Letters to the Editor

Letter: Alaska delegation has duty to speak out against Trump bigotry

The scene is familiar: You are at a dinner party and a stranger or someone you thought you knew makes an ignorant and offensive remark about a person of a certain race. There is an uncomfortable silence while everyone tries to figure out how to respond. Then, to your relief, someone deftly handles the situation and the conversation moves on to the soup.

I had my first experience with this when I was 17, living on my own for the first time in North Carolina. I was playing cards with neighbors. Because I was white, they assumed it was safe to casually use the "n" word. I never played cards with them again, but I also said nothing.

Now we find ourselves having this conversation at a table of 300 million, and Donald Trump is the unwelcome guest who is ranting about "animals," "sh–hole" countries and Mexican "rapists." His staff and supporters do their best to spin his statements, but we all know what's going on, because we've sat at this table before — only now the offensive views are coming from the president of the United States. We can't just ignore him and hope he leaves before dessert. History has taught us that terrible things happen when the people in power target and dehumanize a group of people based on their race and the people who can and should intervene stand by and say nothing.

Congressman Don Young and Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan were elected to be our voices in Washington, D.C. They know exactly what's going on, as we all do, but for the most part they stay silent, along with the majority of their Republican colleagues. There is no short-term political gain that justifies this silence. Racist rhetoric and policies from the White House do not just demean and divide us as Americans, they give the wink and nod to race-based hatred and violence here and around in the world. With so much at stake, any politician who has the power to influence the national conversation on race in a positive way has the responsibility to do so.

Alyson Pytte
Anchorage

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