January 26, 2014
Leonard Pitts, Jr.
The Miami Herald

Re: The matter is settled. The man behind the curtain, Pitts the Great, has spoken. Some comments on your column today, stating infallibly as is your wont, that “they [Conservatives] have never been on the right side of history where black people have been concerned”.

Mr. Pitts,

Was “Amazing Grace” written by an ancestor of Tupac? Could we double-helix Oprah back to William Wilberforce? What color was Harriet Beecher Stowe?

I had an uncle who died on July 2, 1863 in the Wheat Field at Gettysburg. He was a member of the 69th New York Regiment – the Irish Brigade. He is still there “wrapped in his faded coat of Blue”.

I can’t conceive of a better definition of being on the right side of History. Can you? In fact, should reparations for slavery come to pass I will claim a tax credit carry forward to offset my portion of the due bill.

The first country to ban slavery, absolutely and unconditionally, was Ireland, the land of my forebears. We did it 15 centuries ago. Ergo, it becomes an inconvenient fact that they did not have to deal with Barack Obama’s paternal ancestors.

What were those stout fellows, nature’s noblemen all, doing, you might ask.

They were culling their herds. They were selling their cousins into bondage.

Instead of taking the position of Margaret Sanger, still a heroine of modern American Liberals, a position that Hitler liked so much that he used it as the template for his Nuremberg race laws of 1934, they gathered them up and drove them 1,000 miles to the “door of no return”. Look it up.

White people took them to the New World – more to Brazil than to America – until White people stopped them by force of arms. Look it up.

Speaking of being on the “wrong side of history”, in the election of 1864 the Democratic Party acquiesced in calling Abraham Lincoln a “baboon”. They also wanted to settle with the South, the outcome of which would have been the continuation of slavery. Look that one up also.

Reconstruction was killed by Southern Democrats.

The Ku Klux Klan was protected by and flourished under the Democratic Party. One more thing to Google.

T. Woodrow Wilson, and if we are to believe Justice Thurgood Marshall, was the most bigoted, the most vile racist to be President in the 20th century. Did I mention that he was a Democrat?

The Democratic Vice President – Barkley - in 1948 and the 1952 Democratic candidate for Vice President – Sparkman - were stone cold racists who cherished their lawn jockey statues.

It was Republican President who nominated a Republican to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Do we have to mention that it was he who forged the unanimous consensus that overturned Plessy v Ferguson? Brown v the Wichita Board of Education, remember? I guess we do. The same Republican President sent the United States Army to Little Rock, Arkansas to enforce the law. Look that up also. See which party opposed that in Congress. Here’s a hint. Think donkey.

The 1964 Civil Rights acts would not have passed the Senate save for the votes of the Republican minority. You’re going to have a busy Sunday afternoon at your computer.

The Russell Senate Office Building and the USS John Vinson [CVN70} were named after Senators who, whatever else they did, spent their entire adult lives trying to keep little Black boys from going to school with little White girls. Another item on your look-up list.

I can find no record of a Republican Senate Majority leader who was an active member of the Ku Klux Klan. By active I mean he recruited for them and carried his fair share of gasoline when it was time to burn some crosses.

I also can find no record of a Republican Senate Majority leader going on national TV and twice using the dreaded “N” word, the word that White folk dare not use.

There is one exception to this hard and fast rule: If you are a former member of the Ku Klux Klan who is the Democratic Senate Majority leader you get an eclectically indignant pass.

It is a gruesomely ghastly fact that some 35% to 40% of the abortions performed in this country since 1973 have been done on Black women. Forget about George Zimmerman. If that ain’t genocide I don’t know what is.

Can you name one Democratic member of Congress who is opposed to this Federally sanctioned abattoir, this charnel house that is approaching Chairman Mao numbers of murders? Just one, please.

Take your time.

As Walker Percy said, “the back door of an abortion clinic leads to Auschwitz”.

Would it be imprudently racist of me to point out that it was a Black man, Kermit Gosnell, MD who led the slaughter of the innocents?

Isn’t it tiring to be 100% infallible 100% of the time? Also, don’t your arms get tired what with the time you spend on the cross of unrequited indignation?

Meanwhile, I have to get back to the Golden Jubilee of the hugely popularWar on Poverty.

We won that one, didn’t we?






Kevin Smith





PS – Once you have branded someone with the “R”, as in Racist, is there any chance of redemption, any chance of coming back from the Inferno or is it permanent, like the mark of Cain?