Suddenly we have a new American hero. He's not an Audie Murphy or a Charles Lindbergh or an Ike or a Huck Finn or anybody like that. He's a wholly ignorant, lower middle-class, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, beer-bellied bigot. This hero, this St. Archie [of All in the Family], must be dealt with seriously for he has become much more than a mere television character; he has become a social force engaging the minds and hearts of vast millions of Americans—many of them the people who still significantly control black lives….

[There] is the probability that, week after week, Archie Bunker is saying things and projecting attitudes that stir up anti-black passions and trigger all kinds of racial wickedness….

One hesitates to consider what psychological damage is done to the black children who not only absorb Archie's racial assaults on Saturday evenings but who must also deal with...