Gary Younge’s article (The dark heart of white America, 7 November) does not chime with my experience. Earlier this year I walked 400 miles through poor white communities in Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee on the Appalachian Trail (AT). Yes, there were signs of religious mania and bigotry. Billboards in Hiawassee, Georgia, advertising the Ten Commandments; statues in Franklin and Hot Springs, North Carolina of General Robert E Lee (usually put up in the south by the daughters of the Confederacy in the 1920s when the old soldiers were dying out); and the occasional Confederate battle flag still flying in Tennessee. All these were diluted by the universal generosity of spirit, friendliness, optimism and humour shown by local people. Now, in a stunning result, we have Ralph Northam, a Democrat, elected by nine points as the new governor of Virginia, running against a Republican closely tied to and supported by Trump. Obama’s message of hope still carries. It isn’t all about “anxiety, division and pockets of pain”. Gary started his trip in Maine, which is the northern terminus of the AT. He should go back, put his boots on, and discover a different sort of white America.

Maurice Bates

Scarborough, North Yorkshire

• Gary Younge’s encounter with Richard Spencer (Why I gave a platform to the alt-right, 9 November) brings to mind Playboy magazine’s 1966 interview with the founder of the American Nazi party, George Lincoln Rockwell. Rockwell agreed to do the interview providing that Playboy didn’t send “a Jew” to interview him. Instead, Hugh Hefner dispatched the African American journalist and future author of Roots, Alex Haley, neglecting to mention that Haley was black. The result was a fascinating interview in which Haley’s obviously superior intellect exposed the absurdities of Rockwell’s theories of white superiority.

Bruce Paley

Castlemorris, Pembrokeshire

• I have no argument with Rebecca Solnit’s opinion article (8 November) about dishonest democracy in the US, but I would like to add that if democracy is supposed to be “one man, one vote”, the US system is sadly lacking. For the second time in 16 years, the electoral college appointed a president contrary to the popular vote. Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000 by over 0.5m votes but the college appointed George Bush. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by over 3m votes, and we know the result. The electoral college is biased in favour of the smaller “fly-over” states; for example, a vote in Wyoming has four times the weight of a vote in California, in electoral college terms. Donald Trump was appointed, not elected! Hillary Clinton was not my favourite candidate for president by any means, but she is infinitely more qualified than Trump. Those fine words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”, ring hollow. It depends where you vote.

Anthony Sweeney

London

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