JAMES TARANTO: Hey, you know what’s racist? Citing crime statistics.

Of course it’s an editorial judgment, and by definition it’s the editor’s to make. But if readers are not permitted to question the editors’ judgments, what’s the point of having a comments section at all?

Finally we come to “crime statistics.” We tweeted the post last night with the comment: “News website bans discussion of crime statistics in comments,” which prompted Eyer to respond: “That’s a gross mischaracterization.” We’ll concede it was a slight exaggeration, but Eyer made a concession of her own by posting a comment to her own post this morning acknowledging: “I have edited the portion above on crime statistics to clarify exactly what I’m talking about.” We didn’t save the original; the following quotes are from the edited version.

“We’ve seen an uptick in commenters posting FBI crime statistics in an attempt to paint the problem as one of race,” she writes. “Usually these crime statistics are not helpful to the discussion because they lack other details, such as socioeconomic status, that give context.” So we’re back to “poverty” as the cause of crime.

The overall thrust of Eyer’s rules is to ensure that discussions of race at MLive conform to the media stereotype of black victimization at the hands of white oppression. . . .

These days elite culture, including the news media, routinely vilify whites, especially “white males.”

As we’ve noted before, feminists also frequently stipulate that they’re vilifying white males, even when race is irrelevant. Eyer promises in conclusion: “Next up, I will address issues related to gender.” We can hardly wait.

Indeed.