Letter to the editor on racist double standards
(to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette -- I have a decent track record of my letters actually getting printed, so we'll see)
Dear Editor:
During Michael Vick's trial for dog-fighting, your letters page was filled with vituperation from readers against Vick and against anyone who questioned the hype surrounding his case. One reader called Vick "subhuman" and even compared him to Jeffrey Dahmer.
I wonder if these same people will now expend even one-tenth of that moral indignation for the sake of 14-year old Martin Lee Anderson. Anderson was sadistically beaten to death last year by Florida boot camp guards, and an all-white jury just acquitted his thuggish assailants, despite unmistakable and horrifying videographic evidence. Can Vick's critics spare so much as one word on Anderson's behalf? Will they even lift a finger for the teenagers in Jena, Louisiana, who face prison time for having the temerity to retaliate against racist death threats?
Or could it be that some of white America puts a higher value on the lives of dogs than on the lives of young black men?
JOHN LACNY
Overbrook