To the Editor:

I want to commend The Altamont Enterprise for spotlighting Sarah Gordon’s valiant effort to bring a long-overdue conversation about race to the Hilltowns. Our nation is in the middle of an urgently-needed rethinking of what white privilege means on both the broader societal and more localized, everyday level.

The hostile defensiveness exhibited by many of our neighbors around the undeniable fact of what I like to call “Hilltowns-so-white” only reinforces the idea that this problem requires close and careful consideration, rather than knee-jerk rejection.

Open dialogue and respect for differing points of view is paramount. But all too often, the conversation devolves into a sharp partisan divide, with insults, name-calling, and worse.

Gordon has been subject to misogynist slurs and even threatened with violence simply for suggesting she’d prefer to be aware of and support local businesses that take a firm stand against hate speech and bias. This is totally unacceptable in any civil society. People in our community can, and should, do better. 

Katherine Dieckmann

Westerlo