I count this as a good thing. One of the great joys of the Internet is that dissenters can e-mail the columnist, and commenters can tear apart a typically lumbering PC essay with ease. Democracy in action.
The MSM is coming around to accept this, but race remains a sticking point. News organizations are often open about the censorship of "racist" (i.e., pointing out uncomfortable facts about race) commentary. And a character like Pitts[Email him] — who can dish it but can't take it — finds himself frustrated. Blacks and other minorities are used to getting their way when it comes to expression of opinions, because whites are (in person) afraid to say what's on their minds.
I had to chuckle about Pitts' opening paragraph:
This will be a futile column. Experience dictates that it will change no minds, inspire no reconsideration among those who disagree. It will sit on the computer screen or the newspaper page taking up space, affecting nothing, until another column replaces it. It will be a useless essay, written for one reason only: to protect the writer's mental health. If the writer did not write it, you see, there is a great danger his head would explode.[When ears don't hear, truth is futile, Miami Herald, March 19, 2011]Why, Leonard, that's how I often feel!
Seriously, a columnist ought not be surprised that people disagree with him, but Leonard seems to be taking special offense here on grounds that his opponents are just ignorant racist whites who won't acknowledge the facts. And how dare anyone disagree with him: he's black, he's angry, he's righteous. He's Leonard Pitts!
This is the same columnist, by the way, who sneered "cry me a river" in response to white complaints about black criminal attacks—specifically, the Knoxville Horror!.[The loonies of Knoxville, June 3, 2007]
But when you have a topic that's as empirically locked-down as "black crime", it's too tempting for whites to wade in. Plenty of sources support the counter-assertion that blacks do, in fact, commit crime in amounts disproportionate to their share of the population.
Pitts is not in a position of strength of here, so he has to resort to invocations of slavery and 1984.
Denying racial statistics on crime is, well, futile.
And yes, whites are sick of being blamed, bashed and abused over all this.
Solution for the futility: stop writing.
