Dear Editor,
bigot: a person professing an unfounded belief in racial superiority of one ethnic group over another, an irrational concept.
racist: a person who professes that different ethnic groups (races), often own different physical characteristics , often display different behaviors, have different value systems; a term often incorrectly used synonymously with bigot.
When I was discharged from the army in 1960, my company commander was a black captain, universally esteemed and respected by everyone in his command, myself included. When I left teaching high school in 1965 my principal, an educated, intelligent, kind man, was constitutionally incapable of referring to black principals or teachers at District faculty meeting as Mr. Doe or Miss Doe, instead politely using first/last names. I noticed it at the time. It was still Jim Crow America; it was wrong; it decidedly is NOT Jim Crow today.
Our society is vastly different now, in some ways better but not in all. In reality we are starkly divided, angry at the status quo and at each other.
After the George Floyd murder (no other word for it), the Black Lives Matter movement grew exponentially, daily promoted by television newscasts sitcoms, and commercials. It also was hijacked by “progressives” who preach that people everywhere are either oppressors or oppressed. Race pimps such as Al Sharpton and others still beat that false drum. Those who readily swallow their nonsense message – black or white – are either dim bulbs, or else have a political agenda: power. The left’s woke agenda is not to marginalize black Americans but to divide them from other Americans for political gain.
In America today, blacks comprise approximately 13% of the general population but are featured in 100% of TV commercials.
There are thousands of black American physicians, lawyers, educators, military officers; they earned their positions through work, sacrifice, and merit. Just as true, NFL and NBA teams are overwhelming black athletes by virtue of the fact that they are superior athletes [merit].
Personally, I can no more understand the black life experience in this country than I can that of a Hasidic jew. That said, we all share a fundamental humanity. And we are all Americans. Truly we are blessed to live in a nation with almost limitless opportunity. The proof of this truth is that no other nation in the world has so many non-Americans walked so many thousands of miles to get into it.
God bless America!
El Sellers
Fairfield, Texas
