Enough talk; time for action
In her high-toned response to “Read This First,” Eboni C. Bugg [Mailbag, October 4] says essentially that C-VILLE editor Cathy Harding wouldn’t know racism if it bit her on the ass. With respect to Ms. Bugg’s passionate sincerity, I have to say that her letter comes off as not much more than a shrill complaint that Ms. Harding doesn’t regard the issue as serious just because she takes issue with the words of one of its demagogues.
I’ll allow Dean Turner’s assertion and Ms. Bugg’s insistence that racial incidents are terrorism, “[t] error being something that causes intense, overpowering fear.” But we might apply that definition to reversal of fortune, disease, old age and impending death as well. Everybody is terrorized by something, and it is how we deal with terrorism, collectively and individually, that defines our character. So let me add another word to the lexicon: equanimity– evenness of mind under stress. Hemingway took it up a few notches and styled it “grace under pressure”—a refusal to whine, no matter what.
This virtue is attained by dealing with suffering, not just by talking about it, and certainly not by imposing it on others. “Dealing with suffering” does not mean acquiescence or forbearance. On the contrary, it means taking active responsibility for our own condition.
Ms. Bugg complains of a lack of empathy in Cathy Harding’s putting recent instances of racism in a perspective. But then she asserts that Ms. Harding couldn’t understand anyway because she is a “white, neo-hippie editor of a liberal art and news weekly.” What does Ms. Bugg want? Just to have her say?
There are federal laws that punish violators of the civil rights of others. Institutions like the University have gone beyond what many reasonable people think appropriate to provide affirmative action opportunities. Decent people deplore the instances of racism in the past as well as the recent incidents in Charlottesville and the new, international, Internet-driven form of racism that Ms. Bugg alludes to. Still, some people’s hearts just won’t be changed. But the fact that the problem exists does not belie the commitment to solving it.
Ms. Bugg is right: racism exists. It is appalling. And, O.K., it is terrorism. Now—that having been said, what shall we do?
David Sellers
Spotsylvania Courthouse
Let’s get together (yeah yeah yeah!)
It is a sad commentary on the state of political polarization in our country when the sight of Democrats and Republicans working together for the common good provokes a comment from C-VILLE Weekly about “strange political bedfellows” [7 Days, October 11]. Bipartisanship used to be the norm; now it’s the exception.
A coalition of Democrats, Republicans, and independents has indeed been working hard to publicize and win approval of the November 8 referendum that would allow the city to join the many other Virginia localities that have an elected—as opposed to an appointed—school board. Should the referendum pass, let’s hope that others will be inspired to work across the aisle for the common good.
Jeffrey Rossman
Charlottesville