Have we lost all sense of proportion?
We have lived through a half decade in this country of blaming police for the actions of a sadistic few. We have lived through a year now of condemning the white race in America as systematically racist because everyone in the country doesn’t have what some do.
Locally, we hear demands that the police force match the diversity of the community, and that it happen immediately. In fact, that has been a goal of every Chattanooga police chief dating back at least 30 years, but it’s not as easy as snapping your fingers and making it happen.
Elsewhere, a Walmart Market closed recently in the Dalewood area, and inevitably desperate cries went up complaining about a food desert. City leaders and representatives of the area no doubt want to fill that need, but they cannot help do so unless they have a grocer willing to locate to a site that many community members – though not Walmart – said closed because of too much merchandise theft.
On Tuesday night, a group addressing the Chattanooga City Council said the city’s 18 Youth and Family Development Centers had been closed too long and that all needed to open now. But the announcement that six would open for summer camps and that the others would open in the near future wasn’t deemed quite good enough.