For your cover story on “The Big Fix: Breathing New Life Into Chicago’s Public Schools” (March 8), why did you run a photograph that does nothing to support the headline? Instead of using a picture that shows interested and engaged schoolchildren, you published an image that depicts African-American children as unhappy, displeased and blase.
Was it simply incompetence, or could it be an unconscious manifestation on the part of the photographer, editor or someone else of the continuing negative stereotype that blacks can’t learn? Whatever the reason, a serious lack of judgment and sensitivity was demonstrated by those responsible for this front cover.
Denise Rose
Oak Park
MORE ON MITSUBISHI
In response to your article regarding the women at the Mitsubishi plant in Normal (“Abuse on the Line,” Feb. 15): I also was the object of harassing behavior by my male co-workers, at an auto plant on Chicago’s Far South Side in the mid to late ’70s. I could probably write a book on that episode of my life; however, let me simply share with you the following observations.
First, these attitudes and behaviors are definitely not imported. They are firmly ingrained in our culture.
Women risk resistance and derision whenever we step outside our circumscribed roles.
The individuals who perpetrate these acts of sexual harassment (or racism, or homophobia) are generally small-minded and insecure.
Finally, there is a word that really sums it all up. It is “misogyny.”
Arlene Cyrnek
Park Forest
“Abuse on the Line” was indeed a sad commentary. I’m not a prude by any means, but such shameful and ugly misconduct is hard to comprehend. Surely these same men must have wives, daughters, sisters, mothers, and would insist that those women be accorded common decency and respect.
That being said, how about reminding a few women to behave like a lady, dress modestly and not be a “tease”?
Edwin J. Seeboeck
Chicago
Your story was more a supermarket tabloid piece than a journalistic effort by a world-class newspaper. It seems obvious that the federal administrative state has for more than 30 years grossly misinterpreted the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and subsequent social and physical environmental legislation.
Ordinary social behavior has been criminalized.
Ray Scannell
Wheaton
I am enraged! Women have the power to run Mitsubishi out of town by not buying their products and warning all other women intending to purchase a Mitsubishi of what they will be promoting. Any woman who thinks to do otherwise had better wake up and smell the exhaust fumes!
JanetLynn Muzik
Glendale Heights
Someone once said that evil persists when good men (or women) do nothing. So it was very satisfying to read “Abuse on the Line.” You are to be commended for printing this important story.
Thomas Tock
Dwight
Who tolerated such behavior from these men earlier in their lives? I can’t believe that it started for the first time at Mitsubishi. And how has the union gotten off the hook in this situation? Mitsubishi management certainly failed these women, but others failed also, and should be held equally accountable for their failures.
David Workman
Aurora
———-
The Magazine welcomes letters. Send mail to The Editor, Chicago Tribune Magazine, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill. 60611, or to our Internet address,
tribmag@tribune.com.
All correspondence, including e-mail, must include the writer’s name, home address and phone number. Letters may be edited for space and clarity.
