The New York Times Sanitizes Incendiary Rhetoric

Rhetoric has consequences.

Making incendiary accusations about race, ethnic and religious discrimination is a dangerous game—most Americans are aware of this nation's troubled history and feel passionate about avoiding any reruns; when someone or a group is labeled “racist”, there are centuries of baggage that attach.

Charges of racism, bigotry and hate inflame raw nerves as few issues do. That is why it is vitally important that opinion molders think before they engage in incendiary name-calling, no matter how benign their motivations might be. Charges of hate stick, fester and are nearly indelible.

Thursday night's police murders in Dallas offer a case study in how tragedy reminds us that words are powerful and ought to be utilized carefully and with thought, they don't simply float in the ether.

Michael Eric Dyson, a professor of sociology at Georgetown and a contributing opinion writer to The New York Times, posted an “>screed, a latter day J'accuse directed at the white community. It declared among other things:

It is clear that you, white America, will never understand us. We are a nation of nearly 40 million black souls inside a nation of more than 320 million people. We don't all think the same, feel the same, love, learn, live or even die the same…

You will never understand the helplessness we feel in watching these events unfold, violently, time and again, as shaky images tell a story more sobering than your eyes are willing to believe: that black life can mean so little. That Alton and Philando Castle, black men whose deaths were captured on film this past week, could be gone as we watch, as a police officer fires a gun. That the police are part of an undeclared war against blackness.

You can never admit that this is true. In fact, you deem the idea so preposterous and insulting that you call the black people who believe it racists themselves. In that case the best-armed man will always win.

You say that black folks kill each other every day without a mumbling word while we thunderously protest a few cops, usually but not always white, who shoot to death black people who you deem to be mostly “thugs.” [Emphasis added]

That piece was posted before the tragic Dallas events. As the murders of the five law enforcement officers unfolded, The Times did a frantic bit of Etch-a-sketch and