David Duke’s Strong Showing in Louisiana Vote

The editorial “Ex-Klansman Duke: How’d He Get So Far?” (Oct. 4) is a question that raises few eyebrows in the African-American community, based on the racist climate that lingers in America. However, it does raise a fear that African-Americans have concluded, long before the timely statements of Malcolm X, that America is dying a slow death and the rise of Duke is nothing but a mere symptom.

It is not difficult to figure the reasons behind Duke’s popularity when we look at a few events that have shaped the last decade; Ronald Reagan defeated a maligned Jimmy Carter by a record-breaking margin; Jesse Jackson, as sensible as his policy was eloquently stated, could only muster a small respectable percentage of votes from whites; the rise of racial crimes; the building of a war machine; the attack on the arts by the so-called silent majority; the strengthening of the predominantly white conservative Supreme Court, Senate and House.

It is an often-stated assumption in the African-American community that white male Americans are bitterly watching their way of life slowly erode by an onslaught of unmanageable events. To this, Duke preaches the return of white males to a place in society that they feel is slipping to minorities, the place of the middle class. It’s the middle-class white male who sees Duke as a defender of his rights, a spokesman for his cause. To African-Americans, Duke is nothing new, for he lives in the corporations we work for, the law enforcement departments that patrol our streets, the judges who hear our cases and the teachers who teach our children. We are not surprised and neither should you be.

WENDEL ECKFORD

Hawthorne