Ethan Skarstedt
Newfield, New Jersey
I write in response to the letter to the editor in Tuesday's Daily Universe, entitled 'Arab Rapist a Stereotype.'
Nobody said it was an Arab. The letter is correct in stating that the rapists was described as a 'Middle Eastern looking' man. It was not correct in claiming that this implied suspicion of all Arabs or even all Middle Eastern people. The writers of the letter themselves state that Middle Eastern peoples tend to a dark complexion and dark hair. The writers of the letter are the only people I know of that assume this means that the rapist was of Middle Eastern descent. If the description was meant to pinpoint the rapist as an Arab then the description would have read 'was an Arabic man' or 'was a Middle Eastern man.' Instead the description said 'a Middle Eastern looking man.'
This is a perfectly reasonable descriptive tool. One that is more effective and therefore more likely to help catch the rapist than an attempt to describe his physical characteristics from scratch. The writers of the 'Arab Rapist a Stereotype' letter made two mistakes. The first one was assuming that all readers of the description were as shallow-minded as they were and would immediately jump to the unwarranted and spurious conclusion that the rapist was an Arab (By the way, why not an Israeli Jew?). The second was claiming that they did not want to 'turn this tragedy into a political issue' only one paragraph before they did just that.
I question the sincerity of anyone that would reach so far to make such a poorly thought out statement. There are enough, manufactured for the press, race issues floating around these days, please don't try so hard to make more.