Pine Bluff letters

Foolish Democrats

Editor, The Commercial:

What a bunch of blowhards the House Democrats are.

I don't know how anyone with a lick of intelligence can stand to listen to all of them as they, each, in turn, recite and recite .. and recite some more, everything from the Gettysburg Address to the Star Spangled Banner, before getting to the point, which supposedly is to prove that President Trump was guilty of incitement to insurrection last week.

They've been on a witch hunt for over four years now, and they all knew they are going to vote to impeach him before they ever walked into the House chamber, so why waste time and taxpayer money?

It's just their little 15 minutes of fame; anyway they can get it, led by a vindictive old woman who has no business in such a power position. America is in for a rough ride, so fasten your seat belts.

Jack Mayberry,

Sheridan

Yes, violence is us

Editor, The Commercial:

This is not who we are. How many times have you heard that?

On Jan. 6, 2021, the violence at the Capitol was incited, encouraged and condoned by the President of the United States. The violence was fueled by Trump's insistence that specific people stole the presidency. He has pushed for Republican legislatures to overturn the election.

While Trump's demand may seem strange, precedence for such a claim dates back to our nation's founding.

Trump's mob rebelled against the same things that inspired the 1877 Hayes-Tilden Compromise, the 1898 Wilmington insurrection, the 1921 Tulsa Massacre, and numerous other violent incidents against Black people, businesses and the state.

In 1877, through a compromise, Rutherford B Hayes was awarded the White House over Samuel J. Tilden, subjecting Black Americans to a century of Jim Crow terror, a trade-off for electoral peace. By the end of the 1898 Wilmington insurrection and massacre, a thriving, middle-class Black community had been destroyed. At least 60 were dead, and white supremacists replaced the entire city government.

The Tulsa race massacre took place on May 31 and June 1, 1921, when mobs of white residents, many of them deputized and given weapons by city officials, attacked Black residents and businesses of the Greenwood district in Tulsa, Okla., destroying what was then known as "The Black Wall Street." The area featured shops, restaurants, movie theatres, a library, pool halls and nightclubs.

As in the past, the rise of Black Americans to political, cultural, and scientific achievements, enfranchisement, and land ownership, makes some white Americans question the wisdom of democracy.

As Keith Reed writes, "The riot validated what history has always shown and what Trump has always known he could exploit since he was a candidate: that racialized violence, even to the point of treason, is tolerable if the perpetrators are white and their political aim is disenfranchising or oppressing Black people. Those who claim otherwise speak from ignorance, both of this election cycle and history."

I beg to differ: Violence is in our DNA. This is who we are.

Chestine Sims

White Hall

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