Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll pass on Leodora’s rationale for the abolition of the NABJ

As I was sifting through emails last week, trying to decide what hopefully eye-catching headline to write for the next edition of The Times Herald and attempting to pick out the next impossibly cute outfit for my impossibly cute 6-month-old daughter, I was relieved to discover one important decision -- knowing which African American institutions are relevant and which ones aren’t -- had been taken off my plate thanks to columnist Tony Leodora.

Whew! What a relief. We all know how well things go when minorities have their druthers dictated to them.

Leodora’s column, ‘Parker’s award just a bit tainted’ takes umbrage to a recent announcement that Rob Parker had been named Sports Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalist. He described the news as “jarring.”

So jarring, in fact, it threatened to ruin the enjoyment of the arugula, avocado and seared tuna salad being served to him at an area restaurant.

I guess even more jarring and certainly more noteworthy, to him, than last month’s shooting massacre at a Maryland newsroom much like the one he used to work in, which he made no mention of in his columns since the tragedy.

Or the fact that with just a little journalistic digging, he could have found out that Parker did not actually win the award, as was erroneously broadcast on FS1, Jemele Hill — who infamously called Donald Trump a white supremacist — did. Parker won the award for NABJ’s Sports Task Force’s Journalist of the Year.

But let’s stop the head-spinning right there to get to the larger, obviously triggering issue.

“Why is there a need for a National Association of Black Journalists? ...Isn’t Parker’s (Hill’s) work good enough to stand up against the rest of the people reporting on sports?” Leodora asks, among other questions in the same vein.

I have some answers. But before I get to them I’d like to point out that the award is not tainted just because Leodora said so. And Parker’s colleagues at Fox Sports must not have thought so either as evidenced