FEATURED JOBS
Allow me to take issue with Jon Parks’ genteelly racist Dec. 14 JT column, “Still Dreaming.” With impeccable white-bread and “arbeit macht frei” logic, Mr. Parks concludes that “MLK would have many reasons to feel that skin color is less important now” than 50 years ago.
Here is what conservative pundit Michael Gerson, the chief speechwriter in the Bush administration, has to say on that point: “Today, the greatest single threat to the unity of America [is] the vast, increasing segregation of young, African-American men and boys from the promise of their country” (“The Overlooked Plight of Black Males,” Washington Post, Dec. 13).
The problem has been getting worse for decades, in good economic times and bad. Whether out of profound ignorance or the desire to score political points, Parks’ view is reminiscent of the attempt by Soviet authorities to expunge the Jewish identity of the victims of Babi Yar, identifying them only as “over 100,000 citizens of Kiev and prisoners of war.”
Baruch Shaw
Clarksville, Md.
