A photo recently posted on Facebook showed a white family of four with the caption, "Only white people can be racist."

As a white, 74-year-old male, I lived through the turbulent 1960s in inner city Philadelphia but did not encounter the white-on-black racism captioned in this Facebook photo. Ethnic slurs against people of different nationalities were more the norm than racial slurs against blacks, in my experience.

I played in the Sonny Hill Basketball League in the late 1950s and early 60s. The league was formed by Sonny Hill, a local mentor who offered inner city youth, predominately black, a place to develop character and skill sets that applied to both basketball and life. At no time were any of the players who participated in this league, black or white, subjected to ethnic or racial slurs. There was mutual respect among all players as engendered by the coaches, and leadership that benefited all.

Which is why I cannot understand the need for today's blacks to denigrate themselves with the use of the "n" word in daily conversation, music lyrics, etc. while vilifying a white person's use of the same word. It shouldn't be a part of our lexicon at all.

We see how Confederate-era statues are being removed from prominence throughout the South in an effort to remove the palpable "hate" felt by their presence. Yet the racial tensions that were present during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s seem much more volatile today. One would have thought the election of the first black president would have done much to positively empower the black community to aspire to greater things. Unfortunately, the opposite seems true. The destruction of black communities is not being done by whites. But the media would have the general populace believe otherwise.

We are a nation of immigrants, arriving at different times and under different circumstances, but we should all want to be Americans ... without hyphenation. It's that "hyphen" that divides us unnecessarily, both racially and ethnically. I am of Italian descent, but I do not refer to myself as an Italian-American, just an American. My grandfather came here with his family to become Americans. He suffered ethnic slurs, as did his children and grandchildren, but we were undaunted in our pursuit of the American dream for our family through assimilation.

My children, however, were raised as I was, to be Americans, to be accepting of all races and ethnicities. Political correctness is not a necessary component in our lives. The PC culture has done more to divide this country along racial/ethnic lines than anything else. I believe that as long as we adhere to the PC mindset, we as a country will remain divided.

Leonard Vigna

Warminster

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Political correctness divides the country - The Intelligencer