People: Sep. 2, 2002

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It seems Soul Train isn't used to criticism. When the 32-year-old dance show was the subject of a Web petition protesting its choice of Ashanti as 2002 entertainer of the year, it railroaded the opposition. Rommel Zamora, 15, who gathered more than 25,000 electronic "signatures," was attacked on soultrain.com and, he claims, in an obscenity-laden e-mail from a show employee. Though the show's creator, Don Cornelius, told TIME he didn't authorize any such e-mail, he's still eager to bury Zamora: "It's a patriarchal syndrome when any 15-year-old nonblack kid can get on a soapbox and raise questions about a program like ours."