Leonard Pitts, Mr. Impossible
by James A. Landrith, Jr.
August/September 2002
in The Abolitionist Examiner
In the July 20th Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Leonard Pitts had this to say about the Racial Privacy Initiative:
“A colorblind America is high on the wish list of many conservatives – right up there with two guns in every nightstand and a prayer in every classroom. They bemoan the scourge of hyphenated Americanism and wax eloquent on how much better off we’d be if we were all just Americans, period. If we no longer saw or acknowledged differences in race and culture.”
I’m not a conservative, yet I support the RPI. I know people from many parts of the political spectrum who support this initiative. Even the campus paper at Berkeley supports the RPI. Pitts is playing games here by trying to smear RPI supporters as religious right authoritarians. It’s childish and idiotic and I am embarrassed for him.
“I share their concern over the balkanization of the country. But their frequently proposed solution to that problem – that we ignore difference – is naive at best. It is also faintly insulting.”
Of course, while we are at it let’s just return to the days of segregation and anti-miscegenation. Pitts is only a step away from that mindset with his belief that constantly focusing on “race” is creating less “racism.” Is that insulting enough for you?
“I speak from experience, having too frequently encountered white people who wanted me to know they didn’t “see” me as black. Intending a compliment, I suppose. Or maybe a promotion. And each time, I wondered the same thing: Why is my heritage something you have to blind yourself to in order for us to have a relationship? Why do you have to pretend I’m not what I quite obviously am before I can earn your goodwill? If that’s the case, maybe your will isn’t as good as you think it is.”
Perhaps, instead of speaking from experience, Mr. Pitts is instead speaking from a victimhood persona. His diatribe sounds similar to sentiments expressed by “white” racialists” who cry about their heritage being diminished and it is just as revolting. Whatever happened to King’s “content of their character?” I’ll tell you what happened, it was rejected by traditional civil rights organizations in the 1970s, in favor of “racialist” and nationalist propaganda.
What Pitts and his ilk want and need is for people to continue to divide themselves into color groups so that he and his collectivist colleagues in neo-Marxia can continue to use skewed and completely inaccurate statitistical “race” data for the purposes of creating divisiveness and political gains for their cohorts. It’s all about the money and power.
He goes on to utter such nonsense as:
“The truth is that so-called colorblindness is neither possible nor even desirable.”
Where does this “truth” come from? Why is it impossible? I have serious trouble trusting people when they claim that something is not possible. At different points in history, there were always naysayers like him who thought that slavery would last forever, that scrapping segregation laws was not possible and that “interracial” marriage would never be completely legalized. It shows a mind that has already closed down to other possibilities.
Once Pitts started with this “neither possible, nor even desirable” nonsense I wrote him off as a flat-earther type. Wait a minute, that’s not entirely true, I wrote him off for aggravated one-droppism in 1997 when he criticized Tiger Woods for not embracing the one-drop rule. In a September 30, 1997 article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Pitts said of Tiger, “his disinclination to identify with black people sort of seems a slap in the face or denial of those travails.” While Pitts is busy embracing one-drop and waxing poetic about things that are “neither possible, nor even desirable,” the rest of the country is rapidly proving him wrong. “Interracial” marriage rates are up, more and more “multiracial” individuals are choosing self-identification over Pitt’s shameful one-droppism and a large number of people chose to boycott the “race” question on the last census, not to mention on college admissions and other forms. It seems that public opinion is moving away from Mr. Pitts’ “neither possible, nor even desirable” collectivist nonsense.
Leonard Pitts, Mr. Impossible. Leonard Pitts, what an embarassment.
James Landrith is the notorious editor and publisher of The Multiracial Activist and The Abolitionist Examiner, two cyber-rags dedicated to freedom from oppressive racial categorization. Landrith can be reached by email at: editor@multiracial.com or at his personal website/blog.
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