The was an armed robbery in Whitewater this week. Robbery is wrong and armed robbery especially so. There’s neither justification nor excuse for the crime.
Radio station WFAW reported the crime in a straightforward way, but the Daily Union on Facebook crudely described the suspects not as black males (as would be conventional) but rather as male blacks. (Obvious point: there are probably people at the DU who don’t even understand the difference between the two descriptions.)
I don’t know, and so am not contending, that the awkward description is intentionally bigoted; it’s enough to know that at these local newspapers, and at local institutions, there’s often a weak staff that receives little or no training and oversight. Workers with limited still and narrow perspectives are hired and then left to their own limitations.
Genuine mentoring (rather than a press release about mentoring) is deficient in all these small rural towns. If the top level’s weak (and it sometimes is), one can guess that’s what’s below is often weaker still.