In his article, "Arizona silences a painful history," (May 16) Leonard Pitts Jr. uses the word "culture" incorrectly.

As H. George Hahn II, an English professor and director of the master's in humanities program at Towson University, wrote in The Baltimore Sun on May 18, 2004: "America may be multiethnic, but it is not multicultural. For the better of all hyphenated Americans, starting with the language, it is an English culture."

Professor Hahn emphasizes that "Diversity is not the most important truth about America. Where it is important — in the Balkans, Lebanon, Armenia, Angola, Sri Lanka, Cyprus, Iraq, Rwanda, Zimbabwe and South Africa — diversity becomes violent divisiveness."

Professor Hahn avers, as a matter of historical truth, America's culture is English.

George L. Darley Jr., Odenton