To the editor:

Mr. George Fisher’s letter of Jan. 13 takes issue with a letter of Mr. Stephen Sellers about the Rittenhouse case. Mr. Fisher concludes that the verdict in the Rittenhouse trial was wrong. Now, after national interest in every aspect of that trial, and a properly-constituted jury that reviewed all the evidence, the verdict is that Rittenhouse was found not guilty. Fisher says, “you have to be blind not to see that he committed murder.” That’s it, for him. He offers no new information, so he is just spouting an opinion fueled by some unstated prejudice. Why we should care what he says?

Anyway, Fisher goes on to a new subject a call for us to be equally sympathetic — or outraged, as the case may be — in our reactions to the various crimes that make headlines these days. He takes Sellers to task for not mentioning the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of white police officers, two cases that have received national publicity. However, to be fair, Fisher should perhaps mention the murder of 18-year-old college student Teresa Majors by three black males, and the recent stabbing death of 24-year-old grad student Brianna Kupfer by a black man, allegedly a criminal with a long list of arrests. Why is Fisher concerned about black deaths and not with white deaths? Perhaps he believes the death of a black person is of greater consequence than that of a white.

I wonder if Fisher, if asked to defend this view, would somehow see this difference in consequence as some sort of payback for years of black slavery, part of some sort of reparation for the disadvantage that blacks allegedly still labor under because of slavery.

I wonder about that alleged disadvantage. Let me describe another way American history might have unfolded: let us say that there never were blacks brought to this country as slaves and that there was thus no significant black population in this country until, perhaps, the earliest 20th century, when blacks might have freely immigrated here in numbers that matched the actual current black population. Under that scenario, would today’s black population be in a better position for economic achievement than they are now? I have my own opinion on this, but I wonder what Fisher’s view might be.

I am reminded of something that happened to me some years ago. Our company was to be under the leadership of a new boss, and my job was to accumulate the files and records that he could review to understand the company’s history. The boss arrived, and he never looked at that stuff! He was not interested in the past; his total focus was on the future.

To say that any race in this country does not have the equal ability to succeed is a racist statement. However, success demands self-confidence; he that believes himself a victim becomes a victim.

Lewistown