Regarding Karen Shepherd’s letter (“Our racial unity in ruins”, Auburn Reporter, Aug. 2): After spending considerable space castigating those who would ruin “the racial unity we’ve all worked so hard to attain,” she then goes on to ruin it herself.

She notes “statistically, it is young men who commit the vast majority of crimes,” then goes on, “I know it was so with me when a young man … flung me to the ground …” If this was meant to bolster those statistics she claimed, it might have been a good point.

Unfortunately, in the midst of this, she tells us it was a young “Pacific Islander,” as if this assignation or description had any bearing on the point she was trying to get across. In fact, it had the opposite effect.

She goes on to imply that, because of this incident, she can also be described as a “purse-clutching, door-locking white grandmother,” but, of course, it’s not racial. If it’s not racial, why in the world inject what race, nationality, background, etc. that her attacker might have been or might have looked like? If it’s not racial, is she implying she now turns into this paranoid, elderly person whenever she sees any young man? Somehow I don’t get the impression that she’s frightened to death of all young men. Perhaps only those pesky “Pacific Islanders,” but, of course, it’s “not racial.”

Oh, and Roderick Scott, whom Ms. Shepherd alludes to in her story, and how everyone ignored this story. What she failed to mention was that Mr. Scott was immediately arrested for this shooting. He didn’t get to claim, “self-defense” or “stand your ground” or anything else, and simply go on home that same day. A marked difference from the Zimmerman case.

I’m sorry, Ms. Shepherd, that you are tired of being called a racist. That’s not a pejorative that has ever been ascribed to me, regardless of whose presidential policies I disagree with.

– Jean Bolton