Credit Civil Rights to Older Generation

John Balzar (Commentary, Aug. 26) would have us believe that the World War II generation was made up of racists who did nothing for civil rights. Does he remember the Supreme Court of Earl Warren, which outlawed school segregation in 1954? Does he recall the senators and representatives who enacted the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960 and the major one of 1964? Or the other civil rights laws of that era? Does he think of the voters who supported such laws?

If anything, civil rights stemmed from the work of people who had lived through World War I.

T.A. Heppenheimer

Fountain Valley

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Like Balzar, I am unnerved by the recent media drumbeat of “the Greatest Generation.” Without question, that generation defined “the last hurrah” for democracy. My father and five uncles served in the U.S. Navy. This same generation returned entrenched in racism, bigotry and “white” entitlement. My father and uncles taught me the phrase, “free, white and 21.”

Those same WWII military heroes sent my generation to die in the undeclared war in Vietnam, to fight the “Red” menace, the “yellow” peril (Hiroshima apparently an insufficient deterrent). But I particularly resent the hubris in suggesting that America has even seen its greatest generation. As a country, we should learn from the past, rather than deify it prematurely.

Luan LaPerna Gaines

Dana Point

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Balzar is on target. The whole story about all of “the Greatest Generation” must be told. Tom Brokaw’s book, whose title named this generation, is a moving biographical collage of the stories of only some of the heroic men and women of those days. I recommended the book to many of my friends; a number of them WWII veterans who were in the worst heat of battle. And, I relate, in my own way, to so much of that book.

However, not a single Mexican American is mentioned in the book. We are still left out again; now, in this important, widely read book by Brokaw. The irony of the servicemen-led race riots against the Mexican community, with our record number of Medal of Honor winners, should have been included, somehow. I was a 13-year-old at Loyola High School when the so-called “zoot-suit” riots broke out on June 3, 1944. I remember.

Cesar A. Gonzalez-T.

Professor Emeritus

Founding Chair,

Chicano Studies

San Diego Mesa College

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Re “The True ‘Great Generation,’ ” by Mike Males, Opinion, Aug. 26: It will be the generation of something or others that will rectify what my generation of Betty Ford narcissists has wrought. We boomers are the product of what Brokaw has called “the Greatest Generation.” The one forged on the twin anvils of the Great Depression and the big war. Their hard work and historical circumstances created a now-bygone era of unprecedented prosperity in the United States. It was to their misguided but loving credit that they wanted to spare boomers what they had to go through.

Ted Bryla

Alta Loma