LETTERS

CHANGES AND CHICANOS



I ONCE AGAIN (after a two year vacation from purchasing D Magazine) decided to pick up a copy both with curiosity and interest. Your July 1985 edition offered some interesting changes. I would like to challenge you to really begin to address some of Dallas’ key issues and problems-specifically from the minority perspective.

As I have said to various city leaders through my membership in the Dallas Assembly and Dallas Alliance, our great challenge for the remaining portion of this decade will be and is increased racial polarization and public education. In the DISD, the dropout issue among Chicanos, the status of bilingual education and diminishing achievement scores can pose significant obstacles and problems for our city. The future of the arts, Central Expressway and other urban sprawl issues will mean very little if we continue to “push out” minority kids from the schools-without jobs, alienated and ready to commit crimes. You add the racial polarization factor and you begin to see a very dismal picture for our great city!

Again, I hope you accept these perspectives and hopefully highlight them from our point of view. Unfortunately, Chris Tucker’s participation in the Dallas Institute [“Soul of a City,” July] once again demonstrates that your view of our city’s future is still pretty one-sided and presented from the WASP perspective. There are a lot of organizations; i.e., MALDEF, LULAC, Mexican American Bar Association, the NAACP and others that would provide Tucker a different scenario.

René Martinez

Dallas



IN DEFENSE

OF DON WALKER

I WOULD LIKE to suggest a name change for D Magazine. Let us say S Magazine would be more appropriate, as in Salem. It would seem that your writers have changed their professions to Witch Hunters. I don’t believe I have read a more sensationalized, insensitive piece in many years [“Grand Prix, Grand Scam, Grand Jury,” by Eric Miller, Inside Dallas/Fort Worth, July].

It has only been a year ago that you were promoting yourselves as “The Grand Prix Magazine” and the race’s organizers could do no wrong. Now that Don Walker has run into adverse times, you quickly join the rest of the pack to tear him apart.

While I’m sure that Walker will not be a candidate for sainthood, I do not believe he deserves the wrath bestowed upon him recently. The courts will decide his case without the aid of your journalistic ax.

John R. Gerrits

Dallas



IT IS MY understanding that Buddy Bor-en is attempting to stage “an event for Dallas -not a springboard for he and his wife to be formally introduced to Dallas society.” It is interesting to me how quickly his sharp criticism of the Walkers’ intentions can be reversed to apply so adequately to himself.



A loyal Walker employee,



Lynn Harris

Mesquite



GRUMBLINGSFROM THE GROVE



BEFORE YOU PUBLISH another article on Pleasant Grove [“Communal Knowledge-Getting to know your neighbor,” Newcomers Guide, July], I think you should look past the end of your nose or at least lower it.

Regarding such statements as “the Grove is far from perfect”: We don’t pretend to be, but why was this type of remark only put in to single out this area? We are a part of Dallas too, and every area in Dallas has its less than perfect side, even North.

I don’t know how you compiled your information, but the homes just in our neighborhood range from the $60s to over $100 thousand. Our cars vary from imports to Cadillacs and Park Avenues to vans and trucks. We even have swimming pools in our back yards. We also have doctors, lawyers, ministers, presidents and vice presidents of companies, and people who own their own businesses live in the Grove. And we are proud to say Max Goldblatt lives here. We drive north to eat, because of a lack of restaurants in this area. Thank you El Chico, you stepped out of bounds and put a restaurant here.

We have subscribed to D Magazine from its beginning and have always enjoyed the articles and up-date information. We just hope in the future your articles on this area can be more positive.

Mrs. Sharon A. Smith

Dallas, Texas



MORE ON THE JOE BOB AFFAIR



I APPLAUD Chris Tucker’s June ’85 column [Insights] regarding the Dallas Times Herald’s cancellation of Joe Bob’s drive-in feature. Tucker’s article was well-written and elucidated a point of view shared by many readers. I hope to see more columns of this caliber.

I have been, and remain, a staunch John Bloom fan. It is rumored that D Magazine may employ Bloom in future issues. If true, bravo!

Congratulations on the increasing merit of your articles and the courage to support an unjustly accused and maligned writer.

Sandie Smith

Italy, Texas



IN RUNNING the Joe Bob Briggs article, you have provided satisfaction for the morbidly curious. Congratulations. I fail to see how the firing of one lackluster writer in a town the size of Dallas should warrant several precious pages in a monthly magazine. Certainly, he was hired to increase circulation. When his untempered, puerile “satire” began to hurt circulation, he was fired. Big deal.

Perhaps it is true that “rednecks” (your term) need minorities to trample. Might it also be true that without rednecks, “writers” like John Bloom wouldn’t have anybody to abuse in the press? After all, real dishing of most other minorities is forbidden by popular taste, for the immediate present.

Lynda Washington

Bedford