Letter to the editor: GOP's racism

Republican efforts to restrict voting rights and widespread attacks on people of color and immigrants are symptomatic of many white Americans’ attitudes promulgated, in my opinion, by none other than Donald J. Trump. Sadly, his racist legacy lives on and will continue for many years.

It is this nonsensical idea that somehow America was, is and should be the domain of white Aryan Europeans that Trump so eloquently promoted. While our Declaration of Independence says “that all men are created equal,” our Constitution in Article I specifically refers to “non-free” persons as “three-fifths of all other persons.” In other words, slaves (Blacks) count as only three-fifths of a white person. Though in 1868, this wording was corrected in the 14th Amendment, many of our white citizens seem to continue to believe Black people amount to less than white people.

Unfortunately this racist notion has always been like an underlying current festering in the American psyche. As a “white” who lived in the “Southland” for 70-plus years, I know the phrases, the looks and the attitudes that Trump promoted and made, for some, acceptable. You see, in America, it’s all about race. Virtually every conflict can have its roots narrowed down to race.

So, Mr. and Mrs. Republican, get off of your “high horse,” look in the mirror and see what your party has become: a bastion of racism.

Kenneth L. Powell

New Kensington