The Perils of Voicing One’s Own Opinions

Re “Is Saying What You Think Too Perilous?” (Feb. 27):

Yes, saying what you think is often too perilous, if you’re talking about race or ethnicity or sexual life style in this country, particularly if you make this mistake in the mass media.

Tom Wolfe has become infamous in liberal circles for openly writing about the racial-ethnic conflicts that everybody knows hide just beneath the veneer of our approved national self-image.

So we end up with a fairy tale world, in fiction or journalism, with the media officially promoting all the proper attitudes and ignoring the fact that many class, ethnic and sexual life style differences are true differences that can and often do promote conflict, dysfunction and disease.

All sorts of scientific studies show that overpopulation and congestion in themselves cause anger and violence, not only in humans, but in animals as well. A serious discussion of these issues requires rocking the boat, speaking out on matters of birth control, religion, ethnicity, social class, immigration.

The United States, like any sick family, is sick because of the secrets it keeps; secrets too fearful to be faced if we insist on maintaining a nicey-nice fiction about ourselves.

C.C. WILSON

Canoga Park