To the editor:

Tuesday, the Lawrence Journal-World published a letter to the editor from John McQuitty in response to one by Pegah Naemi Jimenez. Naemi Jimenez’s letter pointed to a decision made by editorial staff, noting that this type of behavior reinforces racist stereotypes and perpetuates systemic racism. She stated that the paper should not foreground Black involvement in the criminal legal system while consigning a discussion of significant allegations and a settlement featuring a white person to the sports section. McQuitty’s response to that letter compared naming a racist editorial judgment with McCarthyism. He equated asking for a behavioral change with knee-jerk labeling of individuals. He went on to say that reparations are unnecessary because white people died to end slavery in the Civil War. Rather than seeing reparations as restorative justice for the enduring economic harm of past policy choices in the United States, he focused on bloodshed and retribution. Reparations are necessary because of the economic exploitation of Black people visible in our current racial wealth gap. Ending the Civil War and later chattel slavery did not create equality in policy or in practice. More importantly, pointing out how an editorial choice reinforces racial stereotypes isn’t the same thing as a campaign to purge suspected Communists or queer people from government and Hollywood. If we cannot point out racist behavior without being labeled an historically inaccurate version of “cancel culture,” it will be impossible for any of us to learn to change our behavior and thus change our community for the better.

Elise Higgins,

Lawrence