Success stories missing
EDITOR: EDITOR: I watched with interest the 50-year anniversary of the March on Washington. One speaker after another praised the Rev. Martin Luther King, identified a host of positive changes for minorities that resulted from the civil rights movement and then proceeded to tell the audience that they were still victims.
It's my belief that the more you tell people they are victims, the more they believe it.
What I didn't see or (with the exception of Oprah Winfrey) were stories of black men and women who refused to let the victim stigma define them and grabbed the opportunities presented to them.
Where were men such as Dr. Ben Carson (a gifted neurosurgeon) and black CEOs such as Kenneth Frazier (Merck), Kenneth Chenault (American Express), Don Thompson (McDonald's), Ursula Burns (Xerox), Clarence Otis (Olive Garden and Red Lobster), Richard Parsons (CitiGroup)? Where was Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas?
Were these men and women not invited to speak because they don't fit the narrative that the NAACP, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and others want to project? Is it because as more black men and women succeed, these people and others like them, who continue to convince their brothers and sisters of their continued victimization, will become irrelevant?
EDWARD E. ENGLE
Santa Rosa
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