Letters: 9/5/19

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Careless journalism

[Joel] Dyer: You are an intelligible writer, and your article, “The perils of forgotten history” (Re: Buzz, Aug. 29, 2019) contained a good amount of historical information that I found interesting, but if you have time, I’d like you to read what I have to say.

First, I am writing to you to beg that you just don’t write lies into the featured section of Boulder Weekly. President Trump did not call all brown migrants rapists and MS-13 gang members. You know that; writing hyperbolic slander carelessly in the first paragraph of your story ruins your credibly for the remaining sections of your article. Boulder Weekly is often in newspaper holders near bus stops in Boulder, you could have reached more people to empathize with what happened in 1974, starting out with lies is ineffective.

Secondly, I fear that your article is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now that we have an edifice dedicated to the “original stewards of the land”; are European Americans supposed to live in permanent guilt? Your article is an implicit condemnation of people who look at their arm and see white skin. That is not a solution if your goal is to not repeat the past. I read your article feeling like I was being threatened in each paragraph, it was like you were asking me to confess to a crime; which is the only way Los Seis can become relevant to the average Boulderite. The Los Seis artifact is a result of the Chicano movement clashing with U.S. government sovereignty; that was the context back then, and that context has not changed. Context matters when you think evil and good belong where you think they belong.

Remember Mr. Dyer, conservatives and the right never create or change anything, they just react to what they see and what they perceive. If someone wants racial harmony in their community, implicit demonetization of whites and writing an article commemorating a stone structure to make a horror story of the past relevant by the invocation that whites must atone again, and again, and again, is the same shaming mechanism that spurred Trump to election.

Your article is nothing but a fan to the flames. I hope you learn that there exists a thing called forgiveness and understanding through context. Explicit condemnation of American sovereignty and implicit condemnation of European Americans, with sculptures like the Los Seis de Boulder, do nothing but point fingers.

If you don’t know how to help America, please don’t write about her. Thank you for reading.

Jacob Oliver/via internet