Specially made runners’ IDs are given to participants in a protest after the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed black jogger, outside the Glynn County Courthouse, Brunswick, Ga., May 8.
Photo: ERIK S. LESSER/EPA-EFE/ShutterstockI was very pleased to read Gerard Baker’s “Editor at Large: The Often Distorted Reality of Hate Crime in America” (Review, May 16). The distorted coverage of hate crimes by the mainstream press is a travesty. White victims of attacks by blacks wonder why their suffering doesn’t warrant coverage by the media, when black victims of white criminals are lionized, especially because black crime is much more common. This leads to a distorted notion of what is wrong in America.
Jennifer Marks
Laguna Woods, Calif.
The issue that has been called out in the press about Ahmaud Arbery’s death isn’t his being killed, but the failure of the justice system to pursue justice in his death. Prosecutors were unable to press charges against the alleged killer of Paul and Lidia Marino because that person was shot and killed after an exchange of gunfire with police. Do you think that prosecutors would have hesitated to vigorously pursue prosecution if the suspect had survived?
Lloyd David
Seattle
The fact is that the levers of power are usually controlled by whites, and in exercising that power they not too infrequently disregard the rights of our fellow citizens of color. By not stating the key fact of the delay in the arrest of Mr. Arbery’s killers and by not discussing it in the context of possible institutional racism, Mr. Baker fails to make his point.
Harold Floyd
Media, Pa.
Mr. Baker’s excellent piece on hate crime will, I imagine, bring in much hate mail. He speaks a truth that is unpopular. By saying that “the emperor has no clothes,” Mr. Baker has shown courage.
Craig Jones
Nags Head, N.C.
Any imbalance in reporting of crimes between the races, if indeed it exists, isn’t as important as the actual imbalance in prosecutions, and the recent tragedy in Georgia is a perfect example. If the video of Mr. Arbery’s killing hadn’t been made public, there is no indication that the two white men would have been arrested. How differently would the prosecutors have acted if the perpetrators were black and Mr. Arbery were white? That is the most important longstanding and frequent imbalance we should be talking about.
Valentine Barnes
New York
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