TO THE EDITOR:
If you’re white and in the media and you find yourself just having to talk about race, quote Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and you’ll get a pass for being socially and historically ignorant. “I would have been a Freedom Rider, really, I promise,” the strategy seems to suggest.
The decision to seat Donna Bell on the Chapel Hill Town Council in order to maintain a black voice in town politics was a decent, albeit imperfect, one to make. I call it imperfect because a person’s color does not mean they will represent their community.
But more importantly, the United States has never been wholeheartedly committed to creating the conditions for “fair” representation to always be possible.
In his column, “Content over color,” (Feb. 3), Cameron Parker refers to those who preferred to sit the fifth-place winner as “advocates of democratic legitimacy.”
But legitimate to whom? Tell me: If a government, in this case Town Council, continues to make decisions that for time eternal disadvantage your community, and even optimal participation still does not guarantee your protection, is that government “legitimate?”
It is legitimate to those who build duplexes and raise rents.
As stated before, the deficit of legitimacy is not the town’s problem alone. We have a 21st century economy and an 18th century concept of rights. We don’t have economic, corporeal or collective rights that aren’t subject to the ideological whim of whoever is holding office. Until then, consider the dream deferred.
Domenic Powell
Senior
History, International Studies
Editor’s Note: Powell served last semester as DTH’s race relations columnist.
