Racist label too hasty

In a June 3 opinion piece by pundit Shawn Vestal (in the news section), citizen responders are called “misguided,” “mentally wounded,” “poor souls” and “bigots.” What led these epithets to be applied to individuals who wrote to The Spokesman online? They were simply tired of the racial strife and pain they had been suffering in California and moved here where, as Vestal dismissively puts it, “we’re such a white loaf of bread.”

A recent study in Philadelphia found at least some segregation takes place because many blacks prefer living with blacks. Are Chinese Americans bigots because they prefer living in Chinatown? Or Swedes who settled in Minnesota and Jews together in New York? Are all bigots because of their desire to live together?

From Africa to California, from the Balkans to the Middle East, ethnic and racial mixing has not always added to the quality of life.

I, who have the privilege of loving two black grandsons from Ethiopia, could now be labeled a racist because I defend the right of all Americans to have their own beliefs and their own freedom to speak out without being publicly smeared as being “mentally wounded” or “bigoted,” no matter how “politically incorrect.”

Foster Cline

Sandpoint