Graffiti Problem

I protest the racial overtones of Sheryl Stolberg’s article on graffiti.

Members of the ruling class in Los Angeles get very upset about the degradation of the cosmetic appearance of their city, while at the same time blaming others for the degradation of the underlying social and political structures.

The article failed to consider the sociological causes of graffiti, which cannot be understood without getting inside the social system they represent.

Especially offensive was the implication that graffiti is a cause of urban blight. The article did not even mention the possibility that graffiti may be not a cause or even a symptom of that blight, but a highly articulate protest against it.

The predilection of graffiti artists for freeway structures is particularly appropriate when we consider the vast environmental destruction and political tyranny represented by those structures. There are no public works in which citizens have less political influence. The destruction of the city’s interurban rail system by oil and automotive companies in the late 1960s represents the city’s final and continuing capitulation to corporate interests.

WILLIAM H. DuBAY, Torrance