Laguna Beach Local News
In her Left of Center column of Feb. 26, Jean Ardell responded to my letter to the Editor. She describes incidents where Dr. Rebecca Lindsey confronted Racism. Lindsey is a Black resident of Laguna and holder of a degree in Interracial Studies.
One incident occurred near the Montage when an elderly, white man told Lindsey to leave the sidewalk and walk along Coast Highway instead. A bizarre, despicable remark, out of the Jim Crow South, made by a very prejudiced man; but not a racist event. Acts of racism occur when a powerful race (or perhaps religion or nationality) in a country or area, that considers itself superior to another, exerts its power through laws or the police, for instance, to mistreat the weaker race. Prejudice alone is not racism. There are people everywhere who are prejudiced against others whether Jew, Muslim, Hispanic, Black, white or the newly invented class, “privileged old white men”.