Dear Editor:

Six years ago black and white Americans alike rushed to the polls to elect America’s first African-American president. At the time, it just seemed for those voters that the time had finally arrived for such a momentous step forward for the nation. What those voters got was an African American who does not identify or relate to anybody outside of his tight circle of advisors. Black Americans, for the most part, are still relishing up there on cloud nine, while white Americans are just confused and not knowing what has hit them. How prophetic was Martin Luther King Jr. in his historic 1963 speech where he asked Americans to judge a person “not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character”.

In my opinion the nation is now in an absolute state of turmoil. And I know that a lot of people out there feel the same as I do on this matter. I know because they will read this article and will approach me and tell me so, again. My response is always the same in that until people step forward and let their feelings be known publically nothing will change and we will gradually lose this nation. I am from the generation that has lived in a time when this country was not in its best light, but I have also witnessed changes not equaled in the history of the world. Though not forgetting the past, because I know where we’ve been, what bothers me most now is that I don’t know where the nation is going.

Recently our first lady of the United States, the wife of our first African-American president, spoke at the graduation at historically black Tuskegee University. Mrs. Obama gave about as dreary an outlook as I can imagine as to what the mostly black American graduates were about face as they ventured out into this still “racist” country. Mrs. Obama and her husband, the president, and their kids live at one of the most prominent addresses the world, the White House! Just last week presidential candidate Hillary Clinton spoke at Texas Southern University in Houston, another predominately black university, where her message to the mostly black graduates was the threat that her opposition, the Republication Party, in the upcoming election would threaten their “sacred” right as black citizens to vote. How ironic, when were it not for the Republican Party, these graduates conceivably could still not have the right to vote. And, what is even more ironic is that these “college graduates” don’t already know this fact.

I ask you here to compare those impressions with the president’s personal reaction over the unfortunate situations in Florida, Missouri and Maryland where black men were killed by white policemen in arguable situations. Compare that to the horrible situations in which white and black police officers are assassinated in New York City and Hattiesburg, Miss., by black thugs, and there is absolutely no word from the White House in those cases. And with the likes of people like Al Sharpton apparently advising the president, I fear that a potentially explosive pattern is being set. Is this a phase in President Obama’s promise during the elections to “transform” America? Let me cite a quote from Dr. Thomas Sowell. “Racial demagoguery gains votes for politicians, money for race hustling lawyers and a combination of money, power and notoriety for armies of professional activists, ideologues and shakedown artists.”

What we are experiencing in the country now is an almost total breakdown and disregard for the Constitution of the United States, which established the guidelines that have led to the unprecedented success of this country. The quest for power among our current crop of politicians, both Democrat and Republican, has led to this absolute state of confusion. I understand what the Democratic agenda is, but have no idea what the Republicans are, or why they even exist.

As a result, when there is no regard for established and abided-by law, you have total breakdown of societal standards.

What I have attempted to highlight here is the racial component of this perceived breakdown because it impacts me first. However, race is just a very visible aspect of the infestations popping up all across the country. With these breakdowns there is no longer a definition of a norm.

For a politician seeking power, the norm can be whatever your desire may be for that election period.

I have read someplace that one way to transform a system is overwhelm it with discard. Simply put, “united we stand, divided we fall.” Our first African-American president’s stated intent during his campaign was to fundamentally transform this country.

The current state of the country tends to indicate that the transformation is well under way. Is anybody out there having second thoughts? Is this really what we want America to be?

– Roosevelt Ludd