A letter-writer, pointing out civil rights leaders' initial outrage over the later discredited rape case against Duke lacrosse players, mockingly asked me why black leaders weren't equally upset over the barbarism police say was inflicted upon a woman and her 12-year-old son in Florida.

Was it because the victims, as well as the suspects, were black?

Yep, I said.

One night last month, police say, 10 masked teenage thugs -- at least the three arrested so far were ages 14, 15 and 16 -- forced their way into the family's West Palm Beach apartment and raped and sodomized the mother for hours and at gunpoint forced her to perform a sex act on her son.

The woman and her son, West Palm Beach Police Department spokesman Ted White told me, "are in hiding, trying to get on with their lives."

Good luck.

Do you reckon if the woman had been a stripper working her way through school -- aren't they all? -- that some civil rights leader would be offering to pay for her education, as one did in the Duke Lacrosse farce?

Or maybe if the assailants had been sons of privilege -- and white -- would MSNBC, Fox and CNN be bombarding us with round-the-clock coverage?

Where, now that the suspects and victims appear to all be darker than blue, are the New Black Panthers, who converged on Durham -- actually, on Duke University -- loudly demanding justice for their sister?

Well, isn't that Haitian woman a sister, too?

I asked White, the cop spokesman, about the response in West Palm Beach. Have the New Black Panthers shown up? How about the old ones?

"There's been outrage but no type of gathering," he said. "Nobody's come."

He said police were in the process of setting up a substation in the Dunbar Village housing development even before this subhuman attack.

You know what? I'd love to see the men there tell the cops, "Naw, homes, we got this." They should then prey upon the predators and deal with them as urban terrorists.

Forget al-Qaeda. Forget, even, the KKK. The most fear-inducing person among many blacks is a dad-less, hip-hop-raised black boy with no sense of conscience or history.

I know what some black readers will say, and my response is, "Well, you're another one."

The NAACP is holding its annual convention in Detroit this week, and in an admirable but misguided attempt to become relevant, held a mock funeral -- with horse-drawn casket and everything -- to bury the N-word.

Oy. You know what would be relevant? Burying, in prison or in the ground, the punks who did this to a mother and child.

There is currently a debate about the ethics of a pill that can erase human memory as you would a computer disk. That poor woman and her son would be perfect candidates for it if it would erase the terror they experienced.

After reading that one of their neighbors said, "So a lady got raped. Big deal," I'd like to take one of those pills myself.

Want to help the family? Go to any Wachovia Bank and make a contribution to the Dunbar Victim Assistance Fund/St. Ann Church.

Get $150+ in coupons in every Sunday N&O. Click here for convenient home delivery.