Recent news compels this letter. In 1923, the British novelist D.H. Lawrence had this to say about our country: “All the other stuff, the love, the democracy … is a sort of by-play. The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.”
Then we remember George Floyd, Amaud Arbery, Dreasjon Reed, Breonna Taylor, Sandra Bland, Taylor McDade, Eric Garner, Laquan McDonald, Alton Sterling, Rekia Boyd, Walter Scott, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Philando Castile, Jordan Davis, Atatiana Jefferson, the Charleston Nine, Emmett Till, Elijah Lovejoy, the Jim Crow 8,000, Tulsa in 1921, Rosewood in 1923, the Trail of Tears, the Long Walk, the Sand Creek massacre, Wounded Knee, and the Rio Grande. On and on it goes, and each time we act surprised.
How many times must we prove Lawrence right before we drive out the better angels of our nature and our nation melts into oblivion?
JOHN RABY
New London
The protests are not the problem. Our government and our media are deflecting blame, attention and resources away from the real issue. The problem in our country is the pervasive racism that is once again brought to our collective attention with the brutal killing of George Floyd, the most recent victim among the staggering numbers of victims of racist violence in our history.
The protests, with few exceptions, are cries of pain, grief, frustration, anger and desperation at the violence and injustices that nonwhites suffer under our white supremacist culture. And to make matters worse, much of the violence is now in the other direction, inflicted by the militarized forces of our government against the protestors, thus further threatening our very democracy. We are in a tinder box. We cannot know how this crisis will have played out by the time this letter is published, but today I am compelled to write it as a plea to my fellow white citizens.
Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said recently, “Peace is not merely the absence of violence, it’s the presence of justice.” We will not have peace in this country until enough of us white people understand and face the difficult truths of our history head on and take up the difficult work to bring about real change. To quote Anne Braden, a white journalist, educator and organizer for civil rights from the 1950s through the turn of the century, “The battle is and always has been a battle for the hearts and minds of white people in this country. The fight against racism is our issue. … We need to become involved with it as if our lives depended on it because really, in truth, they do.”
We have accomplished both terrible and great things in this country. Together, in honest alliance with the leadership of people of color, we can do this one achingly hard, great thing — turning history around toward realizing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s hope, so that the arc of the moral universe truly does bend toward justice.
CAROL ROUGVIE
West Lebanon
Following the killing of George Floyd, in a moment when our nation cried out for leadership and healing, President Donald Trump called for violence. “When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” he tweeted. As I write this, PBS is reporting that police fired tear gas into a crowd of peaceful protesters outside the White House. This so President Trump could walk to St. John’s Church to be photographed holding a Bible. Can the president even begin to understand the irony and hypocrisy inherent in his actions?
By contrast, President Barack Obama’s statement on Floyd’s death read, in part, “for millions of Americans, being treated differently on account of race is tragically, painfully, maddeningly ‘normal.’ … This shouldn’t be ‘normal’ in 2020 America. It can’t be ‘normal.’ If we want our children to grow up in a nation that lives up to its highest ideals, we can and must be better.”
And while former Vice President Joe Biden is no Barack Obama, he is the clear choice in November to give our children and our nation that chance to “be better,” and to live up to the highest ideals that President Obama spoke of.
I have had enough of the current president’s treatment of his fellow Americans, as well as his treatment of his fellow world citizens. Join me in speaking up, speaking out and voting for change in November.
JOE DEFFNER
Thetford Center
As an elementary teacher in the Upper Valley for many years, I was humbled by the wisdom of young children. One year, on Martin Luther King Day, the first graders in my class were sharing their thoughts and feelings about the unfairness of discrimination based on skin color. One of the students asked this profound question: “How would you know who to hate, if you were blind?”
TERRI ASHLEY
West Lebanon
Here’s a question: Do we want a law and order president, or a rule of law president?
BILL DONAHUE
Hartland
The hymn Let There Be Peace is thought of as a Christmas song. It is not. It is right and timeless, for all seasons and ages. It resonates with me every time there’s an incident of injustice, happening too frequently now. Some have correctly pointed out that these violations happen more than we know, and many African Americans just bear up and quietly suffer indignities and disrespect and harassment. The daily fear and anxiety every time they or their loved ones step outside their homes is as intolerable as the murder of innocents. There is too much hate and anger in our society, and too little humanity. Respect for human life would have made the other officers intervene and prevent George Floyd’s killing. It’s unconscionable that they didn’t respond to his cries for help, or to those of the many witnesses.
The riots reflect justifiable rage. Destruction of property and businesses isn’t the answer, as it wasn’t in 1967-1968. It will be difficult for those losing their livelihoods to rebuild. The economic base of some communities will be severely impacted, which hurts residents through loss of access to goods and services and employment opportunities. This compounds economic disparities. After the other riots, it took some cities decades to see reinvestment and redevelopment, and some neighborhoods never fully recovered.
Hating violence and destruction does not make you a hater. It doesn’t mean you are not listening or are dismissing the pain of injustice, or that you don’t see injustice. It doesn’t mean you don’t want criminal justice reform, or enforcement of protection under the law for all Americans.
As individuals, we can each commit to making our society one in which all children can grow and achieve their dreams in safety. Kindness, fairness and continued awareness, by listening to our African American friends and colleagues as they share their personal stories, can be a start to our healing process as we search for real solutions to ending injustice.
JUDY PHILLIPS
Norwich
Brutish.
Thuggish.
Idiotic.
Despotic.
The list could go on and on, but you knew who I was talking about from the very first word.
It’s heartening to read of so many people donating part or all of their stimulus checks to good causes. Here’s a critical cause you might consider supporting: former Vice President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. Four more years of this madman is truly unimaginable.
ANDREA SAND
Woodstock
President Donald Trump standing in front of St John’s Episcopal Church, holding a Bible in his hand, after dispersing peaceful protestors with tear gas and military force for his photo op, was stunning in its hypocrisy. He should open that Bible and read Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, chapter 5: “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ ”
As the saying goes, going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.
FRAN R. HAUGEN
East Thetford
In 1994, in South Africa, Nelson Mandela was released from prison and apartheid was declared to have “ended.” It had not. Violent racial fractures remained. A new, more tolerant “normal” did not emerge.
In a bold move to get the nation to focus on the racial inequalities and prejudices that were tearing it apart, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, comprised of both blacks and whites, was formed. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a black clergyman with unquestioned moral respect and authority, was appointed its chair. The commission traveled around the country for months, holding hearings in many towns, in schools and churches, open to the public. The commission’s mandate was to expose the racial truths and then to recommend solutions to achieve racial reconciliation.
Citizens who came forward to speak at the hearings were urged to be honest — to admit the nature and depth of their prejudice, or to recount the ways they had been prejudiced against by others, including the Afrikaner police. Importantly, in order to get everyone to be forthcoming, the commission was empowered to give them amnesty for what they acknowledged, including admissions of incidents of their own brutality. Thousands of amnesties were issued. The truth came out — raw and unvarnished. The nation, transfixed, watched the proceedings on TV. It was a seminal moment in South African history.
When the commission completed its months of hearings, most of its recommendations for fundamental societal change were passed into law by the national legislature.
Why can’t we follow this example? Why can’t we establish our own Truth and Reconciliation Commission to expose the real nature and depth of our racial inequalities and prejudices in order to get the truth out — the whole truth — but in a constructive manner that leads to systemic change?
Let’s not let the killing of George Floyd and other black Americans before him be in vain. Instead, let’s make them become a dramatic catalyst for enduring change. The time to do it is now.
JOHN FERRIES
New London
As I sat in the peace and comfort of my own home, I watched on television as the president of the United States unleashed heavily armed police and military forces against peaceful and nonviolent people legally protesting in the park across the street from his home. And as the president stood in his Rose Garden a couple of hundred yards away, delivering a menacing speech full of bluster and unenforceable threats, the protesters were being gassed, beaten, chased on horseback and shot with rubber bullets. All so that he could then walk across the street to pose for a photo op in front of a church he has rarely entered, leering at the cameras as he clutched somebody else’s bible like a Quaker holding a loaded gun.
As I watched, I saw America dying.
BOB BOWEN
Claremont