Racism
Racism
Something to ponder
In her March 3 letter, Lottie Tagupa said that haole was not a racial slur.
As a child, I was lucky to have a Native American grandfather who told me of the horrors racial hatred brought on. The second thing was to grow up in central Berkeley, which was a small United Nations. We grew up and had friends of very ethnicity you can think of.
When I was discharged from the U.S. Army and came back from overseas in 1967, my wife and I drove from California to a little town in Georgia, where her parents had moved. I saw a large barn-type building with a sign that read: “Knights of the Klu Klux Klan.”
We went to see a movie and I saw African- Americans standing outside in the rain, at a walk-up counter to get their popcorn and candy. They then walked up an outside staircase and were only allowed to sit in the balcony. They watched the movie through a wire fence.
We had a flat tire on the way home and I pulled into the only gas station in town. When I told the owner (a white man), he said, with a very large African-American man standing there with us: “I’ll get the nigger to fix it.”
When the black man with one hand carried the flat tire into the shop, I asked the owner how he could make such terrible racial slur right in front of the man. He said: “It’s not a racial slur. That is what everyone calls them.”
Think about it.
Ken Serverson
Kailua-Kona
Short sighted
Secure our future
I was surprised to read yet another letter condemning the telescopes on Mauna Kea in WHT. One would think, after our planet’s recent encounter with a medium-sized asteroid brushing by and the atom bomb-sized explosion of a small one over Russia the same day, we would be discussing ways to deal with these threats.
First we have to find out what is flying about at hypersonic speeds around us, then modify our technology to prevent these objects from snuffing us out. The former requires the most advanced optical telescopes working under ideal conditions — and that is why we need these machines on this island.
If we are all vaporized by a city-sized rock the way the dinosaurs were, there will be no one left to worship on any pristine mountain top. If you don’t think securing the future of life on Earth is a sacred endeavor, then you can drop out, join an apocalyptic cult and get off waiting for the end of days.
Brian Lievens
Holualoa