Leonard Pitts, Jr. The Miami Herald - What’s an “average White guy” to do? – Some comments on your op-ed on the evils of “stereotyping”.

February 22, 2012
Leonard Pitts, Jr.
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693

RE: What’s an “average White guy” to do? – Some comments on your op-ed on the evils of “stereotyping”.

Mr. Pitts,

Is another perfectly sound word – “chink” – about to go down the modern American Liberal memory hole?

The subject of your low dudgeon is a New York Knickerbocker, Jeremy Lin. Let it be said that Lin has had a 3 week run etched in brilliance. Sometimes the basket looks as wide as a well. He has the hot hand. I would have him shoot as soon as he gets off the bus. A case could be made for him being a mole planted by the Mandarin money lenders to whom we are in thralldom. As he tours the country he can report back to Ming the merciless about how many “shovel ready” jobs there are. You may recall that Lord Barack the Beneficent borrowed, first billions and then trillions, to finance what is now known as the not quite shovel ready jobs

But back to “stereotyping”.

You say “It is difficult to escape this impression when one hears you using the Ku Klux Klan’s favorite racial epithet.”

The last time I went to an NBA game I thought I had taken the wrong subway. Instead of coming up from the catacombs to Madison Square Garden I thought I had been transported to a Senator Robert Byrd [D-WVA] cross burning KKK recruitment rally. The only word I heard above the cacophony of a Knicks game in the Garden was the dreaded “N” word, the word that “average White guys” dare not use.

Here’s a shocker.

Weren’t no White folk, “average” or otherwise, using it.

I assume that many members of the choir had working knowledge of James Joyce.

The dreaded “N” word was used as a noun, a verb, a gerund, and an exclamation point. The best one was the split infinitive. Maybe we can have a day, a la Bloomsday, during Black History Month to celebrate the advancement of the language. Maybe not.


Speaking of “stereotyping”…

I read this morning of a debate in the non-Caucasian community about the proper name for their group.

I remember when Jesse Jackson proclaimed – the term ex cathedra comes to mind – that the word “Black” was the only acceptable term. That has segued into the more ubiquitous term “African-American”. Now, some of the lanschmen are objecting to one size fits all.

Would you be so kind as to send me a list of “verboten” words, particularly for an “average White guy”?

Would you also tell me if there are words that are universally “stereotypical”, that is to say no one can use them anytime?

How long before an “interloper” could go into the Barnes & Noble in Harlem and ask the clerk for a copy of Dick Gregory’s autobiography by its title? SASE if no one knows its name. Incidentally, it’s a great book.





Kevin Smith