U.S. ‘is loaded with racists’

Re “The shutdown won’t turn off GOP voters,” Opinion, Jan. 15

Jonathan Metzl recites the positions of several supporters of President Trump who retain their approval of him because of racism or in spite of the fact that doing so is contrary to their own well-being.

Metzl alluded to a focus group respondent who said school budget cuts were justified because African Americans “just use school funds to rent party buses,” and another who criticized immigrants with this statement: “The Mexicans, their food stamps, everything they want, we’re paying for it.”

Those of us who are sociologists, social workers or in other helping professions have said it for some time: America is loaded with racists and others who are impractical at many levels. It is understandable that these people support the president under any circumstance. Ralph Mitchell Monterey Park

As a young sociologist some 80 years ago, E. Franklin Frazier stated that racism is a form of insanity. That comment got him fired from Morehouse College.

As I contemplate Trump supporters going against their own interests, as detailed in Metzl’s opinion piece, that quote came to mind.

If Metzl is correct that Trump supporters will cut their own wrists as long as his policies create chaos and further fracture the deep American fault lines of race, class and ideology, then indeed racism is a form of insanity. Philip S. Hart Los Feliz

Metzl’s piece is more evidence that the Democratic Party needs to find a candidate that will unite the Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders voters and remind them 95% of their political goals were and still are the same, and that they are 100% the opposite of Trump supporters.

This candidate does not need to attract any Trump voters. Trump is not a president who was elected by a majority of American voters; he is rather the choice of the electoral college, which gave him power partly because of the Sanders-Clinton divide. Alan Segal San Diego