‘My two cents’. That is the title of a column the Enterprise-Journal created last year. Now, speaking directly to you, Jack Ryan, editor to editor, I say: shame on you!

As the managing editor for your newspaper, you have the right to layout and publish your newspaper as you see fit. I am not challenging this right. Why would I? We layout and publish our newspaper as we see fit.

Ninety to ninety-five percent of what we print in the Mississippi Tribune each week, you will not find in your newspaper. Our newspaper is an African American newspaper, written, published, managed and owned by Black people. Your newspaper is like a lot of the daily newspapers in America, written, published, managed and owned by white people, and written from a white point of view.

I am writing this to make sure that you and your primary readers understand this. The Black community has always understood this. You control it. You write it. It is your story. From you it is “his-story” (history).

So, when you chose to publish that column in your newspaper, you were doing what you have a right to do. But, your ‘My two cents’ column is nothing more than a place where you can allow your readers to express their opinions and make public statements without accountability.

Remember, most of the statements and opinions in your column come directly from your newspaper online blog responses from your website. And, no one is required to identify themselves. They are able to speak freely and bravely without anyone knowing their names or where they live.

What cowards!!!!

And that includes you Jack Ryan.

You’ve created a way for you and some of your friends, as well as people who are not friends of yours, to say whatever they like without any repurcussions. So, we are only left with you to hold responsible for so many of the hateful and ignorant rantings of some of your readers that YOU SELECT each week to appear in your column that is not even worth two cents.

It is clear from reading the responses to the blog on your website and the comments you publish in the newspaper column that a number of the people commenting have a limited, ignorant and hateful viewpoint about Black people in general. The comments you select are often negative and hateful and sometimes slanderous and ignorant and sometimes lies. And this has gone unchecked for too long.

Readers of the comments you select will always find a majority, if not all of the comments you selected, against or attacking persons and subjects that are important or have relevance for a lot of the Black community. Examples are:

• the county coroner and his use of a county vehicle,
• the Mississippi Conference of Black Mayors held here in McComb/Pike County,
• unending and unceasing attacks against Mayor Zach Patterson
• and, Tasha Dillon and the department she heads, Community Affairs and Tourism.

Publishing these comments, I believe, allows you to declare and emphasize your point of view and the viewpoint of many of your white readers. A viewpoint, at times, very different than the viewpoint of the Black community. And, a lot of the viewpoints that I am refering to are steeped in racist attitudes and thoughts. Don’t believe me? Well, let’s look at a current example.

Tasha Dillon.

She is the director of the City of McComb Department of Community Relations and Tourism.
In the comments YOU SELECTED for you column, they reveal the mind of commentators that YOU wanted us to read:

“ We are having a family reunion in April. Where do I sign up to get money? Most are coming from out of town. If you give to one, you must give to all.”

“...I applaud them (state representatives David Myers and Sam Mims) for pointing out the gross misuse of funds and coming up with a creative way to try and get the best use of it.”

“Good for Mims and Myers. The mayor is being disingenuous with his outcry of foul play by the M&M’s. He is the one paying the tourism director $57,000 per year to run that department. He is the one who by passed city policy, which requires all positions to be advertised. He is the one who hired a person that has no degree or even a studied discipline in community affairs or public administration.”

You selected these silly, vicious and ridiculous comments, Jack Ryan. All of those comments were so far from the truth and I am trying my best to believe that you knew this. And, if you knew the truth, then why would you intentionally print lies???

For our readers who are unaware, let me respond to these comments:

1. Tasha’s department has never paid for a family reunion or church event. All you had to do was ask her.
2. There has been no gross misuse of any funds from her department. Myers and Mims are operating under personal vendettas against Mayor Patterson and are only trying to get revenge at the expense of Tasha’s department and the entire community that has benefited from her efforts (especially a Black community that was rarely featured, considered or benefited from previous organizations, activities and events like the Main Street Association and the Iron Horse Festival.
3. Tasha Dillon does not make $57,000. Not even close. Ask her. She does have a college degree, as well as, post-gradute training. She has extensive experience, matching the majority of tourism directors around the U.S. She is a Mississippi Certified Tourism Specialist. She is managing a $167,000 budget for her department. Previously, she has successfully managed a $250,000 budget with 14 employees in 4 locations.

When people are not required to identify themselves, when they are not held accountable for their words, then they are free to write lies and make misleading statements. And, slander people. Especially Black people. Black leaders.

And, your ‘two cents’ column has been used and continues to be used by you as a primary propoganda tool against the first Black Mayor of McComb.

By the way, if you don’t like the word ‘racist’, please come up with a better word. But, until you do, every time you and your anonymous commentators hold Black leaders to standards that you did not hold and are not holding white counterparts to, then I will call you racist!

Every time you try to stop anything and everything it that our Black leaders are doing unless you feel that it is ‘best for everybody’, then I will call you racist! When you ignore and even question the sound statements and methods of Black leaders and individuals who are more competent than you, then I will call you racist!

When you stop a bond issue that would take Black kids off the streets and put them into repaired and improved recreation facilities, that would repair streets in those communities so that parents, friends, mentors, and relatives can drive them safely and regularly to their destination, and that would create more badly needed jobs and revenue in the Black community, then I will call you racist!

When you continue to say and believe that the majority of Black people are ignorant, violent, dumber than you, and on welfare, then I will call you racist!

When you continue to believe that you know and have to tell us and decide what’s best for Black people, then I will call you racist!

When, like so many of the residents of Pike County, you think less of Black people, think that you are better than, smarter than, more moral than, more right than, then I will call you racist!

When you use so much of your time and energy attacking the first African American Mayor of McComb, it seems, everytime he does something, good or bad: when you spend so much time and energy speaking against his administration and even his re-election, when you consistently disrespect the man AND his office, and you did not do this with any of the previous white mayors and administrations, then I will call you racist!

Your ‘My two cents’ column has been and is being clearly used as a place where racist attitudes, racist minds, and racist people can meet. I don’t know if you originally intended for it to be this way. But that’s what you ended up creating Jack Ryan. And, you are certainly using it that way now.

Shame on you!