JOHN YOUNG (HAS, Mar 9) accused me of talking “hysterically” because I said that black people have been, and still are, treated atrociously. He says this is an attempt to “insult the white people of this country”.

If that isn’t itself a blatant example of childish hysterics I don’t know what is. Black people have indeed been treated atrociously and saying so isn’t being hysterical, it’s being factual.

Has Mr Young never heard of the slave trade, the Ku Klux Klan or the murder of Stephen Lawrence – the investigation into whose death concluded that the police in this country are “institutionally racist”? I could go on.

In fact, far from being hysterical my letter was an attempt to give a moderate, balanced perspective on a subject that is all too apt to produce extremism and hysteria of both kinds.

Also, before advising others to sort truth from untruth, Mr Young, you should distinguish between the two yourself.

Tony Kelly, Crook.