Dear Sir,

For more than two decades we have had right-wing conservatives and racists — oftentimes, they are one and the same in the West — railing against the alleged scourge of political correctness.

In a recent Letter to the Editor, we saw another example of that demonstrated by the letter writer Helle Patterson in defence of Walker Zupp’s recent Letter to the Editor that contained numerous white supremacist tropes masquerading as some sort of lampooning.

If Zupp was simply lampooning, it was done at the expense of black Bermudians.

The joke was on us and I assume most Anglo fellow travellers such as Patterson heard the racist dog whistle quite clearly ... it was obviously music to her ears.

Patterson practically swooned over Zupp’s determination to puncture the so-called political-correctness balloon.

Well, it should be clear to many of us that what Spurling-Zupp and Patterson meant by their attack on political correctness is as follows. Translation: to be as racist as I want to be in the public domain. For some whites, it’s a cherished privilege, which is consistent with whiteness historically. Ms Patterson, we get it.

The reality is that outside of some right-wing racist rag in Britain or Australia, Zupp’s racist hate speech of a letter would have never seen the light of day in any credible newspaper or news media outlet in the West in 2019. At least not one owned by Rupert Murdoch.

Finally, I salute esteemed former educator Cheryl Griffin, who Patterson took on, for having the courage to stand up to Zupp’s insult to black Bermuda, some days ago in this publication.

Ms Griffin knew that Spurling-Zupp’s joke was fully intended to demean and denigrate black Bermudians, and exposed his letter for what it was. I thank her.

ROLFE COMMISSIONG

Warwick