LETTER TO THE EDITOR

As former Post-Gazette staff members, we are writing to express our anger at the content, tone and timing of
Monday’s editorial. (Jan. 15, “Reason as Racism”)

The piece seeks to excuse President Trump’s disparaging remarks about nations of color, while also limiting the
term “racist” to the narrowest and most violent forms of the practice, as if it no longer exists.

This is not the Post-Gazette we knew.

As a group, our personal politics and worldviews were often at odds. Newspapers are not a place for a single
brand of personality or intellect. But we all shared the core values of journalism: fairness, accuracy, careful
thought, and common decency.

An editorial saying, “so what” to a president referring to African countries as “shitholes,” and suggesting that
the definition of racism be confined to the likes of racist mass-murderer Dylann Roof or segregationist sheriff
Bull Connor, who set police dogs on civil rights demonstrators, basically surrenders the cause of civil rights.

Racism is more than overt violence. It is the systematic degradation of people through practices and institutions
that are so pervasive we cease to recognize them in our own lives. It is dismissing a politician’s horrible remarks
as “coarse” but meaningless, when words are the very tools of governance. It is suggesting that racist is an
invalid term unless someone has met a standard so narrow that it excuses a discrimination that is little more than
apartheid without the violence.

Notably, racism is also saying these things in print, in a major newspaper, on Martin Luther King Day.

William Toland (412-337-1738)

Mackenzie Carpenter
James O’Toole
Ervin Dyer
Timothy McNulty
Deborah M. Todd
Mark Roth
Allan Walton
Michael Henninger
Monica Haynes
R.J. Hufnagel
Ann Belser
Jennifer Lin
Cristina Rouvalis
Dennis Roddy
Carmen Lee
Jim McKay
Kim Lyons
Robert Bianco
Daniel Malloy
Barbara Vancheri
Patt Risher Ledewitz
Barbara White Stack
(Link below)
http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/editorials/2018/01/15/Reason-as-racism-An-immigration-debate-gets-
derailed/stories/201801150024