letter from Tom to Pinky

Dear Patricia,
Or should I say Pinky?  After visiting you at your grandmothers home to urge you to not put up a fight and give up your rights to Miss Em's house, you told me with the deepest and most true sincerity that you planned to fight for not only your rights to the house but your people's. These words shot straight through my heart and into my conscience.  I now find myself at greater odds with American society than ever before.  Having spent my entire life in the north and only knowing you as Patricia in the content of being a white woman, I have always viewed you as of being of great character and intelligence.  However, due to the disturbing mindset of these southerners, they associate you with not your intellect and charm but with a class, they deem to be secondary to their own.  This causes me great personal distress.  Of course, I love you no matter your race or origin, but I can't help but wonder if I would have ever developed feelings if I had known you to be black.  Whether I would I like admit it or not, I'm not sure if I would have allowed myself to fall in love with you.  But having fallen in love, I know my hypothetical reservations would have come with a horrific consequence, the absence of you in my life.  Having taken all of this information into consideration I can only hope that as time passes on, our society will adapt to not judge people by the color of their skin but by their merit and character.  I suppose this is why I urged you so strongly to come home with me and begged you to come to your senses.  But after several months of reflection, I can see it now, and I only wish the best for you to come.  So tonight I pray for you and your future success and for our country, specifically the south I wish that one day we will be able to have a country where all women will be accepted and valued by their works and not their skin.  Anyways, forgive me for the intrusion upon your new life, I just felt that my feelings needed to be voiced.
 Sending my love,
Tom

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