It was a very beautiful letter written by Joseph Mendola (Monitor letters, Sept. 26). It was well thought out, well phrased, hit on some key points, and talked about some of the most successful African Americans in this country.
Yet it appears to me that his words came from the mind of a person who has and enjoys white privilege and doesn’t even know it. He mentioned people like Lebron James, Michael Jordan, Berry Gordy, and Barack Obama. I’d like to let him know that not all of us can play basketball, have rhythm, or are as charismatic as most of the African Americans he mentioned, and I’m willing to bet him that everyone he mentioned didn’t get where they did unscathed by racism.
It appears that Mendola never heard of Rosewood, Florida, or Slocum, Texas, or about what happened in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921. He has no idea about redlining and the discriminating loan system in his American privilege, or the school-to-prison pipeline. I’m wondering if he is old enough to have lived during the Jim Crow laws here in this nation of American privilege.
The fact is there are more overt racists in this country who don’t don white sheets and hoods than who do. He must not know that the typical African American faces some type of racism every day. Sometimes it is overt and dangerous, sometimes it is as subtle as being followed in a store. That is the life of the typical African American, but I doubt he will ever understand what I’m saying because of the white privilege he is mistaking for American privilege.
J.R. CURTIS
Concord