READERS WRITE

Election 2008

Win was victory for blacks and whites

I am glad Barack Obama won the election. It not only was the right moment in time, but it will be good for this nation and the world. It will certainly prove to an otherwise doubting world that democracy does work. This is a victory for black and white races because Obama, having a black father and a white mother, is neither black nor white but is the embodiment of both races.

JOHN D. CORNWELL JR.

Stockbridge

Fear-mongering tactics rightly rejected

The media says that the economy is the main reason Barack Obama won this election, and I’m sure they are right. However, I like to think that this election was also a repudiation of Karl Rovian sleazeball politics.

The John McCain campaign was negative, misleading and sensationalistic, much like George Bush’s campaign against McCain in 2000 (oh, the irony). But this time they made it even worse by inciting fear and hatred. The majority of voters saw through it, ignored it and elected Obama.

And look at what happened in North Carolina. Sen. Elizabeth Dole put out an ad that vilified atheists (guess what, people, atheists are Americans too!) and misrepresented her opponent’s religious faith. The ad backfired and she lost. Just another thing to be proud of regarding this election.

LORI O’NEAL

Kennesaw

Energy efficiency, renewability best courses

An AJC editorial called for new nuclear power plants to address global warming and provide an additional source of electricity (“Reactors have to be part of energy plan,” @issue, Nov. 2). However, overwhelming evidence indicates that energy efficiency and renewable energy can yield more electricity, more high-quality jobs and greater reduction of global warming gases faster and cheaper than new nuclear plants.

Nuclear plant costs have skyrocketed, doubling in just the last two years. Wind energy can now produce electricity at half the cost of a new nuclear plant. Energy efficiency can save electricity at one-fourth the cost of nuclear-generated electricity. Moreover, a dollar spent on energy efficiency reduces more than 10 times as much global warming gases as a dollar spent on nuclear power. Reducing global warming gases through renewable energy is also much more cost-efficient compared to new nuclear plants. For a growing economy with full employment, energy efficiency and renewable energy sources are all we need.

FRANK BOVE

Bove, of Tucker, is a board member of ECO-Action, a grass-roots environmental organization.

Responses to “For my generation, the timing was unexpected,” @issue, Nov. 5

Tucker’s pride resonates in me

Like Cynthia Tucker, I am proud to see that walls around diversity are falling. I was raised in rural northwest Georgia and went to an elementary school with only one black student. I was raised to separate myself from blacks.

Then one day my father got relocated to Round Lake, Ill., for his job. I was a slow-talking country boy out of his element with no friends in a strange place. The first person to speak to me was a black kid named Andy, and my life has been different from that point. I wish this world were different, that everyone would see that a person’s color doesn’t determine character.

I did vote for John McCain; however, it had nothing to do with Barack Obama’s ethnicity. I simply agreed with McCain’s views a little more than Obama’s (the tiebreaker being each candidate’s views on abortion). I do believe that Obama will lead our country down a road that will bring us back to financial stability and respect in the global political scene, and in hindsight I believe I voted for the wrong candidate. I am so happy that this election brought joy to the people of this nation, especially the black community.

RILEY MORRIS

Rome, Ga.

Late recognition of nation’s character

I read with interest Cynthia Tucker’s post-election column and would love to see the one she had ready in the event of a John McCain victory. I doubt we would have read “I have celebrated my country’s amazing journey” or “I’ve been surprised by the speed with which this country has accomplished a social transformation so near complete” or “America embraces its racial and ethnic diversity more readily than any other nation” and “favor[s] pluralism.”

This election did not suddenly make those things happen but, rather, revealed them. With a McCain victory, I think we would have had more of Tucker’s typical rhetoric about the ’50s and ’60s racial oppression carried into the 21st century.

Tucker speaks of her niece with an almost grudging amazement at who she is. I am amazed, too, considering she has grown up around an aunt who, by her own admission, asks her niece about her friends: “Is she black? White? Of color?” An aunt who is so invested in perceived injustice and racism that she is “struggling to find [her] footing on an altered terrain.”

It is past time for Tucker to relax, breathe deeply, find a hobby, enjoy life, and try to find the peace and joy her niece so obviously has.

REBECCA NOELL

Woodstock