Defending Generals, Vietnam Vets and the Integrity of a Race-Relations Issue

I’m on a roll with three posts in three days. If you have not been here in a couple of days, please scroll down the screen to September 11, 2007 and read the piece by Sens. Joseph Lieberman and John McCain.

Now to today’s business: The only set-up to the first letter is that Mr. Feaver wrote an op-ed column denouncing MoveOn.org’s disgraceful attack on General David Petraeus.

Editor,

The Boston Globe published a letter from a delusional letter writer who wrote, in part, “. . . MoveOn did not invent nastiness. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were no less nasty . . . creating parallels between the MoveOn rant and McCarthyism is ludicrous, and I think that Mr. Feaver knows it (Letters, September 12).”

More ludicrous than creating parallels between MoveOn.org and Sen. Joseph McCarthy is creating parallels between decorated Vietnam veterans who chose to express an opinion during the 2004 Presidential campaign and the political assassins at MoveOn.org.

I think the delusional letter writer does not know this and that’s what makes the delusional letter writer, and all who agree with him, well . . . delusional. (End of first letter.)

And, as frequent visitors to this space know, I’m a white guy perfectly comfortable writing about race and race-relations issues. Militant blacks and guilty white liberals may not be comfortable reading my material because I try to deal with race and race issues honestly. My letter to the Boston Globe this week in response to another guilty, white, liberal article (please go look at all the white faces of the Boston Globe editorial board at boston.com, Today’s Paper, Opinion):

Editor,

No study on traffic-stop, racial-profiling approaches the value of the paper it is printed on unless the study contemplates the race of the police officers involved in all the stops (Study of traffic stops is derailed, Police lagging on racial data collection; September 9).

In July 2003, the Boston Globe published, "When police departments are accused of racial profiling, white officers are generally the ones facing scrutiny. But a Boston Globe analysis of 20,000 Boston police tickets and warnings tells a different story: Minority officers here are at least as tough as whites on minority drivers, and sometimes tougher . . . minority officers were less lenient overall, issuing fewer warnings to all drivers . . . and the racial gap was wider, with minority officers ticketing 43 percent of whites and 54 percent of minorities at the same speeds, the Globe found . . . further, the records show that black officers were toughest on Latino drivers, ticketing 67 percent of Latinos, but just 47 percent of blacks (Minority officers are stricter on minorities, July 20, 2003)."

Contrary to the Boston Globe's suggestion, I don't know if minority officers racially profile more than white officers. I'm certainly not going to draw any conclusions from just one Boston Globe study.

I do know that we need to be sure we properly identify the problems before we try to fix them, though. (End of second letter.)