--compensatory education, Head Start, Upward Bound, etc.--are doomed to fail. The failure comes as a result of the belief that the attitudes, feelings, and behaviors of blacks are pathological deviations from a superior white life style. The emergence of a "black life style" is, however, a result of social reality. Deviance and deprivation are misleading constructs, implying that blacks can be something they cannot be, namely white. [Because of the print quality of the original, this document will be only marginally legible in microfiche and xerox hard copy.] (Author/JM)