Systemic, how?

This is in response to the guest opinion, “Systemic racism affects everyone” published 7/29/20: The author, the Rev. Gretchen Rehberg, doesn’t tell us how whites are systemically racist, only that we are. This is so typical of the myriad of articles and letters telling us about the “privilege” we have as a result of our “original sin.”

Here and there, we read that the criminal justice system is an example of systemic racism. If we merely look at numbers of arrests and incarcerations, we could draw a conclusion of unfairness of one race over another. But this is bone-headed reasoning, as it would be ridiculous to conclude systemic sexism exists because males are arrested and jailed at a far higher rate than females. How come we don’t see protests over systemic sexism if we are just going to look at statistics?

Here is a fact: People are racists; not groups. A system or idea could be good or bad, but that doesn’t mean all of the people are good or bad. If we assign characteristics to a race and say we are better than “those” people, isn’t this the actual definition of racism? Isn’t it possible for any person from any race to be guilty of thinking this way? Isn’t it better to love people without loving groups, than to love groups without loving people? Surely, Rev. Rehberg should agree with this.

Craig Detmer

Spokane