Lest anyone think I was the only one who received some pretty nasty comments over the Jena 6 affair, last Saturday’s Virginian-Pilot reprinted an article by Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts. The local headline was much more tame – “Understand context of the Jena case” – than that of the original but the text was the same. In the article, Pitts responds to an email he received:
Your columns usually merit reading. But this time, You sound like the typical Black guy crying ”victim.” Leonard, you list instances of Black injustice and I’m sure there are many. However have you forgot about O.J.? He got away with murder Leonard. He killed his white wife! . . . Or how about Sharpton and the Brawley case? . . . Or the Duke case. . . . I could go on and on. You want more respect for you and your race? Stop sounding like a nigger and start sounding and acting like a Black man. You’ll get respect and justice. Try being a Black man all the time, not just when it fits your agenda.
Pitts says:
Anyway, you were one of a number of readers who wrote to remind me of Simpson. If the point of your reference to him, Tawana Brawley and the Duke lacrosse case was that the justice system has repeatedly and historically mistreated whites, too, on the basis of race, I’m sorry, but that’s absurd. Not that those cases were not travesties. They were. And if those travesties leave you outraged, well, I share that feeling.
What is with these folks? Why is it that whenever a racial issue comes up they bring up O.J. or the Duke case? And why do black writers have to continually inform white America that not all of us agreed with what happened in those cases?
What will it take for people to understand that blacks are no more monolithic in their thinking than any other group?
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 