To the Editor:

Let me state right off that I fully agree with several of the Enterprise’s letter writers that flying a Confederate flag is not only a sign of racial animosity, it is also flagrantly unpatriotic.

That said — there are two points that need to be raised.

The first is that I spend many hours driving around main and back roads of this part of New York State every week, and in the past month I have seen a grand total of three Confederate flags flying on private property — and one of those was in Rensselaer County.

This hardly provides evidence for the self-appointed anti-racist czars who seem to have concluded that the Helderberg area is a hotbed of racism with KKK members within every seemingly innocent homestead.

The second point is that extremism begets extremism. The Black Lives Matter website and similar websites are rife with vicious denunciations of white people — especially white men — and white culture.

Until recently, the New York Times best-seller list featured the book “White Fragility” by Robin D’Angelo — a white academic, ironically — which is described on amazon.com as providing “the antidote to white fragility and a road map for developing white racial stamina and humility.” Replace the word “white” with “Black” in that description and I daresay a book titled “Black Fragility” would be blasted from every “woke” corner of academia and the media as a blatant example of this country’s “systemic racism.”

And by the way: I invite anyone who has been tempted to believe the lie of “systemic racism” to step into the nearest hospital or medical facility for example and read the posted lists of physicians and physicians’ assistants. What is immediately obvious is the extraordinary diversity of racial, ethnic, and likely religious backgrounds that can be determined by these professional people's surnames.

Or check out the lists of top students in local high schools and colleges and discover the same diversity.

A recent correspondent to The Enterprise claimed that he had never encountered a white supremacist who was a Democrat. Well, I suggest that this gentleman do some historical research.

He will find that the KKK was founded and sustained by Democrats. He will find that, for much of the 20th Century, southern states were called the “solid South” because they inevitably voted for Democrats while maintaining racial segregation.

He will find that it was Democratic presidents in the 1940s who dropped atomic bombs on Asian people in two Japanese cities — but not on German cities, inhabited by Caucasians. He will find that those same Democratic presidents placed tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans into concentration camps during the war — but did not imprison German-Americans.

Those same Democrat presidents granted German prisoners of war accommodations and meals the same as American soldiers were given — but treated Japanese POWs far more harshly.

The country has yet to see the Democratic Party apologize for these blatantly racist actions.

And lastly: Before the onset of the pandemic — at this year’s State of the Union message, President Donald Trump announced to the Congress that Black employment was then the highest it had ever been and Black unemployment was the lowest it had ever been. Republicans stood up and applauded and cheered — while Democrats sat in icy silence.

He then announced that Hispanic employment was the highest it had ever been and Hispanic unemployment was the lowest. Again — Republicans rose and applauded and cheered while Democrats sat in silence.

Let's see now: Just whom are we supposed to regard as racists?

Michael Nardacci

Albany