Editorial

A coalition of Asian organizations have joined the lawsuit against Harvard University for alleged racial discrimination in admissions. They charge that less qualified applicants of other races have received acceptance letters denied to Asians only because of bigotry against Asians.

Those who are angered by Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem would have to conclude that the extensive pattern of police assaults against unarmed black men do not justify such protest.

Now is the best time for activists to increase efforts to change the culture of the police. Last week a jury in Dallas County Texas convicted a police officer for killing a 15-year-old unarmed black boy, and they sentenced former officer Roy Oliver to 15 years in prison.

How realistic was it for anyone to believe that a man who arrived in his personal Boeing 757, with his name emblazoned on the fuselage, was committed to the effort of improving the economic status of working class Americans?

The oft-repeated message about the importance of the black vote seems to be finally taking hold. Analysis of the past two elections for president indicates that blacks vote in presidential elections at a rate equivalent to whites. However, in off-year elections and in primaries, the vote by blacks often declines.

Boston’s tradition of a multiracial affiliation for full equality continues. It’s a Boston thing that survives despite persistent vestiges of racial discrimination.

The sophisticated voter must treat the September election as decisive. Since the candidates hold similar positions on the political issues, voters must decide whether the fact that Pressley is a woman and is black is sufficient to outweigh Capuano’s record of achievement.

Slavery was legal in much of the United States until ratification of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution on Dec. 6, 1865. Most of the black slaves were then located in the states of the Southern Confederacy, and were agricultural workers. However, Massachusetts had technically ended slavery many years earlier.

A peculiarity about America’s racial conflict is that there seems to be no objective reason for it. Blacks have never established any territorial claims, and blacks have not engaged in violent encounters to establish primacy over whites. It appears then, that the nation’s racial conflict has been triggered by nothing more serious than blacks’ apparently offending complexion.

The conventional definition of war requires bombs, tanks and artillery. However, we know that in modern times cyber war can be just as violent. Malfunction of the power grid, the banking system and democratic elections would inflict even more destruction than a bombing raid.

It is time for voters to wake up to the fact that they have been conned by America’s greatest flimflam man and its worst president.

News reports attacking the management of the Whittier Street Health Center ignore the achievements of the Roxbury nonprofit and the extraordinary pressures facing health centers today.