George,

Katherine McNamara's response to the WSJ article by Jim Webb was brilliant. I hope that you will endeavor to keep this debate alive and that we will hear from conservatives as well. If I have learned anything in my 68 years it is that people forget the past a lot more than they remember it. Thus, it has always been as it is today -- the burdens borne by people who lived through that era are forgotten.

Webb's article might, then, be the basis of an intense relook at where we are and how far we have yet to go. That would be a good thing.

One only has to look at the state of race relations in the southern parts of Virginia to see how little progress has been made and how the weight of the past sabotages the prospects for a better future.

Al Weed (Electronic mail, July 28, 2010)