Leonard Pitts Cries "Race." So What Else Is New?

Leonard Pitts is a professional race writer. He is a columnist for the Miami Herald and has won a Pulitzer Prize. This time he writes about Jena and uses the term “nigger.” Of course, since he is Black, he is allowed to use this offensive term. But he uses it to accuse someone who wrote him and e-mail of racism. So far, par for the course.

He begins his argument with a headline which carries a message, but reads strangely for someone who is a professional writer:

“Multiply sense of betrayal by 388 years.”

I read that and went “Huh?” But knowing Mr. Pitts, I intuited his meaning and it goes something like this:

“Black people have been oppressed by white people in this country for 388 years and we continue to be oppressed and you will have to make it up to me!”

He uses the events at Jena to prove his point that black people continue to be treated unfairly in this country. He may have a point, but unfortunately for him, Jena is not a good example.

To begin with, he describes the attack of the white youth by six black youths this way:

“they gave a white kid a black eye and knocked him out.”

Well, no, that’s not exactly what happened. According to the witnesses, the six knocked the white kid out and then proceeded to stomp him while he was unconscious. The Shreveport Times reports:

According to court documents, someone hit Barker from behind, knocking him out, then others began to kick and stomp his "lifeless" body. He spent about three hours in a local emergency room for treatment of injuries to his head and face.

The same article gives us an insight into the history of one of the attackers, a football star by the name of Mychal Bell who has a history of committing violent crimes. But as is often the case with sports stars, he was given a pass by the school and his coach. We need go back no further in our memories than O.J. Simpson and Michael Vick to understand that star athletes are often protected from the consequences of their actions, and as a result sometimes commit violence.

And regarding Barker’s injuries, they apparently cost the family $12,000 which is more that the cost to treat a black eye.

Mr. Pitts’ grievance – and the grievance of those who marched in Jena and wrote articles in support of the “Jena Six” – is that the punishment of the defendants was too harsh. That seemed reasonable based on the way the crime was characterized by Mr. Pitts: a schoolyard tussle with the victim getting a black eye. But now that more information has gotten out, it seems that Mr. Pitts is trying to carry his argument with a lie. And the previous record of one of the defendants becomes much more important.

Writing as “Patterico” an LA prosecutor says this:

As a prosecutor, I can tell you that the most important factors in the treatment of any criminal defendant are (1) the seriousness of the current offense, and (2) the nature of the defendant’s prior criminal history — with a special focus on similar actions.
It is not a “minor” detail that a person charged with a violent crime has a criminal history, including four previous violent crimes.

There are some other pieces of this puzzle in Searching for Facts. Could the infamous nooses have something to do with a football game and not race?

The square at Jena High School has been known for the center of school spirit and/or pranks for many years. I've seen everything from "funerals" of opponent football teams to the tree and surrounding area covered with toilet tissue. Jena High School is known for themed activities surrounding football games. This particular week, JHS was playing a team in which the mascot is Cowboys! Hence, the nooses in the tree..."hang'em high!" Not for one moment did the thought of racism cross my mind or the majority of the others. It was football season. We were playing the cowboys. The kids, girls and boys, wore boots to school and had a western themed pep rally! Nooses = cowboys and horse theives in my world. Maybe I've watched too much Gunsmoke, but racism was not even a thought. Due to the reaction of ADULTS in the black community, not the kids at the school, the boys were suspended. The entire punishment for those boys was never published because of the confidentiality of the issue. However, the boys were suspended. They and their families were required to go to counseling. The boys had hours of community service. The boys and their families continue to receive threatening phone calls, but yet no one has addressed that issue.

I doubt if Mr. Pitts would even entertain the thought. Perhaps because I have not been drenched in racial defensiveness all of my life, when I see a noose, I think of Western movies. When Mr. Pitts sees a noose he sees a black lynching. In fact, he is paid to think of blacks being lynched, but more on that later.

Mr. Pitts correspondent then refers to examples more recent than 1619 to point out that racism is now a two way street:

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

Mr. Pitts replies:

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.

Why are those cases “absurd?” Was OJ acquitted because he was innocent or because the black jury decided that they were not going to convict this particular black football hero? Wasn’t the whole Tawana Brawley hoax about race; about white guys attacking a black girl because of her race? Wasn’t the Duke Lacrosse rape-hoax about furthering a theme of rich white jocks versus poor black women? If it was about something else, why did a rape case in Durham, North Carolina end up on the national news with banner headlines in the NY Times?

OK, Mr. Pitts says, those cases may have been travesties. And he shares that feeling. Then perhaps he can refer me to articles that he has written that provide evidence that he shares the feeling. That should not be too hard for a race writer writing about some of the highest profile race-charged cases that occurred while he was working up to his Pulitzer.

The sad fact is that there is money to be made in the race business and that’s the reason it’s not going away anytime soon. Jesse Jackson has made millions for himself and his family by the simple expedient of extorting it. So has Al Sharpton. And Mr. Pitts is making a very good living writing about the plight of the black man. Every time they can find a case, or manufacture a case, they will because that’s the way they make a living.

Unfair? Not really. Not if they have to manufacture a national case out of the “Jena Six” and have to lie to make it.

UPDATE: For a fairer review of what happened in Jena, try reading another black columnist: Jason Whitlock.

Now we love Mychal Bell, the star of the 2006 Jena (La.) High School football team, the teenage boy who has sat in jail since December for his role in a six-on-one beatdown of a fellow student.

Thursday, thousands of us, proud African-Americans, expressed our devotion to and desire to see justice for the “Jena Six,” the half-dozen black students who knocked unconscious, kicked and stomped a white classmate.

Jesse Jackson compared Thursday’s rallies in Jena to the protests and marches that used to take place in cities like Selma, Ala., in the 1960s. Al Sharpton claimed Thursday’s peaceful demonstrations were to highlight racial inequities in the criminal justice system.

Jesse and Al, as they’re prone to do, served a kernel of truth stacked on a mountain of lies.
There are undeniable racial and economic inequities in our criminal justice system, and from afar the “Jena Six” rallies certainly looked and felt like the righteous protests of the 1960s.

But the reality is Thursday’s protests are just another sign that we remain deeply locked in denial about the path we need to travel today for true American liberation, equality and power in the new millennium.

The fact that we waited to love Mychal Bell until after he’d thrown away a Division I football scholarship and nine months of his life is just as heinous as the grossly excessive attempted-murder charges that originally landed him in jail.

Reed Walters, the Jena district attorney, is being accused of racism because he didn’t show Bell compassion when the teenager was brought before the court for the third time on assault charges in a two-year span.

Where was our compassion long before Bell got into this kind of trouble?

That’s the question that needed to be asked in Jena and across the country on Thursday. But it wasn’t asked because everyone has been lied to about what really transpired in the small southern town.

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