Re “Survivor: U.Va. honor student talks arrest, future,” June 18-20 edition:

It’s interesting that around the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act and equal opportunity legislation, some of our federal representatives began calling for an end to the protection that these acts afforded minorities. The inference was that in two and a half generations, we had surpassed the need for those protections.

About the same time, isolated racial incidents popped up across the country involving police overreacting to people of color. The result in each incident has been the unjustified beating or death of minority people, mostly at the hands of law enforcement officers.

While it is emotionally hard to be a witness of each of these incidents, and, worse, to be the victim, they have served as a great awakening to each of us.

We, the people, have fallen asleep over the last 50 years and become indifferent to the fact that, although we have changed some of our racial bias, we have not changed enough.

The events of the past year, and now the church massacre in Charleston, S.C., have rudely shaken us awake! Two and a half generations have not changed the roots of our cultural bias, mistrust and indifference to the plight of our own citizenry!

It took 164 years after Gabriel nailed the first plank on Dr. Martin Luther King’s platform to enact the Civil Rights Act. It has been another 50 years to arrive at this juncture in our cultural evolution. We need to stand up as a people and act as one before the next 50 years pass.

Let’s pray that we don’t have to offer up the sacrifice of any more martyrs before we accept their message. Enough is enough!

ERIC W. JOHNSON

Richmond