Race is the glue holding power intact

The mayor of America's largest city promotes three controversial agendas. Smaller sized soda containers, gun control and a policing program that targets minorities. Most whites protested against any intrusion into their soda pop drinking habits. Most care more about the size of their pop than how much freedom we are willing to relinquish.

Without racial factors, even disinterested observers would surmise that any government measure that violates two constitutional principles - the Fourth, unlawful search, and the 14th, equal protection - would garner the most concern. Is the reason conservative and liberal whites are on the same page have anything to do with race? Many whites, including “liberals,” act like many conservatives when it comes to racial injustices - rationalize and defend what in a more “perfect union” would be indefensible. Their warped logic: the ends justify the means, a philosophy that used to be associated with communists and those viewed as anti-American in my youth.

So, if we were truly living in a post-racial America, why such a disconnect? My assessment: Race not only matters in apartheid America, it is the glue that holds its power - white supremacy - intact. Whenever/wherever race can be injected, and in my opinion, that is virtually everywhere, it comes into play.

How ironic that the mayor of New York, a Jew, has overseen a dramatic increase in a program - stop and frisk - which is eerily similar to tactics used by Nazis in the early 1930s, mostly against Jews.

Thomas Sass

Iowa City