Congress must stay in session until aid approved Walters lacked context on Harris replacement
I strongly feel that our senators and representatives need to stay in session until a new pandemic aid bill is passed. It would be criminal for them to leave for vacation when the current aid package is set to expire by the end of this year. This should not be a partisan issue. People and businesses in our country need help now and our paid representatives have an obligation to stop fighting amongst themselves and take action to make this happen.
— Mark Schatz, Novato
I’m writing in response to Dan Walters’ column published in the Marin IJ about identity politics (“Governor faces identity politics vs. melting-pot vision in replacing Harris,” Nov. 29). What is interesting to me is that, for him, identity politics — in which talent and accomplishment “become secondary to being defined by their race, ethnicity, gender, age, and/or sexual orientation” is a recent phenomenon.
Perhaps as a White male, he has not noticed that for most of our nation and our state’s history, identity politics was the name of the game: Candidates seemingly had to be White, male and heterosexual to be considered for public office.
He also says that Californians “happily live in integrated neighborhoods.” Hmm, he must not have read about the recent study saying otherwise (“Marin dominates racial segregation rankings in UC study,” Nov. 30). Marin could better be described as largely happily segregated neighborhoods. He also may have missed last year’s news about the state’s desegregation order for the Sausalito Marin City School District. So much for the melting pot.
Years of under-representation and non-representation created pressure to finally redress some of these wrongs. It evened the identity playing field to more accurately mirror the ethnically and culturally complex population here in California.
So when Walters ended his column by writing that it should matter that whomever Gov. Gavin Newsom chooses to replace Vice President- elect Kamala Harris in the U.S. Senate “will be seen as representing every Californian,” he should have noted how many years that was never the case.