Dear Sherriff Wiggins,

I wonder if what leads you to conclude that the genuine exercise of free speech of others, those very unlike you, is exactly that which both allows you to speak with perfect conviction about concepts you claim to have never seen and to know, certainly, that the life experiences of black people are not as those people describe? I wonder at the depth and breadth of what you have not seen? “Racial profiling” in policing, which you allow may happen elsewhere, is something you haven’t seen, much less racially targeted violence. Your youth in America’s Deep South informs your belief that “we’ve made a lot of progress.” Lucky you, to be so certain. I think there are examples here, too, you are not seeing.

But you’re comfortable knowing the “political” motivations of others — people you don’t know and have not seen, perhaps cannot see. Why? What do you have that they don’t?

Authority, power and the bottomless white privilege of not seeing, not knowing and not actually caring.

To care is to wonder what you don’t know, which doesn’t appear to be your default stance. You should wonder because there is an awful lot you can’t, don’t or won’t see.

Ian Hoke
Steamboat Springs