To the editor: I am amazed at the research guest contributor Martin Seligman and Noah Love did in examining the degree to which the events that occurred in the 1950s and 1960s had a positive effect on how Americans, especially Black Americans, viewed their sense of personal agency during those years and continuing up to the present (“Civil rights era changed how Black Americans see themselves,” June 18).
This op-ed makes me wonder what they would find if they conducted a similar examination of the sense of personal agency among white evangelists.
It appears to me that the current majority of the Supreme Court is making a set of rulings, particularly on the Voting Rights Act, that are particularly aimed at satisfying the demands of this segment of the American citizenry alone, at the expense of citizens who are neither white nor this kind of evangelist.
The discussion in this op-ed gives us a new objective to aim at: the feeling of personal agency that we all have as American citizens. It seems to me that it should be our objective as a nation to push for principles that enable members of every subgroup to seek this feeling, but also to respect the right of members of groups to which we do not belong to attain this feeling as well.
Steve Wood, Ventura
