AN OPEN LETTER TO THE WHITE COMMUNITY
	Many in the White community tend to discount injustice towards African-Americans in this country.  Even though you mean well, you don’t really understand the tremendous frustration relative to the Black experience here in America.  For example, while most of us in the African-American community don’t doubt that the Goldman’s are a wonderful family that would stand-up against injustice anywhere, even in his pain, Fred Goldman betrayed an insensitivity to that very same pain in the African-American experience.  When he said, “How dare Johnny Cochran compare Mark Fuhrman to Hitler?” he was discounting the injustice and misery that has been the African-American experience in this country.  His words seemed to imply, what the Mark Fuhrmans of this world are currently doing to the African-Americans in this country is insignificant compared to what Hitler did to the Jews.  In response I’d like to point out to Mr. Goldman that a cub is still a lion even though he hasn’t killed as many prey - but give him time. In addition, I also submit to Mr. Goldman that what happened to the Jews in Germany and what has been going on in this country with respect to African-Americans over the past two hundred years only differ in terms of rate and mode of extermination.  So while we have great sympathy for his current circumstance, we must respectfully insist that he please not presume to tell us how to define our current plight. Jews don’t corner the market on suffering and pain. And finally, this episode doesn’t inevitably have to lead to what many predict to be a further division between the races. On the contrary, it could be a new beginning.  For many years the African-American community has tried in vain to explain to the people of this country the frustration that we feel when we are faced with what we perceive to be injustice.  We felt, for example, the very same frustration that you are now when LAPD officers were exonerated for killing Eula Love, a Black woman trying to prevent her utilities from being shut off.  We also felt your frustration when a Korean woman killed the fourteen year old Latasha Harlan over a bottle of orange juice - shooting her in the back of the head, and then only being placed on probation. We were frustrated, yet again, when even after the cops who beat Rodney King were finally convicted, the judge gave them a lighter than normal sentence, saying, “They had suffered enough.” So, make no mistake, we are intimately acquainted with the pain of frustration. But don’t take this to mean that I’m implying that the O.J. verdict was unjust, I’m simply saying that since you think it was, you now have a point of reference to help you to understand the way we’ve felt for over two hundred years. And by the way, this writer is proud to count himself among the “ignorant, and under-educated postal workers, incapable of understanding the facts in this case.”? Eric L. Wattree wattree.com
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