Reader responds to Writers Circle articles

To the editor:

The Gazette Writers' Circle essays on 'privilege” predictably were a jeremiad about whites having all the advantages in our society. Bob Elliott's piece was the exception in being thoughtful and nuanced. To add some balance to the four other pieces, here are some examples of black privilege.

Black privilege means that you can, as RaQuishia Harrington does in her piece, decry that 'I don't have the privilege to just see myself as an individual, because I will always be ... classified by my race”, while demanding the huge preference affirmative action gives her race in college admission and in hiring on account of her race. If you want to be judged as an individual and save us from the Rachel Dolezals of the world, renounce racial preferences/discrimination.

Kingsley Botchway criticizes store clerks for watching him closely. As a teenager in the 1960s, I experienced this in record stores. I knew my demographic (teenagers) often shoplifted records and blamed my demographic's behavior for the scrutiny. Botchway might try the same.

Black privilege also means you can claim victim status because 24 percent of Iowa's prison population is black, while only about 3 percent of the population is black. Some people attribute this to discrimination in the judicial system. Former district court judge George Stigler, who is black, once said, 'of a thousand reasons why so many blacks are incarcerated, discrimination in the Iowa judicial system ranks at 996.” We should work on the other 995 first.

Kurt Maas

Coggon