INAPT COMPARISON

Mr. and Mrs. Richard J. Warren compared the violent actions of “Ragtime’s” Coalhouse Walker Jr. to Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City (Letters, July 6). This comparison is grossly inaccurate.

McVeigh is a disaffected white man who, no matter what his life circumstances, is a member of the dominant race that has historically enslaved, brutalized and maligned Coalhouse Walker’s race. Coalhouse’s violent act in “Ragtime” is the tragic undoing of a proud, hopeful man who has been denigrated by one more vicious act of racism (and Coalhouse never receives a fair trial for the bombing).

In “Ragtime,” Coalhouse symbolizes the African American race, whose valiant efforts to rise up from the collective horror of a deeply unjust past have often been met with political and social ignorance. The Warrens, like so many people, have forgotten that, especially in human behavior, context is everything.

MARY POWELL HARPEL

South Pasadena