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Are people upset with Minneapolis City Council Member Michael Rainville because he told the truth of what he saw ("Council member's apology questioned," July 11)? Or are they upset because they don't like that he identified the people who were committing illegal acts? Have we as a society become so sensitive that we cannot hear the truth about who is doing criminal acts? The only way to stop the violence is to identify who is doing it. Thank you, Council Member Rainville, for telling the rest of us what you observed.

Ray Shannon, Ham Lake

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My wife and I have lived in the St. Anthony Main neighborhood of downtown Minneapolis since 2017. We are delighted in the diversity of our community, being near the natural beauty of the Mississippi River and enjoying all the amenities our city has to offer.

But sadly things have changed for the worse over the past few years. Violent crime has skyrocketed and it seems the City Council and the judicial system instead of addressing the lawlessness head-on are merely waving white flags. Nevertheless, while many may be fleeing to the suburbs, we do not intend to give up on Northeast, because we love it here and have hope the situation will improve.

One reason for that optimism is our Third Ward council member, Michael Rainville, who has been a bold voice at City Hall calling for swift and overwhelming measures to address our city's historic crime crisis. He is a selfless public servant and has rightly demanded the additional law enforcement our beleaguered communities so desperately need now. We are proud that our councilman has stood up to the dangerous defund-the-police movement and recognizes, as few in Minneapolis municipal government seem to, that crime isn't a political issue but instead an existential one that threatens to destroy the city we all love in short order.

Ward Brehm, Minneapolis

A recent commentary by Sharon E. Carlson (Opinion Exchange, July 9) posed the question: "What is going on with the unenlightened white male?" After reading her musings about the male ego, I was left with the question of how she (if I dare use a gender-specific pronoun) defines "unenlightened"? Who determines whether a guy is enlightened or a crude, benighted troglodyte?

I consider myself reasonably enlightened. I am well-educated, well-read, have traveled abroad, and consider myself a pragmatic, sensible centrist politically. Yet I suspect many progressive activists would consider me woefully unenlightened. I still believe that the U.S. was founded by idealists whose ideas, if not always their actions, were enlightened for their time. Thus it grieves me when I see my polling place, a school named after Thomas Jefferson, bearing a banner reading Ella Baker Global Studies and Humanities Magnet School.

Unlike several of our outspoken City Council members, I believe that the shooters, carjackers, car racers, fireworks shooters, thieves, aggressive panhandlers and other criminals are a greater threat to public safety than are the police, who the council members seem to delight in maligning, if not defunding. Does my unwillingness to celebrate diversity even when diversity is behaving badly make me unenlightened?

I really wish Carlson had defined her term. There are plenty of reasons for a reasonable white male to be seriously unhappy with both ends of the political spectrum.

Donald Wolesky, Minneapolis

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I appreciated Carlson's comments and insights about white males, or at least white males in their 50s like her brothers.

I'm a white male in my mid-70s. When I grew up many decades ago in a small city in Indiana, there wasn't much distinction between white-collar and blue-collar males. The economic gap between the town doctor or dentist and a worker at the local Chrysler plant wasn't that much. Everyone could afford a home, a car or two, a vacation, and sending their kids to college, if that's what they wanted. I had no sense then that white males shared the feelings of insecurity and vulnerability felt by Carlson's brothers.

Of course, in the 1950s and '60s, white males had no competition from other racial or ethnic groups for jobs and opportunities. Discrimination against minorities assured white males their place at the head of the line. Did opening the door to other previously burdened populations begin the era of white males feeling vulnerable? Maybe. Or, was it the ever widening gap between the "haves" and the middle class?

The answer to when white males began to feel vulnerable and insecure is probably complex. However, it's probably true they now are feeling the same anxieties and insecurities that have been felt by men of other races and ethnic groups for generations. It's a little hard to feel too sympathetic for them.

Fred Morris, Minneapolis

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There seems to be a certain segment of white males that desperately need to hear "it's not your fault." They appear to gravitate toward those who tell them this, and who also tell them that they are actually "victims." I believe this is one of the reasons why Donald Trump came to power and why we are seeing a surge today in white supremacy groups and ideology.

It may be that when some of these vulnerable white males begin to truly believe that they are blameless victims they sometimes lash out — like most recently in Buffalo, N.Y.; Uvalde, Texas, and Highland Park, Ill. It is a curious contradiction of messaging that the same people saying "it's not your fault" also preach "personal responsibility" — a confounding juxtaposition to be sure. But this is an issue that we as a society either find an answer for, or, I fear, we will continue to be dealing with these tragedies for a very long time.

David McCuskey, Orono

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Carlson's observations about "the predicament of white males" is simply a variation on the predicament that most Americans have encountered due to the past 40-plus years of restructuring the economy.

Over that time, we have had three major tax cuts that primarily benefited the wealthy. We've added new necessities to a household budget (e.g., cellphones and internet access) and have done little to lower the burden of health care, day care, nursing homes or college. When we try — e.g., by lowering student debt or passing the Affordable Health Care Act — the efforts are rolled back as soon as possible. Unions have been attacked, the minimum wage is below the poverty line, and the Minnesota Attorney General's Office says that employees lose $50 billion a year nationally due to outright wage theft. And so on.

The richest 1% of U.S. households now owns more than the 77.5 million households in the middle class (Star Tribune, Oct. 11, 2021), and real wages have stagnated even as the overall economy has grown roughly sevenfold since 1982. MIT's Living Wage Calculator (livingwage.mit.edu) says that a family of two adults and two children in Hennepin County needs to earn $110,327 annually if both parents work. A single-income family breadwinner would need to earn more than $40 an hour to match that idealized situation from America's past.

Yes, this creates a predicament for older white males — and for all other ages, genders and ethnicities. The particular emotional effects or stresses vary, but we need to focus on the common problems making life more difficult for anyone who depends on a paycheck.

Scott Hvizdos, Richfield

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On the basis of one evening's conversation with her own brothers, Carlson expounds on white males, their traits, situations and responses. She acknowledges that demographic groups are not monoliths but proceeds to make dismissive pronouncements as if they were.

One woman is not qualified to speak for "white males" or any other large group. Neither is one man.

The Star Tribune should not devote a third of a page to spreading narrow, uninformed, insulting views on any group.

Marilyn Cloutier, Stillwater