Letter writer: Shine your light, Robert White!

Graphic by Lori Deaton

Robert White’s brilliant, soulful essay in the Nov. 30 Mountain Xpress [“Black Lives Matter: Enough Is Enough”] should be required reading in all humanities courses at all levels in America today.

It is a powerful plea for people to “come together” — a reminder of the first question that a human being asked God. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” is what Cain asked God when he had killed his brother Abel (Genesis 4:9, King James Version of the Christian Bible). How then, can Christians in America justify not loving their brothers and sisters of all races? God gave no race a superior status.

In regard to White’s plea for opportunity for all, wouldn’t it be amazing to see Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan and a few other billionaires/millionaires develop their own Works Progress Administration program in spite of the failure of our Congress to do so? They could set up a jobs program and leave a lasting, loving legacy of work for the betterment of mankind, including men and women of all races. They could show the world a beautiful America. Our human conscience needs to kick in at some point. Why not now?

Shine your light, Robert White!

— Dave Waldrop
Webster

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25 thoughts on “Letter writer: Shine your light, Robert White!

  1. Snowflake (Social Justice Worrier)

    “How then, can Christians in America justify not loving their brothers and sisters of all races? God gave no race a superior status.”

    What era are you living in? You sound like someone who has no intimate experience with Christian America. Or it’s just a loaded question like “Have you stopped beating your wife”.

  2. Abby

    If you think Christians all think the same, or insinuate that they do, then you are a bigot.. Please stop fighting bigotry with bigotry. Being Muslim does not make you a terrorist, and being Christian does not make you a racist.

    • Peter Robbins

      Was the letter saying (or insinuating) that all Christian are bigots? I thought it was implying that none should be.

      • Snowflake (Social Justice Worrier)

        “Was the letter saying (or insinuating) that all Christian are bigots? ”

        Considering the way it was phrased and the fact that the author targeted Christians specifically (for no warranted reason), that was exactly its message.

        • Peter Robbins

          You’re too sensitive. Hug a stuffed bear in a safe space and you’ll feel better.

          • Snowflake (Social Justice Worrier)

            How can progressives be moral authorities when they can’t even recognize, and then try to justify, their own bigotry? I wasn’t hurt or personally offended by what the author said. I am offended by bigotry itself, though, and will confront it when it raises it’s ugly head.

          • Brandy Rae

            Replying to White’s touching article with “How then, can Christians in America justify not loving their brothers and sisters of all races? God gave no race a superior status.” is….. making me feel that maybe White’s point wasn’t received. That vocabulary is bigoted on any level. That’s like looking at a terorist attack on the news and bluntly saying “why do all Muslims do that?”. They don’t. Radicals are radicals, and they are not the norm. We win the fight against bigotry by not using this kind of language on all levels…

          • Peter Robbins

            I second thought, forget the teddy bear. Hug your straw man.

  3. The Real World

    Let’s keep in mind that Robert White articulated no instance of racism towards himself or his wife in their neighborhood. I’m not sure why he wrote the letter (seemed like he was a little unnerved in adjusting to the particulars of mountain, country life……i.e. gunfire and that he is a different color than all of his neighbors. I imagine neither of those were the case when he lived in New Jersey).

    I am predicting perceptions to fairly quickly improve once our Divider-in-Chief no longer has the bully pulpit. He has an obsession with race, is stuck in a rut regarding it and began stirring the pot on that issue more than 8 years ago and is continuing until the end of his tenure. The mainstream media and Hollywood decided to ride the coattails of that meme and all of that caused people to think race relations are much worse than they actually are. It is a largely fraudulent assertion.

    • Peter Robbins

      Oh, come now. Racial gerrymandering. Found in both congressional and state districts. Voter suppression laws. Found to have targeted minorities with surgical precision. Even social-justice warriors as enlightened as Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions will have their hands full with this North Carolina bunch.

      • Lulz

        I bethca a trillion that anyone will gladly come up with an ID if they hit the lottery and need to show proof of who they are. But to vote, why that’s like an abomination.

  4. The Real World

    Hold on, Pedro – what you are speaking of is related to politics not skin color. Political parties are constantly on the hunt to foil opposition; that is a given and has many forms. If you believe that large numbers of Americans actually want people of color to have little say in our elections or governance then that belief is a serious problem. Because it’s not true.

    An ugly reality from the Left are the immediate, continual (and most often without basis) accusations of bias, racism, ETC. ETC. to those they consider to be against them. That is bigotry itself.

    The Left likes to use “identity groups” as self-serving tools. It’s one of the reasons they form them. Here’s the latest voting bloc being attempted: “Obama proposed to create a new racial classification of “MENA” for Middle East and North Africans. On Friday, the White House Office of Management and Budget advanced the proposal with a notice in the Federal Register, seeking comments on whether to add Middle Eastern and North African as a separate racial or ethnic category, which groups would be included, and what it should be called. Under the proposal, the new Middle East and North African designation – or MENA, as it’s called by population scholars – is broader in concept than Arab (an ethnicity) or Muslim (a religion). It would include anyone from a region of the world stretching from Morocco to Iran, and including Syrian and Coptic Christians, Israeli Jews and other religious minorities.” —- there are numerous articles online about this. How grand, a manufactured group of people about as connected as my WNC neighborhood and a bunch of Aborigines. But the MENA would form another utility for which to accost opposition, shove Govt money to to create “loyalty” (aka bribe for votes) and on it goes.

    Real racism is at it’s lowest level in my lifetime and continues on a positive trajectory. Don’t believe politicians or the media — their job is to manipulate for their own purposes.

    • Lulz

      Yep. The left in the end is about the elitist being propped up by the majority and taking everything for themselves. Its examples are numerous. Look at the colleges where the six figured salaried professors are paid by the debt of the students who will never recover. And now call for an even bigger pool of those not even in college to pay for their lives. Or the government cronies where the made up worthless jobs are paid for by the taxpayers. And those two groups will have actual fat pensioned retirements. Will the majority of workers who subsidized them have the same? No chance in hell.

    • Peter Robbins

      As regards gerrymandering and voter suppression, I don’t think a political-racial distinction gets you very far, El Mundo Real. Targeting blacks for involuntary servitude was done for economic reasons, but we don’t ordinarily dismiss it as a perhaps-overaggressive variation of hardball capitalism.

      • The Real World

        “voter suppression” — Don’t you feel this is a patently silly term? Nobody is suppressed. Citizens of legal age are permitted to vote, it’s easy. Plus some unknown number of non-citizens do as well. Why should that be okay? Everybody has ID and for the handful that don’t, it can be easily obtained.

        Claims that no voter fraud occurs has been repeatedly proven otherwise. Apparently, upon Jill Stein’s….err, I mean….HRC’s recent recount, a bit under 40% percent of Detroit districts showed total numbers of votes cast ABOVE the number of voters registered! Alrightly then. So, how many other districts in the USA would evidence similar? Philly districts did in 2012.

        “Targeting blacks for involuntary servitude was done for economic reasons” — are you referring to something of recent era? I am not clear what you mean. (crossing fingers that you aren’t in the same racial rut as Obama)

        • Peter Robbins

          When laws are invidiously crafted to make it harder for a certain, otherwise eligible group to vote, I call that voter suppression. And when that group is a race, the laws are particularly odious. I am open to the possibility that a voter ID law, standing alone and flexibly crafted, might have withstood judicial scrutiny. But that’s not what happened. And for someone to suggest that the motives of the legislators were really political, rather than racial, doesn’t make a difference to me — any more than for some historical revisionist to suggest the motives for slavery were really commercial, rather than racial. I wasn’t trying to suggest that slavery and voter suppression are exactly the same things — only that they’re both bad.

          I don’t know about the rut part. I have enough trouble with these mountain roads.

          • The Real World

            +1 for teaching me a new word.

            Invidious – 1.calculated to create ill will or resentment or give offense; hateful: invidious remarks.
            2.offensively or unfairly discriminating

            Wow, that is quite a definition and offensively innaccurate regarding this topic. I’m not even a Repub and it bothers me what you are asserting. I AM an American and will stand for anyone being falsely accused. Voter ID’s are needed to prevent Detroits, Phillys and all the others from happening. There has been a pattern, the solution is simple and any people standing in the way of that simple solution are the problem and seemingly support easily tainted elections. Are you in that camp, PR?

            Additionally, your logic would indicate that we should assume Obama has it in for Jews based on his recent tactics towards Israel. In fact, that would be a much clearer deduction than this Voter ID situation. What do you think, is that what he’s really intending? To stick it to the Jews?

          • Peter Robbins

            Oh, please. Read the Court of Appeals decision. The General Assembly was found to have passed a package of laws that targeted minorities for adverse treatment with surgical precision. That is invidious discrimination.

          • Peter Robbins

            As for the rest of your response, I’m not going there. I’m disappointed that I haven’t convinced you as to the seriousness of the language in the Court of Appeals’ ruling, because you strike me as a person of goodwill and ’tis the season for comity. Maybe another time.

  5. The Real World

    I am a person of goodwill. At least a couple of people on this board recognize that.

    Would you forgive me if I declared I’m a bit too weary (all that wine on Xmas….naaaww) to try to figure out the right search terms to source the decision you’re referring to? If you happen to have a link, I will give it a hearty skim. Which is kinda big of me considering you inferred stuff from my original comment that was unrelated to what I put forth (bit of a hijack).

    This bears repeating; from above: “If you believe that large numbers of Americans actually want people of color to have little say in our elections or governance then that belief is a serious problem. Because it’s not true.” I don’t know what you may witness up in Marshall or what the latest fake news WaPo, NY Times, etc. is pushing but you cannot realistically extrapolate any of those to represent the views/behaviors of a majority of a political party or color of people in the USA.

    Twas disingenuous of you to cop-out on my last question as it was a totally fair one. Please explain.

    • Peter Robbins

      And go easy on the snark, friend. I was doing you a favor by not touching your comment about the President and “the Jews.” Not everyone would have been so generous.

      • The Real World

        That article also linked to another CO article on this topic so, I read two. And they were both very obviously presented from a partisan standpoint. Sigh….so that’s a problem straight away. They use the clever “surgical precision” line but provide no example of that from the decision….what? Are their readers first-graders? As typical, they are counting on people accepting that assertion and parroting the specifically-devised soundbite. Sigh, again.

        I didn’t read either court decision but did see that the over-turning panel was 3 Democrat Judges who were also appointed by Democrat Presidents. Which may not indicate anything but, then again, it might. The bottomline is very simple: if people w/o ID (whatever their race, gender, ethnicity, etc) generally voted Republican you would find that party making little issue about ID’s and the Democrats would be going nuts about it. It’s about VOTES, not skin color, and eliminating potential fraud, of which there is plenty.

        That is one of the reasons Trump got so much support is because people are deeply angry about the constant accusations of anything coming from Democrats. And especially so because Democrats continually prove themselves blatant hypocrites. They do not live their own “values” and got the hearty smackdown they deserved this election year.

        I am certainly capable of snark but did not inject any above. I do not understand what you mean about doing me a favor and also do not comprehend the sensitivity in the South about Jews. It has been my experience for over 25 years that the mere mention of the word (which is not derogatory, btw. Not sure, but it seems that some may think it is. They are Jews) causes people to physically stiffen and pretty immediately change the subject. There is obviously a reason for that but I don’t know what it is. I sometimes ask but, as here, do not get the courtesy of a reply (or get a fake one).

        Here, I’ll give you my view.: I don’t think the Prez is sticking it to Jews. It seems highly likely that he IS sticking it to Zionist Israelis. He’s a petty, vindictive guy with a large chip on his shoulder— that’s how he rolls.

        (Mods, pls don’t go getting all sensitive about this and proving the points I just made. Thank you.)

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