Wednesday, February 26, 2003

In response to the article written by Chadwick Barr and Michael Thompson who clearly seem to be concerned residents of Peachtree City I would like to state that exclusion on the basis of race, class, and gender is illegal.

Today, we have moved beyond overt racism, classism, and sexism to a more covert form that manifests itself within "statistics." Instead of having the insight to see why it is that a majority of people of color is locked away in our nation's prisons, we make sweeping generalizations that minorities and low-income residents cause more crime.

There is a distinct difference between a criminal and a person who is criminalized. There are many laws that have tendencies to criminalize minorities and low-income residents rather than bring justice where it is deserved. One example is the crack-cocaine law.

I am not advocating a process of excusing crime but rather I am inviting you to question the supposed statistics that our country has come to believe as the steadfast truth. And, I am also inviting you to examine the justice in excluding people from Peachtree City based on their race or income.

Peachtree City is already a very sheltered and nonrepresentative town, and to continue to keep it this way and call that responsible development is foolish and close-minded.

I am the first to criticize the continued expansion of big businesses into every part of our nation, but the automatic causal relationship that results between business expansion, minorities, and low-income residents to crime is based on a faulty premise of logic. This is not a causal relationship, but rather a socially constructed argument to keep certain individuals out of Peachtree City.

Now, if Mr. Barr and Mr. Thompson would like to have prospective Peachtree City residents meet specific racial and class criteria, they should really just come out and state that.

We live in a dynamic and changing world. Thus, expansion and inclusion are the only hope we have in making this world a better place, and the polar opposite of that is what Peachtree City would become if we resort to so-called "responsible development."

My proposal is that we consider why certain stereotypes about crime and minorities have been made and how statistics are formulated to perpetuate those stereotypes. The Band-Aid measures of exclusion that Barr and Thompson propose do not solve anything, but rather isolate us from a world that we cannot simply ignore, but rather as good citizens must actively engage in.

Lakshmi Sridaran

UC-Berkeley student and Peachtree City resident