I agree with Alex Lee (“Republican Reboot: The SHIT Party,” Letters 3/25). Look at the repulsive voter suppression laws that Georgian Republicans passed like cockroaches in the dark of night: a naked hustle to destroy voting rights of Black people. Their newly minted laws also harm poor whites, but so far they’re too stupefied by racism to see it.

It doesn’t take much conversing with the average John/Jane Q White Person to see how clueless they are about race. It’s angering to hear how checked out they’ve been. Did you not even once notice the absence of Black/Brown people in your neighborhoods, schools, parks, jobs, churches? Did you think it was coincidental, rather than years of racist laws, policies, violence and schemed exclusion? Was your life goal to reside in a “good” neighborhood, telling yourself that race had nothing to do with it? Any Black person can tell you that “good” neighborhood means a “white” neighborhood in unspoken but very clear terms. 

It’s like you’ve lived your life inside a pit toilet. In pit toilets you do your business, try not to breathe and man, don’t ever look down. But the stink is there. Whites have shit on people of color for centuries, literally capitalizing on our blood, sweat and tears while ignoring the stink of their own actions. Oh, and suddenly now some of them realize it’s been no picnic for Asian folks either.

Time to drain that pit toilet, aka racism, white people, and stop filling it up! 

Ramona Wise

Eugene