Racism Cuts Both Ways

Regarding "Political cartoonist’s message misfired and brought on more pain" (Wednesday City & State), columnist Lisa Falkenberg correctly portrays the cartoon showing a picture of a hearse carrying the body of Sandra Bland being pulled over by "a Texas police officer" as offensive.  Unfortunately, she portrays it only as offensive to African Americans who view this incident as "a modern-day lynching", and apparently consider police behavior towards blacks as irredeemably racist.

Such a portrayal is unreasonable and unfair not only to "Texas police officers" in general, but to white police officers in particular.  There is precious little evidence that any of the deadly encounters of the past few years had anything to do with race, including this one.  In fact, several of the most recent and publicized incidents involved black police officers, and yet, the "racist white police officer" narrative is the only one given any coverage in the press.

Such gross generalizations not only kill meaningful debate, they endanger the lives of civil servants.  Just ask the employees at the Waller County jail who have been deluged with death threats, or the widows of two New York police officers - one Asian and one Latino - who were assassinated by a black man enraged by such unfair characterizations.  

Washington Post cartoonist Tom Toles no doubt thinks it clever to portray all Texas cops as violators of black people, and Texans have gotten used to such caricatures by East Coast elitists.  I just wish the Chronicle would start calling out such behavior instead of buying into it.

Pete Smith 

Houston, TX