How times have changed. While watching my weekend college football games and reading the newspaper, I observed something I could not imagine several years ago — Alabama and Mississippi's football teams are overwhelming black as are most teams in the South. In fact, you could count the number of white players on both offense and defense on one hand.
Second observation — now that the drug problem has hit the white community in record numbers, it is now seen as a mental and substance abuse issue — in other words, a health problem. Hello, Kurt Schmoke! Scores of black men and women find themselves, even to this day, entangled in our criminal justice system. They are viewed in some quarters as habitual criminal drug users, abusers and predators.
And finally, the Republican Party, the bastion of conservatism and family values, has as its nominee for president a man who feels no guilt or remorse in groping women (aside from women he perceives as unattractive) in their private parts, demonizing minority groups and questioning the tenets of our democratic process ("Trump: The litigation candidate," Oct. 24). Interesting times, they are!
Sen. Nathaniel J. McFadden, Baltimore
The writer, a Democrat, represents Baltimore City's District 45 in the state Senate.