I was reading an article today on
Editor and Publisher. The piece examined a recent columnist, Leonard Pitts, about a commentary he recently wrote for the Miami Herald. It was his ‘debut’ commentary, which I guess, has given a few white supremacy groups something to talk about, hence the reason for Editor and Publisher to write about this topic…
Anyway, the gist of the article, as stated by Editor and Publisher, indicated that Pitts “wrote about the brutal January murder of a white couple in Tennessee. A group of African Americans were charged with the crime.” However, in Pitts’ column, Editor and Publisher stated, “He noted that supremacists and conservative bloggers who pushed the murder case into the national spotlight were examples of white people who ‘put on the victim hat’ and allege that black crime against whites is underreported”.
After reading Editor and Publisher’s article, I just HAD to read what Pitts wrote in his ‘debut’ piece. You too, can read the article by
clicking here.
(I do advise caution however.)I can tell you, after reading his commentary, I was amazed that anyone could be so callous about a man and woman murdered in the fashion that the two young people were, Black, White, Asian, Latino, whatever!
The REAL sad part of the story wasn’t that the media reported the crime, but that the color of their skin was the MAIN topic of the story. Was this a hate crime? Who knows…who is ANYONE to judge that? They could have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but the fact of the matter is, they are gone, and were brutally taken away.
I had to ask myself a few questions after I read what I did…Why does this country continue to focus on the color of skin? What are we teaching the youth of the nation? If you’re not white, if you’re not black, etc., etc., you can’t be a ‘particular’ something or do something great? Why can’t we start writing about the positive rather than the negative ALL the time?
I then thought…perhaps if we stopped focusing on the color we could start focusing on the person…then maybe, just maybe, we could ALL learn to be color blind…
Just a thought…
