I am a fan of Robert Azzi’s essays. If I agreed with everything he wrote as a knee-jerk matter of course, I’d have little need to read his essays. His June 1 column struck me as if not overtly so, then at least edging toward calling “whites” as a group, “racist,”... folks lost in their cultural imperatives and history that the truth was beyond their ability to “see.” To suggest such a broad reach about any “other,” in this case, “white” is the “other” seems to me to be the very essence of “racism.” This is not just an error that I suggest as Mr Azzi’s in this case, but common enough to us all that we do better to locate the “two by four in our own eyes first;” admittedly, a tough job. The “other” can be, but is not exclusively a pattern of actions directed by race, creed or religion. I have worked in very poor communities north of here, “whiter” than even NH, and seen the same generational applications of prejudice practiced “white on white.”

I have seen similar unfairness, hierarchically entrenched “privilege.” as a matter of course in my years in Britain. I have seen the same growing up in Lebanon, NH. I think Mr. Azzi’s point needs broader reference. Race or gender based arguments are merely a convenience to both the “oppressor” or “oppressed.” To build on what I read as Mr Azzi’s theme of cultural blinders, I wonder what in any culture allows or fosters the attitude that my security and comfort is based on keeping the same from others. How as “good Christians, Muslims, Jews etc.” could we justify that pattern of actions without creating mythologies of our exalted difference from others? This is bigger than “race” or “white privilege” as Mr. Azzi knows given the sectional divisions within his accepted religion again somewhat parallel to divisions in Christianity and Judaism. Playing any version of the race card distorts by simplification much broader question(s) about human behavior.

Doug MacKinnon

Meredith