Readers Write: Comments on crime in Minneapolis, essay on ‘unenlightened white males’

Opinion editor’s word: Star Tribune Opinion publishes letters from readers on-line and in print every day. To contribute, click on here.

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Are folks upset with Minneapolis Metropolis Council Member Michael Rainville as a result of he instructed the reality of what he noticed (“Council member’s apology questioned,” July 11)? Or are they upset as a result of they do not like that he recognized the individuals who had been committing unlawful acts? Have we as a society develop into so delicate that we can not hear the reality about who’s doing legal acts? The one method to cease the violence is to establish who’s doing it. Thanks, Council Member Rainville, for telling the remainder of us what you noticed.

Ray Shannon, Ham Lake

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My spouse and I’ve lived within the St. Anthony Principal neighborhood of downtown Minneapolis since 2017. We’re delighted within the variety of our neighborhood, being close to the pure fantastic thing about the Mississippi River and having fun with all of the facilities our metropolis has to supply.

However sadly issues have modified for the more severe over the previous few years. Violent crime has skyrocketed and it appears the Metropolis Council and the judicial system as an alternative of addressing the lawlessness head-on are merely waving white flags. Nonetheless, whereas many could also be fleeing to the suburbs, we don’t intend to surrender on Northeast, as a result of we like it right here and have hope the state of affairs will enhance.

One cause for that optimism is our Third Ward council member, Michael Rainville, who has been a daring voice at Metropolis Corridor calling for swift and overwhelming measures to deal with our metropolis’s historic crime disaster. He’s a selfless public servant and has rightly demanded the extra legislation enforcement our beleaguered communities so desperately want now. We’re proud that our councilman has stood as much as the damaging defund-the-police motion and acknowledges, as few in Minneapolis municipal authorities appear to, that crime is not a political difficulty however as an alternative an existential one which threatens to destroy town all of us love briefly order.

Ward Brehm, Minneapolis

‘UNENLIGHTENED WHITE MALES’

A latest commentary by Sharon E. Carlson (Opinion Change, July 9) posed the query: “What’s going on with the unenlightened white male?” After studying her musings in regards to the male ego, I used to be left with the query of how she (if I dare use a gender-specific pronoun) defines “unenlightened”? Who determines whether or not a man is enlightened or a crude, benighted troglodyte?

I contemplate myself fairly enlightened. I’m well-educated, well-read, have traveled overseas, and contemplate myself a realistic, smart centrist politically. But I believe many progressive activists would contemplate me woefully unenlightened. I nonetheless imagine that the U.S. was based by idealists whose concepts, if not at all times their actions, had been enlightened for his or her time. Thus it grieves me after I see my polling place, a faculty named after Thomas Jefferson, bearing a banner studying Ella Baker International Research and Humanities Magnet Faculty.

Not like a number of of our outspoken Metropolis Council members, I imagine that the shooters, carjackers, automobile racers, fireworks shooters, thieves, aggressive panhandlers and different criminals are a better risk to public security than are the police, who the council members appear to please in maligning, if not defunding. Does my unwillingness to rejoice variety even when variety is behaving badly make me unenlightened?

I actually want Carlson had outlined her time period. There are many causes for an inexpensive white male to be significantly sad with each ends of the political spectrum.

Donald Wolesky, Minneapolis

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I appreciated Carlson’s feedback and insights about white males, or at the least white males of their 50s like her brothers.

I am a white male in my mid-70s. After I grew up many a long time in the past in a small metropolis in Indiana, there wasn’t a lot distinction between white-collar and blue-collar males. The financial hole between the city physician or dentist and a employee on the native Chrysler plant wasn’t that a lot. Everybody might afford a house, a automobile or two, a trip, and sending their children to varsity, if that is what they wished. I had no sense then that white males shared the emotions of insecurity and vulnerability felt by Carlson’s brothers.

In fact, within the Nineteen Fifties and ’60s, white males had no competitors from different racial or ethnic teams for jobs and alternatives. Discrimination in opposition to minorities assured white males their place on the head of the road. Did opening the door to different beforehand burdened populations start the period of white males feeling weak? Possibly. Or, was it the ever widening hole between the “haves” and the center class?

The reply to when white males started to really feel weak and insecure might be advanced. Nonetheless, it is in all probability true they now are feeling the identical anxieties and insecurities which were felt by males of different races and ethnic teams for generations. It is slightly arduous to really feel too sympathetic for them.

Fred Morris, Minneapolis

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There appears to be a sure phase of white males that desperately want to listen to “it is not your fault.” They seem to gravitate towards those that inform them this, and who additionally inform them that they’re really “victims.” I imagine this is likely one of the explanation why Donald Trump got here to energy and why we’re seeing a surge right this moment in white supremacy teams and beliefs.

It could be that when a few of these weak white males start to really imagine that they’re innocent victims they generally lash out — like most just lately in Buffalo, N.Y.; Uvalde, Texas, and Highland Park, Sick. It’s a curious contradiction of messaging that the identical folks saying “it is not your fault” additionally preach “private duty” — a confounding juxtaposition to make sure. However this is a matter that we as a society both discover a solution for, or, I worry, we are going to proceed to be coping with these tragedies for a really very long time.

David McCuskey, Orono

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Carlson’s observations about “the predicament of white males” is solely a variation on the predicament that the majority People have encountered as a result of previous 40-plus years of restructuring the economic system.

Over that point, we’ve got had three main tax cuts that primarily benefited the rich. We have added new requirements to a family price range (e.g., cellphones and web entry) and have finished little to decrease the burden of well being care, day care, nursing properties or school. After we attempt — e.g., by reducing scholar debt or passing the Inexpensive Well being Care Act — the efforts are rolled again as quickly as doable. Unions have been attacked, the minimal wage is beneath the poverty line, and the Minnesota Legal professional Basic’s Workplace says that staff lose $50 billion a 12 months nationally as a consequence of outright wage theft. And so forth.

The richest 1% of U.S. households now owns greater than the 77.5 million households within the center class (Star Tribune, Oct. 11, 2021), and actual wages have stagnated whilst the general economic system has grown roughly sevenfold since 1982. MIT’s Dwelling Wage Calculator (livingwage.mit.edu) says {that a} household of two adults and two youngsters in Hennepin County must earn $110,327 yearly if each mother and father work. A single-income household breadwinner would wish to earn greater than $40 an hour to match that idealized state of affairs from America’s previous.

Sure, this creates a predicament for older white males — and for all different ages, genders and ethnicities. The actual emotional results or stresses fluctuate, however we have to give attention to the frequent issues making life tougher for anybody who will depend on a paycheck.

Scott Hvizdos, Richfield

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On the premise of 1 night’s dialog along with her personal brothers, Carlson expounds on white males, their traits, conditions and responses. She acknowledges that demographic teams should not monoliths however proceeds to make dismissive pronouncements as in the event that they had been.

One girl isn’t certified to talk for “white males” or some other giant group. Neither is one man.

The Star Tribune shouldn’t commit a 3rd of a web page to spreading slim, uninformed, insulting views on any group.

Marilyn Cloutier, Stillwater