Dysfunctional practices’

“Dysfunctional practices’”, Carmel Pine Cone – March 11, 2022

Many thanks to you for having the courage to speak out on the conditions that have led to Pacific Grove police officer Michael Gonzales’s dismissal. Political correctness and, in particular, the inability to have an honest and candid public conversation about race in our country, have elevated the issue to taboo status. There is this narrative that Black people are victims, white people are oppressors and that this situation has led to the wide disparity in socio-economic achievements between the two groups.

This is primarily false. I live in Pleasanton, where an increasingly high percentage of the population is Asian. They mirror many of the practices that many in the White community do: Completing school, raising children in two-parent homes and respecting the law. I have observed that much of the failure where it occurs in the Black community can be laid at the feet of their own citizens. There are clear cultural dysfunctional practices within the Black
community that, if improved, would lead to higher levels of success.

The paradox, of course, is that we have widely accepted and socially reinforced groupthink. Many people see what others see but can’t say it. The consequences are too severe. Officer Gonzales found out the hard way.

Tom Coleman, Pleasanton