Columnist the target of racist death threats

A few weeks ago, columnist Leonard Pitts inflamed racists across the country for a column he did deriding them for playing the victim card. Certain individuals in the Knoxville, Tenn area were calling for the carjacking,rape and murder of a white couple, allegedly done by 5 black suspects, to be categorized as a hate crime. Obviously, the crime was barbaric and those who perpetrated it should have the book thrown at them but, this appears to have been motivated by opportunity, not race.

Pitts was not belittling the crime. Instead, he was chastising those who, incorrectly, seized upon the racial differences between the victims and the accused, stating that if the races of the people had been reversed, the crime would have been reported more widely. Pitts went on to dissect this argument, including citing a 2001 study that showed “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.”

Well, this had the white racists up in arms, which lead one white supremacist web site to post his address, phone number and wife’s name (another site followed suit, as well). So, Pitts has been receiving death threats via phone and email. The owner of the site refuses to take the information down. When the editor of the Miami Herald called the site’s editor, Bill White (this has to be a pseudonym), he was told that “We have no intention of removing Mr. Pitts’ personal information. Frankly, if some loony took the info and killed him, I wouldn’t shed a tear. That also goes for your whole newsroom.”

The FBI has been called in to investigate the threats. Let’s hope that this madness does not rise above the level of mere threats and that Pitts will continue to speak out and continue to speak the truth as he sees it.

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3 comments for “Columnist the target of racist death threats”

Bill White , on the 21 of June, 2007 at 11:04 am said:
Bill White is not a pseudonym and Pitts was belittling the crime. All the nigger lying in Jew papers to the contrary won’t change that fact — which white people see very clearly.

Nice try, though, Negro!
JP Smith , on the 21 of June, 2007 at 11:22 am said:
Bill,

Thanks for “opening your mouth and removing all doubt”, to paraphrase Mark Twain.
black…MYstory » Blog Archive » White supremacist site issues thinly-veiled call for attacks on ‘Jena 6′ , on the 24 of September, 2007 at 9:06 am said:
[...] site is run by the same idiot, Bill White, who posted the address, telephone number and name of the wife of columnist Leonard Pitts, who derided white supremacists for playing the victim card over a carjacking incident involving [...]

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Bill White , on the 21 of June, 2007 at 11:04 am said:

Bill White is not a pseudonym and Pitts was belittling the crime. All the nigger lying in Jew papers to the contrary won’t change that fact — which white people see very clearly.

Nice try, though, Negro!

JP Smith , on the 21 of June, 2007 at 11:22 am said:

Bill,

Thanks for “opening your mouth and removing all doubt”, to paraphrase Mark Twain.

black…MYstory » Blog Archive » White supremacist site issues thinly-veiled call for attacks on ‘Jena 6′ , on the 24 of September, 2007 at 9:06 am said:

[...] site is run by the same idiot, Bill White, who posted the address, telephone number and name of the wife of columnist Leonard Pitts, who derided white supremacists for playing the victim card over a carjacking incident involving [...]