Clancy Sigal on L.A. Riots

Clancy Sigal’s expose of the white mentalities that fostered the Rodney King aftermath degenerates into the liberal paralysis his straight-talking street sense had meant to decry (Commentary, June 9-10). He brilliantly observes that much of the ongoing misery and violence can be traced to the white desire for social control--control through poverty and the police. But he soon turns to blaming the victims with the media cliche that people of color in America suffer primarily from Reebok-deprivation.

Such displays of chest-beating even-handedness are a major reason why people of color distrust the white hand of friendship. Why is it, fellow white people, that we can’t criticize ourselves without seeking relief by criticizing them?

It doesn’t mean censoring white criticism of black politicians to ask, as I do, that if white people understand black suffering because they suffer too, they prove it by focusing long enough on their own leaders and values to do something about them.

CHRISTOPHER NEWFIELD, Montecito