What Conversation?

     After being away in Italy for a month I was eager to catch up on the local news and turned to back issues of The Perquimans Weekly as soon as I could, especially to Letters to the Editor. I was happy to see further opinions on the new bridge, wind power, and the 2015 Business Expo. But I was dismayed to see the continued personal attacks on Warren Boiselle for his opinions on race (“Racist letters have no place in the paper.” “Racist beliefs not backed by any facts.”)

    In 1965 Daniel Patrick Moynihan issued a paper entitled “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action.” Even though Moynihan was a liberal with many ideas for helping solve the problems that plagued black families (poverty, unemployment, welfare dependency), he was excoriated by the liberal press for pointing out that at the core of these problems was the dysfunctional structure of the black family headed by unwed mothers. For his opinion Moynihan was branded a racist.

    Fifty years later Moynihan's reputation has been rehabilitated. He was right in predicting that as the rate of out-of-wedlock births increases, “most Negro youths are in danger of being caught up in the tangle of pathology that affects their world, and probably a majority are so entrapped.”

    Mr Boiselle's advice to blacks (finish school, get a job, and get married before making babies) may sound crude to some, but it happens to be right on the money. But for this, his detractors demand that he not be permitted to express his opinions in this paper.

    Pundits and talking heads often insist that we need to have a conversation on race relations if we are ever going to solve the problems that plague the black community. But how can we “have a conversation” if one side insists the other has no right to express a contrary opinion?

    I was further dismayed to see that the 10/21 edition on this paper carried not a single letter from local writers. Has the conversation ended? I hope not.