Letters to the Editor: What Biden got wrong about white supremacist violence

To the editor: At last, President Biden has called out white supremacy for what it is — a poison in the soul of this nation. But I must take exception to his insistence that this poison is not American.

Sadly, it has been a part of us since the beginning, when slaves were brought here to build the economy, and when land was taken from Indigenous peoples until they were almost wiped out. Waves of immigrants, the Irish, Italians, Jews, Asians and Mexicans, were all branded as invaders until we needed them as essential workers for job and wars.

We exploited, we lynched, we massacred, and laws were passed to institutionalize white power.

White supremacy has been challenged by victims and their white allies, but these challengers were always demonized as disrupters and threats to the security of their critics. Many were killed. Now and then, a decade or so here and there, Americans rise and say, “Enough — we must change.” The results were the end of slavery, grants of citizenship and the passage of civil rights legislation.

But we must remember these as intermittent spasms of guilt and regret. The federal government didn’t make lynching a federal crime until last year, and after every mass shooting there are “thoughts and prayers” and little else, as we wait for the next outbreak of violence in a nation flooded with guns.

This spectacle is American; this is us.

Sidney Morrison, Los Angeles

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To the editor: When I was being schooled, a long time ago, we were taught that America was a “melting pot,” because almost none of us had our roots in this country.

Our ancestors came from other countries. In the 1800s many came from Ireland to escape famine. Centuries ago Africans were abducted and brought to North America on slave ships; our country’s economy, especially in the South, was built on their backs. People from south of the U.S. border came to escape violence and death.

Can any one of us wanting to get rid of immigrants prove they they are not descended from ancestors who came from another country? I sincerely doubt that!

Let’s go back to the “melting pot” idea.

Joanne Berg, La Cañada Flintridge

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To the editor: After reading The Times the last few days, I think that the folks who actually have what columnist Jean Guerrero calls “Tucker Carlson Syndrome” are members of the mainstream media. It’s amusing to me that the liberals are watching Carlson almost as much as conservative viewers are.

Carlson is an opinionated conservative commentator on Fox News. If one doesn’t like his ideas, then switch to CNN or MSNBC, where one has twice as many wildly popular liberal commentators as conservative pundits on Fox News. I know one thing for sure — most Fox viewers have almost zero interest in what the liberal commentators are saying on CNN or MSNBC.

After the mainstream media (and the pandemic) helped take down former President Trump in 2020, they should be happy. But they aren’t. What a bunch of sourpusses.

Mark Walker, Yorba Linda

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To the editor: If Fox News won’t dump Carlson, a clear-cut racist who won’t back down even after he stirs up hatred, we have to dump Fox — and not just its cable news channel, but the whole corporation.

Major League Baseball and the National Football League must discontinue their contracts with Fox Corp. It’s a terrible disgrace that the same corporation that pushes white supremacy gets to carry major sports.

No more normalizing this hideous behavior.

Ivan Goldman, Redondo Beach