Response to Leonard Pitts' column on racism by cops

It Monday's Wisconsin State Journal, there was this column by Leonard Pitts:

'What Can I Do?' Let's find out
http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/opinion/column/guest/leonard-pitts-jr-what-can-i-do-let-s-find/article_608bb7f5-2b80-5382-b6db-a0a12274e6fb.html

I sent Mr. Pitts the reply below:

If we are going to "do something," we must fully understand the problem, not just one side.

People are still going around saying "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" though the report of Eric Holder's Justice Department says that didn't happen and there was no cause to bring charges against the cop who shot Michael Brown. Yet black business owners were burned out by thugs to protest racism. In Baltimore, low-income senior housing going up was burned out to protest "racism," though given the location we might assume that most of the elderly denied homes to protest the racist death of Gray would have been black (As were three of the six cops indicted--not to mention the mayor, the police chief and the state's attorney.) Yes, I still use the word thugs--I don't know what else to call the Mob, the Aryan Nations or the Skinheads, all of which have a limited diversity policy, though the originals Thugees were from India.

I notice your column didn't mention that sometimes the cop is black and the person shot is white, rarely followed by riots.

‘Justice for Dillon Taylor’ sought for white Utah man fatally shot by black officer

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/sep/3/justice-dillon-taylor-after-white-utah-man-fatally/

White teen killed by black cop in Alabama mirrors Ferguson

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/nov/27/white-teen-gilbert-collar-killed-by-black-cop-trev

There were blacks attacking whites over the death of Trayvon Martin, but no whites attacked blacks over the death of Chris Cervini, an unarmed white teen shot dead by a black man with a gun, who said the teen "rushed at him" and like thug-wannabe George Zimmerman was also acquitted.

Roderick Scott Acquitted

http://mikeb302000.blogspot.com/2009/12/roderick-scott-acquitted.html

The murder statistics are interesting. The media frets constantly about whites killing blacks and about assault rifles. The FBI says that in 2011, 193 black folks were killed by whites and 2,447 by other blacks, while 448 whites were killed by blacks, while 2,630 whites were killed by other whites. Interracial murder is a small part of the total. I've read that more blacks are murdered by blacks in three months in Chicago than were lynched by the KKK in the 1930s Jim Crow decade. Also, guns killed 8,583 people, but only 323 were murdered by any type of rifle, while hands and feet killed 728, knives 1,694 and blunt objects 496.

Intraracial murders are a far larger problem than interracial murders either way, though blacks kill whites about twice as often as the other way around. And hands and feet should be banned as they are more dangerous than all rifles, never mind the scary black ones the media calls assault rifles.

I had a lung transplant on 12/23/13, five days after a brother Marine from Louisiana, John Payne had his at the Madison, VA. While recovering in the  hospital (an ongoing process BTW, but I'm here), I talked with John and his wife Donna about the racism they had experienced in their youths. That led me to write the below essay for my blog. Alas, it is too long for most Americans to read, too long at 8,000 words (with another 8,000 in the reading list, all of which I have read) to be published anywhere.

Unfortunately for your stock in trade, this issue, like so many, does not lend itself to being better understood in a newspaper-column length piece. Focusing only on one side of the issue not only obscures it, but increases the divisions in our society. I like your writing, but you reliably emphasize one side while ignoring inconvenient facts that don't support your argument, rather like politicians on all points of the spectrum. (Which, as a recovering politician myself, I can say.) ~Bob

Essay: Racism in America.

http://tartanmarine.blogspot.com/2014/05/essay-racism-in-america.html

http://tinyurl.com/n4zow58