In Search of Solutions

As a woman with white skin, I took Jocelyn Y. Stewart’s commentary very personally and was very disturbed by what I read.

She makes a statement about a “middle-aged man peering into a grocery store perturbed because it wasn’t open . . . maybe he just had to have a croissant to go with his morning cup of coffee.” Why didn’t she just say “white” middle-aged man and be clear about what she was implying?

She’s as guilty of racism as those who judge African-Americans, Asians or anyone else based on the color of their skin. How does she know this individual’s background--what he may have gone through in his life--that she can judge him? Is she so myopic that she doesn’t see that she’s condoning racism as well?

African-Americans aren’t the only ones who have problems with discrimination. What about Puerto Ricans, Japanese, Mexicans, Greeks, Haitians, men, women, Jews, Catholics, Koreans, Vietnamese, Muslims, Irish, Cubans and anyone else who has something different to offer?

I was raised in New York by parents who fled communist Yugoslavia. They hoped to make a better life for us here.

My father was an auto mechanic who took care of a family of five on a poverty-level paycheck. We lived in a rat-, mice- and roach-infested apartment and I wore clothes donated to us by my father’s customers. I was often beaten up by the black kids in school because I was white, laughed at by the “real Americans” because I was supposedly “communist” and taunted because I didn’t know the language.

Yet today, Stewart may see only a white woman in a supermarket in a middle-class neighborhood. Would she think that I don’t know anything about prejudice?

I live with my boyfriend, who fled South Africa with his family because of its racist regime. For 10 years, the South African army has been looking for him, but he refuses to join an army that supports a white supremacist government. His father is a journalist who for 30 years has written for the anti-government newspaper. Yet, he’s judged by others simply on the basis of being a white South African.

Prejudice is wrong in any form. There are good and bad people in all races. Adults have the responsibility of teaching our children and educating others that it’s wrong to judge someone because they’re different. Stewart, and those like her who inflame rather than inform, needs to go back to school.

CLARA VESELIZA, Van Nuys