Keepin' it unreal.

What is the role of the NAACP? Its latest claim to fame is forcing a high school in Lakota, Ohio to cancel a "racist" play. The work in question: Agatha Christie's popular Ten Little Indians. There's no racist content in the text, but the production drew the NAACP's ire because the book was originally published in England as Ten Little N-----s back when the word had little social context. The title was changed when the book arrived in America, and for decades the play has been performed as "Ten Little Indians" or "And Then There Were None." It would be good news if school plays based on works with long discarded titles were the worst thing the venerable organization had to worry about.

But the tragic and still mysterious murder of Washington Redskins football star Sean Taylor has highlighted a far more serious reality. As the Washington Post noted in its Taylor editorial, nearly half of America's murder victims are black, the number of black men slain nationwide is on the rise, and the most likely cause of death for an African-American male between the ages of 15 and 35 is homicide. One might think that the country's most respected civil-rights organization might spend its energies addressing this somber fact, but it's easier to cry racism and shut down school plays. Easier, but not more useful.