Powerful elites live in past

I was watching the GOP convention and the announcer noted that the racial makeup at the arena was 95 percent white. I thought to myself that the goal of the GOP must be to keep the brown people, black people, red people and yellow people as second-class citizens with no political power.

For the record, I am a white person who grew up in a small town southeast of Seattle. The main source of employment was the local Weyerhaeuser lumber mill or dairy farming and cattle ranching or working at Boeing. My high school class graduated in 1962 and was 100 percent white. So it’s no wonder that many of my classmates are Tea Party Republicans. They want to go back to the good old days of the 1950s and ‘60s where you didn’t have to deal with minorities.

The white powerful elite wants to keep their power by spending massive amounts of money on political campaigns, redistricting and voter ID laws. The racial make-up of the country is changing, and we have to change also. Living in the past isn’t going to solve the problem.

Rick Johnson

Spokane