Only One Race
One day when I was six years old, being raised in Northeast Washington, D.C., I asked my mother if I could go to the White House for lunch and play with Caroline Kennedy. Because I am African-American, the story was told and retold by my mother with a quality of disbelief in my naivete that would make the listeners laugh uproariously. I never thought it was that funny, and grew up feeling shamed and humiliated by the episode.
Yes, I had naively expected that a little white girl in a big white house would be my friend, and spend the afternoon with me. My ability to filter out her race and simply see a child like me was way ahead of its time. When I watched Malia and Sasha Obama walk onto the stage as President-elect Barack Obama prepared to give his acceptance speech, I felt that shame lift. I felt that all the work that I have done to maintain my belief that it is good and proper to look beyond the color of someone's skin finally paid off. Now I support little white girls in doing what I did; imagining themselves in the role of Presidential Princess, even if the princess doesn't look exactly like them. That is the path that will get us most quickly to empathy and appreciation of the only race that should matter: the human race.
Opeyemi Parham, M.D.
Greenfield
One for the Railroad
This is in response to the notes by Becca Liss in the November 13th edition of the Advocate about the art exhibition called Trainspotting. The copy was good for drama, but short on facts. The U.S. rail industry is posting regular increases in miles traveled and tons of freight carried every year in this century. I'm in no way associated with the rail industry; I'm just particular about facts.
In 2006 the U.S. Freight Railroad Industry employed 187,000 workers and had revenues of $54 billion dollars. It carried 50 percent of all coal produced and consumed in the U.S. and almost 10 percent of all farm products. 2,500,000 tons of rail freight originated in Massachusetts, and almost 9 million tons terminated in our commonwealth. There are 500 miles of functioning track in Massachusetts, and almost $45,000,000 in wages were paid to rail freight employees. It has not escaped the attention of shippers that modern rail can move one ton of freight 432 miles with one gallon of fuel.
Dennis S. Collins
Springfield
Correction: Last week in "Smoke Screen," our story on the hookah bar proposed for Northampton, we incorrectly transcribed a statement by entrepreneur Christopher Rahn. Rhan did not say that members of the Board of Health "were confused" about the fact that they had been voting on an exemption that would have allowed the hookah bar to operate, but that they "were not confused."
