- This is in response to the horrible "double standard"
of Leonard Pitts' comments ("Tennessee case ugly in many ways,"
News, June 5) regarding two innocent victims murdered in Tennessee.
-
- It amazes me that people like Leonard Pitts can turn
this tragedy into such a race issue. How dare he say first of all, that
white people are not oppressed? Personally, I am a single mother raising
two minor children and I am not qualified to receive any free health care
coverage. I have no health care at all. I am employed and working to raise
my children, however, I have been told I do not qualify for health care,
any food stamps or any type of assistance in the city of Chicago or for
that matter from the state of Illinois. Whoever murdered these two young
people should be penalized to the extreme. It is true that had it been
an African American person murdered by "white" people, this would
have been called a "hate crime" all over the news and the newspapers.
-
- I am appalled by Leonard Pitts who believes all "whites"
have it so much easier and better than any other race in this country.
This is an absolute lie! Our taxes pay for the system of welfare and health
care coverage for all others and yet I who have survived ovarian tumors
as well as breast tumors cannot get my necessary mammogram every three
months as required because I cannot afford it. How dare he take the tragedy
of these innocent victims and act as if every "white" person
has it made.
-
- Channon Christian and Christoper Newsom were brutally
tortured and murdered. There had been no news reports on television nor
in our newspaper until the day I read about it in Mr. Pitts' column. It
is a fact that had the roles been reversed and the couple had been "black,"
it would have been everywhere. Stop your double standard, Mr. Pitts!
-
- In response to your final comment that you have four
words for white Americans who feel victimized, I have four words for you:
you are the Pitts.
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- Barbara Rehn
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- Chicago
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- http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/news_opinion_letters/2007/06/double_standard.html
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- Black Journalist Leonard Pitts Tells
Whites Concerned About Black On
- White Crime To 'Cry Me A River'
- By Curt Maynard
- 6-9-7
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- If anyone reading this knows how to contact Channon Christian
or Chris Newsom's parents, please send them Leonard Pitt's article and
tell them Pitt's said to "Cry me a river" in regards to their
childrens death.
-
-
- Below is the article Pitts wrote, I've highlighted in
red some of his more 'racist' and insensitive points. I want a public apology
and I want the Miami Herald and all other newspapers that print his crap
to fire him. Remember Imus? After reading Pitt's article, please feel free
to call him at home and maybe send him a postcard. As you read this article
try as hard as you can to imagine a white man writing the same thing about
black victims of a crime perpetrated by whites. When Pitt's says he doesn't
believe the crime was a hate crime what is he really saying? Isn't he saying
that blacks can't commit a hate crime if their victim is white?
-
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- Send him an email lpitts@MiamiHerald.com
-
-
- Here's Dave Wilson's email address - Dave is Pitts' boss
- DWilson@miamiherald.com
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- LEONARD PITTS - ENOUGH WITH PHONY WHITE VICTIMHOOD
-
- It always amazes me when white people put on the victim
hat. As in victim of racial oppression. By any measure -- health, education,
economics, employment -- white Americans enjoy a superior standard of living.
If that's racial oppression, sign me up.
-
- But still, one occasionally hears mewling noises from
that subset of my white countrymen who feel put-upon by big, bad racial
minorities. This is one of those times. And Knoxville, Tenn., has become
the capital city of that lunatic fringe.
-
- It seems that in January, a young white couple, Channon
Christian and Christopher Newsom, were victims of a brutal crime. They
were carjacked, kidnapped and raped. Cleaning fluid was sprayed into Christian's
mouth. She was stuffed in a trash can and apparently suffocated. Newsom
was shot and set afire. His body was dumped. Five blacks, one a woman,
have been arrested. [Now compare this to the fake Duke Lacrosse Rape and
the media coverage it enjoyed].
-
- The story made headlines around Knoxville. It was unnoticed
nationally.
-
- That has changed. A constellation of white supremacists
and conservative bloggers [As far as Pitt's is concerned anyone that is
a conservative is probably a white supremacist] has pushed the story into
the national limelight as illustration of their argument that news media,
constrained by political correctness, refuse to report black-on-white crime
while pulling out all the stops when crime is white on black, as in the
Duke University lacrosse debacle.
-
- I would see their Duke case and raise them a Central
Park jogger, but what do I know?
-
- Anyway, bloggers such as Michael Oliver have chastised
the "liberal, biased, mainstream media" for missing the Knoxville
story. He asked, "Had the roles been reversed, would the media ignore
such a horrific crime?" [Nope]
-
- Truth is, media ignore horrific crimes all the time.
Space is limited and growing more so. Which means the story that catches
fire usually has some element beyond gruesomeness to sell it. In the Duke
case, it was class, privilege, sex and race that did it.
-
- Not that I expect Oliver or other "oppressed"
white people to pay attention to something so trivial as fact. [Yes, Pitt's
thinks tthat if you're concerned about the enormous amount of black on
white crime you are probably stupid, i.e. not interested in facts] They're
too busy demanding that this case be tried as a hate crime -- even though
police say there's no evidence the couple were targeted for any other reason
than that they were there. And on May 26, white supremacists held -- I
kid you not -- a "rally against genocide" in Knoxville.
-
- Part of me thinks I should consider the source and let
this slide. But the argument being advanced here is so utterly, abysmally,
stupidly, self-servingly wrong that I cannot help but respond.
-
- Black crime against whites is underreported? On what
planet? Study after study and expert after expert tell a completely different
story.
-
- For instance, there's "Off Balance: Youth, Race
and Crime in the News," a 2001 report that concluded: Blacks and Latinos
are underrepresented in news media as victims of crime and significantly
overrepresented as perpetrators, based on crime statistics; newspaper articles
about white homicide victims are longer and more frequent than those about
black ones; and interracial violent crime is more likely to be reported,
even though it is just about the rarest kind of violent crime.
-
- And here I'm obligated, because I'm black, to say that
if the defendants in this case did what they are accused of doing, I'd
be happy to see them rot under the jailhouse. Sadly, that needs saying,
because there are people who will not take it as a given.
-
- But with that obligation fulfilled, let me add that I
am likewise unkindly disposed toward the crackpots, incendiaries and flat-out
racists who have chosen this tragedy upon which to take an obscene and
ludicrous stand.
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- I have four words for them and any other white Americans
who feel themselves similarly victimized: Cry me a river.
-
-
- (I demand an apology and I demand that the Miami Herald
fire Pitt's immediately! - Nothing else will be sufficient)
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- http://www.kansas.com/205/story/86731.html -- Source
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- http://pcapostate.blogspot.com/2007/06/black-journalist-leonard-pitts-doesnt.html
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