Many people of the politically liberal persuasion consider themselves sensitive to symbols that offend others.
Regardless of what historical merit or significance a Confederate battle flag might hold, they often argue that it is often viewed as a symbol of slavery, and that's reason enough for polite people not to display it.
No matter how rich the legacy belonging to an Indian athletic mascot or team name, they often argue that it is demeaning to some American Indians, and that's reason enough for colleges to drop such names.
Even when I disagree with their position, I do understand and support their compassionate approach--as long as it works both ways, which it usually doesn't.
Last week, just one state over in the town of Columbia, Tenn., two teenagers wearing hoodies walked into a local pizza place. It was after 10, and high school senior Gordon Shaffer was working alone.
One of the hooded teens carried a plastic shopping bag. The other carried a semiautomatic handgun.
I've never had a gun pointed at me during a crime, and it's harrowing to contemplate. But Shaffer didn't seem petrified in the store security videos that captured the robbery.
Indeed, he behaved precisely as store employees are usually trained to behave. He complied with the gunman's demands and handed over the money. He remained passive and calm and didn't make sudden movements or challenge the criminals.
The robbers easily got what they came for.
But as he was leaving, the one with the gun turned around and inexplicably shot Shaffer twice.
Shaffer was conscious when police arrived, and gave them a description of his attackers, but he died later that night of his wounds.
This crime--in which a young black man wearing a hoodie shot an unarmed white man in cold blood--won't make any national headlines. It's not being investigated as a hate crime, even after the suspected shooter told police he maliciously shot Shaffer "to kill him."
Two-and-a-half years ago U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush of Illinois walked up to the podium on the House of Representatives floor to comment on the death of Trayvon Martin.
He pulled a hoodie up over his head (Martin was wearing a hoodie the night he was killed).
"Just because someone wears a hoodie," he declared, "does not make them a hoodlum."
Besides violating grammatical rules insisting that pronouns agree as either singular or plural, Rush also ran astray of House rules prohibiting hats in the chamber, so he was escorted from the floor.
That was the extent of any reprimand for his misguided, racially slanted stunt.
Surely sensitivity critics in the media wouldn't have gone so lightly had a white House member donned the Army of Northern Virginia's battle banner and pronounced to the speaker and the nation that, "Just because somebody wears a Confederate flag does not make them a racist."
Or stood up with a tomahawk and said, "Just because colleges refuse to abandon an Indian mascot does not make them anti-Native American."
Rep. Rush let his own racial bias get the better of him. The point isn't that somebody who's not a hoodlum can wear a hoodie.
The point is that many, many, many times when young males--of any race--walk into a store or restaurant or bank with a hoodie pulled up, they're up to no good.
On Monday, an armed man in a hoodie robbed a bank in Portage, Ind. Saturday, a hoodie-clad man with a gun robbed an Amarillo, Texas, pizza restaurant. The next night two men wearing hoodies robbed a Wendy's at gunpoint in Trussville, Ala.
In a Houston armored car robbery last Monday, the two armed crooks both wore hoodies. Last Tuesday, a bandit in a hoodie brandishing a handgun robbed a Richmond, Va., bank.
Some robbers were black, some were white, but all wore hoodies. They are, in fact, all hoodlums.
An investigative report this month by a Chicago television station blamed the city's low arrest rate for its 134 bank robberies this year on the fact that so many of the robbers are similar in age and wore hoodies.
Hoodlums and hoodies go together so well that people mistakenly think the words are related ("hoodlum" dates to 1866; the first hooded sweatshirts in the U.S. were produced in the 1930s).
What the nation deserves (but won't get) is an apology from Rep. Rush for his insensitivity to the countless victims, including Gordon Shaffer's devastated family, of dangerous hoodlums wearing hoodies.
He ought to go back on the House floor, with his hoodie in his hand, and say he's sorry for previously flippantly defending the wearing of what has become the uniform of choice for armed thugs and a ubiquitous symbol of crime.
Whether black or white, sporting a pulled-up hoodie can make storekeepers and bank clerks rightfully nervous, and trigger awful memories among crime victims who often have already suffered enough.
That's reason enough to stigmatize hoodies and publicly shame those who want to dress like hoodlums.
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Dana Kelley is a freelance writer from Jonesboro.
Editorial on 10/31/2014