These are posted not as endorsements but as thought-provokers or discussion-starters:
Toni Morrison at Portland State University, May 30, 1975:
It's important, therefore, to know who the real enemy is, and to know the function, the very serious function of racism, which is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining over and over again, your reason for being....I urge you to be careful. For there is a deadly prison: the prison that is erected when one spends one's life fighting phantoms, concentrating on myths, and explaining over and over to the conqueror your language, your lifestyle, your history, your habits...To avoid the prison of reacting to racism is a problem of the very first order.
A statement from the Claremont Institute:
The pretext for this entire nationwide riot is that America is a racist country. That is not true. America is not a racist country....Why is it that so many of our citizens believe that America is racist to its core? Because this lie has been preached by our universities and media like the Gospel for a generation. From there it has traveled throughout society, particularly among the elite. Even most leaders on the Right are unwilling to refute this destructive untruth. In failing to do so, they promote the falsehood, the riots that it has engendered, and ultimately America's destruction. This is to say, the riots are the handiwork of the elite. A country that has been taught it is ignoble will not defend itself against its enemies, domestic or foreign.
As I approach the ripe old age of 95, I think it is fair to say that "I've seen it all." I've witnessed and experienced, first-hand, the evils of discrimination, hatred and bigotry.
I vividly recall the violence and unrest caused by the desegregation of the public schools in my hometown of Boston. I've traveled in the Jim Crow South but could not bring my wife to join in discussions about starting a festival (the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival), because interracial marriage was still against the law in that city. It pains me to say that despite the undeniable progress in race relations, brought about by the sheer force and determination of the Civil Rights Movement, "...justice for all" is not a reality for Black Americans.
For more than 60 years, my team and I have produced the Newport Jazz Festival (1954) and Newport Folk Festival (1959). We've connected musicians with audiences, creating decades of magical musical moments! The audience didn't care about musicians' skin color and the musicians didn't care about the skin color of the folks in the audience. The only thing that mattered was the music.