READERS WRITE
Diplomacy
Nobel Prize-winning presidents’ work is sorely needed
There are conflicts in the Middle East. There are conflicts in the “’Stans.” Let us not forget that WWI was started by one bullet and WWII was started by one madman. We do not want these conflicts to develop into a major war. Great skill and talent are needed to resolve the various issues. We have two men in America who have those abilities, former President Jimmy Carter and current President Barack Obama. Both are Nobel Peace Price laureates although, for whatever the reason, neither has truly earned their awards. I believe that they should pool their talents, get involved, and put an end to these dangerous conflicts.
DAN SIEGEL, DACULA
Stop unfairly judging GWTW
The recent article by AJC writer Ernie Suggs certainly left no doubt that he had prejudged the romantic novel “Gone With the Wind” when he admitted that within 10 seconds after starting to watch this movie that he hated it (Metro Focus, July 27). I was amused at Suggs’ accusation that the movie depicted “stereotypes.” Is Suggs suggesting that Mammy and Prissy speak with a Boston accent or wear ballroom gowns? Or perhaps he was unhappy that Mammy, Pork and Big Sam thought highly of the white slaveowners? Perhaps Suggs is outraged that white Southerners and the Confederacy was portrayed is a fairly sympathetic light? Suggs, would you have been happier if Mammy was dragging chains around and was beaten daily? Well, that would better fit your agenda wouldn’t it?
The truth is that Ernie Suggs, like all too many Black Americans, have made up their minds what that era was all about and how it should be depicted through their modern rose-colored sunshades of political correctness. Actually, they want nothing to interfere with their victimhood and the political power that it brings.
ERNEST WADE, LOGANVILLE
Yes, GWTW is really racist
Ernie Suggs is apparently shocked or surprised that “Gone With The Wind,” a white Southerners’ “beloved American masterpiece”is racist (“Done with the wind,” Metro Focus, July 27) and that it depicts racial stereotypes. I am white and I can’t imagine a movie containing the subject of slavery which did not contain negative racial stereotypes. Even “Django Unchained” contained negative racial stereotypes, unless Samuel L. Jackson’s character was a positive stereotype. I for one thought that his character and almost all the white folk depicted needed killing, which Django obliged. But Gone with the Wind is chock full of negative racial stereotypes of white folk too, including the Charlotte, Rhett, and those idiotic white gentlemen who couldn’t ride off to the war fast enough to get themselves killed for “The Cause.” Being a white slave owner is about as negative a stereotype that I can imagine.
Listen, anyone who pines for the good old days of plantation slavery is a racist. Period. If Gone with The Wind pines for those old days not forgotten, then it is racist. Were there white folks in the South who lived through the Civil War who pined for the old ways? Sure. They were racists then and those who continue to pine for those old days of slavery are racists now.
THOMAS WEST, ATLANTA
