Whitlock / Holding

He doesn’t care. He has a sexy headline he wants to promote and magazines to sell.

So on May 9, this headline will greet Playboy readers on the cover: “Jason Whitlock, The Black KKK.” On the inside of the magazine over my column, the headline will read: “The Black KKK.” A subheadline will state: “Hip Hop is killing Black America, and it’s time to do something about it.”

The story isn’t about the Black KKK. The words do not appear in the 5,000-word column. None of the sources quoted in the story or spoken to on background ever heard those words come out of my mouth, and they never spoke them to me. The story isn’t about hip-hop killing Black America.

The story is about the astronomical financial and cultural price we all — black, white, brown and yellow — are paying for locking up 2.3 million of our citizens. The piece focuses on California’s penal system, the state’s too-powerful prison guard union, Jim Brown’s anti-gang-violence organization and Mexican-black hostility.