Ja'quan Swopes and Dahleen Glanton

Dahleen Glanton is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune. She advocates, often quite effectively, for people of color.

But Michael Jordan reportedly missed shots. LCD Soundsystem released middling albums. And we the people elected Donald Trump as president.

Like the bumper sticker says, shit happens. So it's only natural that Ms. Glanton occasionally knocks out a clunker of a column.

Early on the morning of August 13^th, five teens descended on a rural home near the Illinois-Wisconsin border. They arrived there in a stolen Lexus, and were intent on adding to their bounty.

The home-owner, a seventy-five year-old man, awoke to find the teens in his driveway, attempting to steal his car. He called the police to report a crime in progress.

What happened next is unclear. Did the teens, aware they were in an isolated area, assume they had time to steal the car before the police could respond, ignoring the old man in the process?

After one of them approached the property-owner with a knife, the elderly man discharged his gun, fatally wounding the would-be assailant.

Heightening the drama is the fact that the old man was white and the miscreants were black.

While I abhor guns and gun violence and the industry trade group that works so very, very hard to sustain it, I wasn't overly upset by the news. It struck me mostly as a case of live by the sword, die by the sword.

Ms. Glanton saw it differently, and committed her feelings to print.

She was outraged not only by the death of fourteen-year-old Ja'quan Swopes and the felony murder charges brought against Swopes' accomplices, but by the public reaction to Swopes' death.

After voicing her concerns, Glanton reported her inbox was overflowing with the most-extreme opinions our society could generate. She railed at references to Swopes as a 'thug'.

Apparently, it was a surprise to Glanton that people weren't publicly flagellating themselves in the aftermath of his death.

I also e-mailed Glanton, but her e-mail account had been shut-down for “maintenance.”

I wanted to tell her that yes, the law that permitted authorities to charge the four remaining thieves with felony murder ought to be revisited.

But I also wanted to tell her that Ja'quan Swopes is not Emmet Till, and that the two should never, ever be confused.

Swopes was not the victim of racial hatred—he was the victim of his own stupidity. If there's anything to lament, it's that Swopes considered stealing cars a worthwhile and risk-free endeavor.

Again, I hold nothing but contempt and derision for our gun culture and its enablers. I feel similarly towards crooks—be they in the White House or an old man's driveway at one A.M.

Like many teenagers, Swopes wanted to taste forbidden fruit. He wanted a glimpse of life on the other side.

Needless to say, he got it.

So no. My heart does not bleed for Swopes. If that makes me a racist, fine. But know this: I would feel no differently if his skin were white. Or brown.

My heart bleeds for the truly innocent. Those killed at work. At school. At church. Or while passing a summer evening doing nothing more inflammatory than sitting on their front porch.

Ms. Glanton, let's advocate for the innocent and rail against the guilty. You seem (at least temporarily) to have confused the two.