Dear Editor:

First, I’d like to know what a Laramie opinion has to do with our editorial page. It may reflect the attitude of a portion of our community, but my experience sees this end of the state being a lot more conservative and educated.

I am appalled and indignant over some of the exaggerated and incorrect claims about the blacks in our country made in the letter posted in the June 30 paper.

1. Equal rights denied for 400 years: Voting rights were given to slaves in 1870. Since then our government has poured money into the black communities for education, social programs, welfare, hiring preferences, scholarship preferences, tax preferences for business ownership and racial quotas for job positions. What progress has all these efforts produced?

Yes, I come from the South, and I’ve seen the black community living in poverty. But I’ve also seen a large majority of those citizens not participate in elections, drop out of school, not pay attention in school. Girls in their late teens were pushed to get pregnant so they could qualify for their own welfare. The black community would have a party at the hospital when the baby was born. Liberal platforms encouraged “organization” instead of job fairs and work programs.

2. Reparations? Did you know that the first slave owner in colonial North America was Anthony Johnson, a black indentured servant who worked for his freedom, who eventually owned a plantation and black slaves? There were many black slave owners in the south. After the war, the Republicans enacted a reparations program to give every slave 40 acres and a mule. Later, the Democrats stopped that program. And reparations were not offered to the thousands of families whose husbands, sons, fathers, and uncles died in a war to free the slaves. Nor were reparations offered to the families of slaves and indentured servants of other colors in the same time period who worked their way into American life to become a middle class workforce.

3. Americans killing African natives, plundering their land, subjugating the people into slavery. Long before the Europeans started selling slaves to the slave traders, the black Africans themselves rounded up their own people from other tribes and sold them to slave ships. Do we now get the Africans to pay reparations for their part in this?

The writer from Laramie refers to a particular professor for much of the ideas in the article. What a shame our education system has come to indoctrinating our youth with unsubstantiated opinions of political rhetoric to enhance the power of their liberal cause.

Forced slavery has existed since Biblical times in all countries and societies. Was it right? No. I imagine if we could trace our heritage back far enough, we’d find most of us have forefathers who were enslaved. There is no way we can “atone” for wrongs done. We’ll never get “even.” And pouring more money and favors into any particular community doesn’t help — we’ve seen that.

Perhaps if we quit treating them like victims and more like brothers and sisters, we’d be ahead of the curve.

Jan Sons

Powell