NYT Letter: Obama's Church Was Racist

To the Editor:

For 20 years, Barack Obama attended a church that preached racist rhetoric. I am curious how well Mr. Obama would be polling if he had not been so tolerant of racism in his own spiritual house.

Peter Reitzes
Brooklyn

And two other critical letters there:

To the Editor:

Nicholas D. Kristof’s column includes an example of the unconscious discrimination that permeates our society. He refers to Senator Barack Obama as black when Mr. Obama is half black and half white. Why does that make him black instead of white?

The categorization as black takes us back to a terrible time when it was consciously thought that any amount of black blood contaminated the white race.

George Odian
Staten Island,

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To the Editor:

Nicholas D. Kristof writes of the “unconscious biases” that exist among white voters in this election. But it is impossible to have a serious discussion about race, conscious or unconscious, without discussing the biases of black voters in this election.

When Hillary Rodham Clinton made the historically correct comment about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and President Lyndon B. Johnson, the Obama campaign distorted her remark and turned it into a racial comment.

The great track record that the Clintons had on civil rights made this distortion an absurdity. This, however, did not stop the black community from turning against Mrs. Clinton.

What has since followed is the monolithic black vote for Barack Obama. I have heard black voters say that they intend to vote for Mr. Obama not for his policies, but because he is black. This is no more thought-provoking or acceptable than the comments of those who say they will not vote for Mr. Obama because of his color.

If we are ever going to finally have an honest debate about race in this country, we have to examine the racism that exists in all of us regardless of color or background.

Ellen Shire
New York,