Dear Editor:
Last month, in response to my questions about white privilege, it was suggested that I try learning from Tim Wise, Ta-Nehisi Coates and others. I tried and apparently my mind is so closed that I could not understand them.
I tried listening to a Tim Wise speech. He may have made some reasonable points later in the speech, but after the first several minutes I couldn't take any more. He suggested, in a long-winded diatribe, that the modest financial success of his ancestors was because they were white, not because they were hard-working, industrious people who made more good lifestyle choices than bad. It sounded a lot like Obama's "If you've got a business - you didn't build that, somebody else made that happen." (I know few successful small business people who would agree with Obama.)
Ta-Nehisi Coates could be a poster boy for America being a "Land of Opportunity." His Father had seven children by four women. He was a small publisher and for a time worked as a librarian at Howard University to reduce the cost of college for his children. Ta-Nehisi Coates grew up in a poor neighborhood yet was able to become a successful writer. He is the only one of his father's children who has not received a college degree. Rather than being thankful for the benefits his work ethic has allowed him to achieve, in part because he was born in America, he chooses to attack. In one of his editorials his "proof" that Ms. Clinton was accurate in her comments about Trump supporters being "deplorables" is telling.
I found no readily accessible articles by the other authors mentioned in my brief time of poking around the Internet.
Perhaps I have spent so much time being indoctrinated by the likes of Dr. Ben Carson, Starr Parker, Tomas Sowell, Michelle Malkin, Walter E. Williams, Herman Cain, Alan Keyes (I supported him for President in 1996 and 2000, he would have made a great president), that my mind is closed.
__________
Issue-oriented letters to the editor are welcome. All letters should be limited to 400 words; letters may be edited to conform to guidelines. The author's name must appear with the letter, and the name, address and phone number provided for verification. Letters that cannot be verified by telephone will not be published. Email to [email protected].