Oakland Must Look Inward to Break Its Cycle of Despair

It’s really wearisome hearing excuses about why heavily populated minority communities, such as in Oakland, are unable to pull out of their crime and dysfunctional morass (“Listening to Oakland,” by Scott Duke Harris, July 6). No one is forcing blacks to sell crack cocaine, no one is forcing black and Hispanic youths to adopt a gang culture, no one is forcing blacks to have an astronomical out-of-wedlock birth rate, no one is forcing black and Hispanic students to look at achievement as selling out or to look at dumbing it down as keeping it real.

NAACP Oakland branch president Shannon Reeves has it right: The problems are self-inflicted and will only be remedied by blacks and Hispanics themselves. For someone like Rose Braz, director of the prison reform group Critical Resistance, it’s much simpler to point a finger than look inward.

Greg Belluomini

Hawthorne

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I grew up in Oakland and found Harris’ piece to be very one-sided in the negative fashion. Perhaps he should have done more extensive reporting and spoken with some longtime Oakland residents who could have given another side and made for a more balanced report.

Art Thompson III

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