Letters on Wichita drivers, race problem, public servants, Koch, music week

Drivers can make Wichita kind again

Americans, today, seemingly without remorse, are a fractured bunch increasingly focused on ourselves and the small bubble of a world in which we each live. This is sure to shock few, but are we naive enough to believe this plagues only the largest cities?

It may come as a surprise then that one outcome of James Chung’s analysis of Wichita is the all-too-sobering fact that we are not nearly as warm or friendly as we pretend to be. One trip around the city should be proof enough.

Few would contest that seemingly every corner of the city is in the middle of construction, but few places in the country rival the rudeness on display each day on our roadways. Endless construction zones are bound to be frustrating, but few opportunities present themselves so plainly to pay attention to the world outside our own and be courteous to one another.

Let us avoid the race to the end of every lane threatening to close only to cut off our neighbors, and let us move out of the left lane so others may pass. For a moment, let’s forget about “making America great again.” Let’s make Wichita kind again.

Unresolved problem

I’d like to thank Diana Gordon of the Orpheum Performing Arts Center for extending a most generous partnership to us at The Kansas African American Museum for the recent screening of “I’m Not Your Negro.”

We’re grateful for this new friendship and for our other partners from the Tallgrass Film Festival, but even more for the film’s powerful message.

James Baldwin, the documentary’s focus, feels as relevant as ever in this era of bitter American societal divisions.

“We are cruelly trapped between what we would like to be and what we actually are,” Baldwin said in the film. “And we cannot possibly become what we would like to be until we are willing to ask ourselves just why the lives we lead on this continent are mainly so empty, so tame and so ugly.”

As we approach the 50th anniversary of summer rioting that prompted a report on our yet-unresolved problem of implicit and explicit color consciousness, his axiom, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced,” offers a blunt reminder of what we need to do.

That report, the Kerner Commission Report, and others before and since have been ignored. We continue to do so at our own peril.

Baldwin wrote: “God sent Noah the rainbow sign; no more water, fire next time.”

Thank public servants

The following letter was submitted by Sam Brown, director of the Hugo Wall School of Public Affairs at Wichita State University, and by past directors Nancy McCarthy Snyder and Ed Flentje.

The U.S. president and Congress have designated the week of May 7-13 as Public Service Recognition Week. In this time of political turmoil and polarization, we encourage all residents of our community and state to recognize and thank those who deliver essential public services day in and day out.

In our community, personnel at McConnell Air Force Base function as critical links in national defense. Police and public safety officers in Wichita, Sedgwick County and surrounding jurisdictions help keep our homes and neighborhoods safe.

Front-line staff and their supervisors in the city, county and state assist our most vulnerable residents in achieving independent, productive lives and maintaining good health. Personnel and volunteers in hundreds of nonprofit agencies, both religious and secular, perform essential community services often with public funds.

Public and private school teachers commit long hours and enormous effort to address the educational needs of pre-K, elementary and secondary students with widely differing academic abilities and economic resources. The list could go on and on.

We have seen firsthand the dedication of these public servants who strive daily to improve the quality of life for all Kansans. We encourage you to find ways to express your gratitude for their service.

True altruism

How disingenuous of Charles Koch to cite Alexis de Tocqeville regarding altruism (“Improve the well-being of all,” April 30 Opinion), all the while funding ultra-conservative organizations such as Americans for Prosperity. These groups champions deregulation of environmental laws, low wages and low taxes for the rich, and they promote regressive taxation on the 99 percent, all to enrich the already obscenely wealthy.

In the Cambrian Era, oceans became transparent. Light penetrated into previously murky waters. Eyes evolved that allowed organisms to sense that which lay beyond the immediately surrounding mud. We are now in a sort of intellectual Cambrian explosion. We have tools of mass communication only dreamed of a generation ago. We have, on a mass scale, the capacity to seek and share knowledge and wisdom and with it the capacity to see beyond unconscionable double-speak.

As a society, we will reach beyond the greed that enriches few while enslaving many. We will rise above selfish interests to embrace true altruism.

The ultra-conservative road that Koch and others wish us to follow is the road to ruin. We have now at our disposal a nearly limitless supply of truth and knowledge. Let us hope that we are capable of embracing the evidence before us.

Importance of music

In Wichita and across the nation, May 7-14 is National Music Week, as proclaimed by the National Federation of Music Clubs. This year’s special emphasis is on American music. But as always, the week’s main focus is to remind both adults and children of the importance of music to their daily lives, and particularly in our schools.

May 7 also marks the 125th anniversary of the federation’s local affiliate, the Wichita Musical Club. Founded in 1892, the club still provides five scholarships annually to collegiate musicians here. Over its long life, the club has given hundreds of such scholarships to aspiring musicians, some of whom have gone on to international stardom.

This story was originally published May 7, 2017 at 5:04 AM with the headline "Letters on Wichita drivers, race problem, public servants, Koch, music week."