Re: Letters to the Editor on Carver Elementary School story:

I would like first to point attention to words from “How to Make a Slave” by Willie Lynch. This speech shared systematic, foolproof methods of how to keep black people in a perpetual mental slave-making modality by skillfully using them to turn against one another by many means.

None of us should use any avenue to tear one another down. Like the Bible states, “Whoever among us that thinks that they are without sin, cast the first stone!”

Let us check ourselves to determine if we are part of the problem or part of the solution. Then, let us lavish love and genuine demonstrations of concern on the children, their parents, the community caretakers and this city, countering negative effects. Let us promote and facilitate the kind of emotional healing that fosters and supports academic excellence.

We can unite our energies to pray and to require that the so-called systems of justice address any legal violations, and demand that the educational deficiencies, inequities and insufficiencies that have and are still festering within Richmond Public Schools also are justly rectified.

The Carver School incident has served to expose these issues, which was necessary to bring the root causes to a head for healing.

REV. ROSALIND M. HALL

Richmond

The writer is an associate minister at Mt. Vernon Baptist Church in Richmond.