Letter
to the editor
Life’s failures cannot be blamed on others
I
cannot believe that in 2003 there are people
that believe that for the United States
“it has been a way of life that historically
and presently excludes: indigenous people,
people of color, working class and poor
people.”
If you believe every single word of D. Tran’s
letter printed April 21, you would think
that slavery was still legal today. Being
a student in one of the most diverse schools
of one of the most diverse cities in the
country, Tran’s whiny diatribe is ironic,
disgusting and ridiculous. I am appalled
by his/her condescension of minorities and
hate for this country.
Tran paints a picture that minorities in
the military are being oppressed because
they are being forced to fight. He/she needs
to be reminded that joining the military
is a voluntary action, and they serve proudly.
Tran needs to be grateful for that service,
because anyone paying attention to the war
would see that the newly liberated people
of Iraq certainly are.
To illustrate how wrong Tran is, before
the civil rights revolution of the 1960s,
something Tran seems to think never happened,
there was a 19th century abolitionist named
Frederick Douglass, a black man. He spent
his life going from slave, to public speaker,
to presidential advisor, to U.S. foreign
diplomat. A motto in his life was “what
is possible for me is possible for you.”
There has been racial injustice in the past,
and most of it remains there. When I look
at the lives of people like Douglass, Booker
T. Washington and Martin Luther King, and
compare conditions they lived in to the
race relations of today, I cannot and will
not accept Tran’s ignorant and myopic view
of the world. If Frederick Douglass, a black
man and former slave, could accomplish here
what he did 100 years before the civil rights
revolution, then I have no excuse for failure
in my life. Minorities have no excuse. D.
Tran has no excuse and needs to quit whining
about how bad life is here, because it really
isn’t.
—
Jason Garthoffner
|
