Editor’s Note: Shavana Abruzzo has been a resident of Brooklyn for 26 years. Her column, “A Britisher’s View” has appeared in our newspapers for 20 years.
To The Editor:
I want to tell Shavana Abruzzo [“A Britisher's View”] something: Senator Obama is never going to be your commander in chief [“He simply isn't ready to be our commander-in-chief,” 3-20 issue]. You don't live here, are not a citizen, can't vote here. So what's with, “He simply isn't ready to be our commander-in-chief.” What's with the “our?”
Reverend Jeremiah Wright has said stupid things and has a close relation with Senator Obama. Well, I am a white person and I have white friends and family, who have said some very stupid things about black people. Does that fact make me a bigot? I can't control what other people say, nor can Senator Obama.
Everyone has someone they know, and may care for, who has a head full of garbage about other people. I can't change my friends and family, nor can Senator Obama. So don't blame him for what Rev. Wright said. All people have faults. When you find someone who has tea with God, let me know.
And you pad your writing with a lot of code words that have no meaning but to raise emotion against black people. “His dark side…force feed America the black dilemma…. Poppy cock about slavery.” Well, Ms. Abruzzo, slavery in America happened. It's in the history books, look it up.
Indeed, your writing reads like something out of 1937 Germany. Just exchange some word for that of Jew and Jewish and other words, here and there, and I dare anyone to tell the difference between your writing and that of a 1930s Nazi newspaper article about Jews.
You blame black people for their lot in life. How sick, like they could not wait for New Orleans to be under water so they could all go swimming. Is that what you think? Fact is, prison culture in music is enjoyed by white kids too. But I don't hear you saying anything about that. Nor do you understand when most kids say “nigger” it has a whole different meaning to them.
Outside of skin color, people are people. They go to work and school and have the same human needs, and no group of people have any monopoly on good or bad. And this may surprise you but a lot of black people are in the armed forces. But that fact holds no interest to you. To you, once a nigger, always a nigger.
David Raisman
Bay Ridge
Puzzled & disturbed
