A Retraction

by Ernie McCray

I owe an apology to L. Todd Wood.

I wrote about an article he had written in my recent OB Rag piece, “Wishing a Classmate Would Say ‘No to Racism.’”

His essay was sent to me via email by a high school classmate of mine who, as I wrote, is always trying to prove me wrong regarding race issues Black people face in America.

Apparently, my old school chum added information at the end of Wood’s writing that wasn’t the author’s.

Now, Mr. Wood wrote a lot about Black people that was alarming and concerning to me but he hadn’t written any of the things that I attributed to him after I wrote that he had brought “his rant to an end with an assessment of the benefits to our society if Blacks suddenly upped and left.”

I should have been more observant, I guess, but the truth is, in his original writing for The Washington Times, “Black America Blames White America,” he did not write that without Black people “the amount of people in poverty along with the prison population, gang members, and welfare recipients would go down along with cases of chlamydia, syphilis, gonorrhea, AIDS & HIV and homelessness.”

He did not say “the average ACT, SAT, and IQ scores would, along with the average income, go up” or that “Democrats would lose 76% of their voting base and many criminal defense attorneys would have to find another line of work!”

So, I apologize to the man.

And hopefully somday he will apologize for his impressions of Black people.