Letters to the Editor
weeping for brunnhilde
Published Letters: 1150 Editor's Choice: 3
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@ Joan
[Read the article: I was wrong about Wright]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You know, Joan, what I'm about to share isn't, strictly speaking, your fault, because I own my own feelings and responses, but hear me out, please.
This summer I watched No End in Sight at the Film Forum to a packed house.
We all sat there, stewing in our collective emotions, anger and fury being chief among them.
They were palpable.
As we filed out onto W. Houston St., I caught the following snatch of conversation, uttered by a white middle aged woman, your typical middle class Film Forum type, responding to the apocalyptic catalogue of hubris, warmongering and incompetence we'd just witnessed: "God, it makes me want to join the insurgency."
I'm reminded of this by my own response, right now, to you and your race-baiting, which is something like, "God, it makes me want to join the Nation of Islam."
I'm not the kind of person who joins or is even sympathetic to the Nation of Islam, Joan. I'm 35, an academic, black, married to a European.
I generally don't go in for black pride and that kind of thing, it's just not the path I've chosen or have been set on.
And yet, your bile seriously has me thinking hateful things about "white people like you."
And I hate myself for thinking that because that's really not who I am, or at least, it's not who I usually am and it's certainly not who I aspire to be.
And yet, here I am, fuming, ready to throw bombs (metaphorically) because of your button-pushing.
I'm an eminently reasonable, peace-loving person who believes in the deepest recesses of my soul that reconciliation, honorable reconciliation, is hard work, but it beats the alternative, which is endless rancor.
And yet, you provoke me.
As I say, I own that, that's my problem, and I'm not holding you responsible for that, but I would ask you to just reflect on what I'm saying because while you're not responsible, you are implicated.
This is why I ask you what you stand for.
You say you want to be in a position to effect reconciliation between Clinton people and Obama people, yet you write this race-baiting tripe.
You might consider whether and how your professed goal is advanced by causing people like me to fantasize about joining the Nation of Islam.
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@ Villemar
[Read the article: I was wrong about Wright]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Godspeed, to you.
Europe's a fine place to live.
I may join you someday.
It's funny, because I'm always imploring people not to be motivated by fear because it's blinding and destructive, and here I am, fearing very much my fellow citizens.
Clinton has invoked nuclear annihilation and the plebs in the cheap seats are screaming for a pound of Obama's flesh.
It's fucking barbaric.
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@ Joan
[Read the article: I was wrong about Wright]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thank you, Joan, I appreciate it.
I'd appreciate it even more if you'd really take to heart what I'm trying to say, not for my own sake, but for all our sakes.
But thank you.