(via YES! Weekly)
How can the following LTTE in today's N&R even justify a response?
Yet, I felt the need to show you the mentality of some in our fair city. But we wonder why we have double-digit unemployment...why companies won't even look at this town...why we continuously have a brain-drain? Letters like this do our city a disservice. When we continuously look at color through a prism, we do our own citizens an injustice:
GC athletics disrupts neighborhood
The following is a Counterpoint.
By Margaret Pinnix
I read the Counterpoint written by Otis Hairston on March 18 in the News & Record. Kimmerly Milner, a Greensboro College alumna (March 28), misrepresented the facts in her rebuttal by stating that Hairston accused President Craven Williams and Greensboro College of racism. He made absolutely no mention of racism.
But since you want to inject racism into the conversation, Ms. Milner, I will say you are absolutely right. We are seeing in our community environmental racism.
The predominantly white Greensboro College has come into my community and destroyed the peaceful environment I have grown accustomed to over the past 40 years.
I listen to the yelling by Greensboro College athletes and whistle- and horn-blowing by the coaches, a majority of whom are white.
There is illegal parking on our streets by white students. There is yelling in our community by the Greensboro recreation department’s soccer program, which is predominantly white.
There are bright lights shining in my windows at night by this predominantly white college. White athletes are coming into our private yards to retrieve balls.All of the above has destroyed the peaceful environment of our community by a private white, predominantly United Methodist college. This is called environmental racism. Every United Methodist should be ashamed of their support of Williams and Greensboro College in their attempt to destroy our community.
Not only does Otis Hairston oppose the project by Greensboro College, but more than 90 percent of this community also opposes this intrusive sports park.
Ms. Milner, look at the plans of your alma mater and ask if you would want this in your front or back yard.
If your answer is yes, please speak to Williams and invite him to begin planning his sports park for your community. Then, this issue will be resolved.
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Again, this shouldn't even justify a response.
E.C. :)
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3 comments:
Aside from the fact that the writer attempts to extend the term "environmental racism" beyond its real and substantive meaning, this letter doesn't succeed in persuading or even in generating sympathy. It leaves the reader with the strong impression that the writer wouldn't object if the intruders were black. That's what she makes it all come down to, not that there are these intrusions, but that they are perpetrated by (mostly) white people.
So why should I care? The writer doesn't give me any reason to. I shrug.
I listen to the yelling by Greensboro College athletes and whistle- and horn-blowing by the coaches, a majority of whom are white.
There is illegal parking on our streets by white students. There is yelling in our community by the Greensboro recreation department’s soccer program, which is predominantly white.
This is a lot better than the gun fire heard at NC AT&T! I rest my case.
Beau, use quotation marks for Pete's sake.
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