Readers React: Inflammatory rhetoric in poor communities shows how Trump has wounded America

To the editor: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is riding the wave of poverty and misfortune in places like the Bakersfield area community of Oildale. Blaming Hispanics for blue-collar injustices only causes prejudice and fractures communities. (“Conservative Oildale could be a bellwether of how Trump’s message translates in California,” April 4)

Neighbors who once lived side by side peacefully in these rural areas are now focused on immigration and building walls because Trump has offered them his solution to ending their poverty and problems by offering up Hispanics as the cause.

Nobody knows the consequences of racial hatred Trump will leave across our country after he goes home to New York. I beg to differ with Trump: He will do everything but “make America great again.”

Kerie Berkowitz, Moorpark

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To the editor: I’m writing from the home city of United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta, who will surely not vote for Trump.

I am legitimately curious as to whether the reporter you sent to Oildale was aware that Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders held a rally in Bakersfield two days prior to this article’s publication. I am a liberal, and yet this article puts the liberal in “liberal media.”

The reporter writes as if the short amount of time she spent in Oildale and Bakersfield makes her an expert on the voters who represent our county. This article is the equivalent of going to Northridge to write a story about Los Angeles.

Kaitlin Hulsy, Bakersfield

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To the editor: I was shopping in Walgreen’s last week in Bakersfield and at the checkout counter I met a Hispanic mother and daughter. As a retired Spanish teacher, I generally try to help when translation is necessary.

Our conversation drifted to politics, and when I mentioned Trump’s name, the mother slammed her foot down to the ground and twisted it back and forth. So much for Trump.

Elizabeth Keranen, Bakersfield

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To the editor: Is it a paradox, ironic or simply hypocritical that a woman quoted in the article who was standing in her trash-strewn yard states, “I don’t like Mexicans. To me if you can’t speak English, why be here? Go back to where you came from,” while wearing a Day of the Dead T-shirt printed en español?

Babette Wilk, Valley Village

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