Dear Mr. James:

Here at the sports desk located somewhere below decks of the Good Pirate Ship RedState, we can’t help but notice how often your name crosses our desk. It’s with excellent reason. You are unquestionably one of the greatest basketball players of all time, ranking alongside Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Wilt Chamberlin, and many other deserving legends. You’ve taken three different teams to an NBA championship. Your skill and work ethic is without peer. Your passion for winning, even at age 37 when most athletes have either already called it a day or are more than content to coast on a wash of the fan base’s fond nostalgia for what was, is inspiring. You are all that and a bag of chips.

You’re also flat-out wrong.

As evidence of this, we present the latest fawning puff piece from your PR department … excuse us, ESPN, bearing the title “LeBron James reflects on decade since Trayvon Martin’s death, giving ‘voices to people that don’t have voices.’” Let’s dig in, shall we?

We start with Trayvon Martin himself. Not the fresh-faced, 13-year-old routinely portrayed by the same media that came up with the term “white Hispanic” to describe George Zimmerman, but the snot-nosed 17-year-old punk who got stupid and confrontational with a self-appointed neighborhood defender, and suffered the result of two morons colliding when one is armed. Did Martin deserve to die? No. Should he have attacked Zimmerman? No. Two stupids don’t make a smart. Make that three stupids, as we add to the mix a drooling media begging for someone and something upon which to stir up racial tensions.

And what say you, LeBron?

“You’re not a criminal because you put a hood over the top of your head. It’s a uniform for us. That’s what we do. That’s what we wear. We don’t have the luxury of wearing suits or having button-downs. We don’t have the means to get sweaters and things of that nature. Our uniform is T-shirts, hoodies and shorts. That’s our uniform growing up as Black kids in the inner city.

“That was our moment to be able to let Trayvon Martin and his family know, but the whole entire Black community and also white America know, that we ain’t for that bulls—.”

LeBron, in this regard, you’re right. You’re not a criminal because you wear a hoodie. You’re a criminal if you get stupid, regardless of attire. Idiocy is in no way tied to choice of apparel and/or skin pigmentation. Martin was an idiot. Zimmerman was an idiot. Martin died because two idiots, one being himself, refused to walk away.

Let’s see what other pearls of wisdom you have to offer, LeBron.

“It’s never going to stop,” he said. “It’s never going to stop, but that don’t mean we stop.”

Get that, honky cats? You will never stop being racist. Apparently, LeBron is the only person on the planet who owns a copy of “White Fragility” who has actually read and believes its bilge water.

Ah, but there’s more.

James said racism is “learned in the household,” not something people are born with. So there is hope, even if things seem bleak, he said.

“That’s how America has been for a long time and the s– ain’t going to change, but what will change is how guys in power [respond],” James said. “And what will change for me, and what has already changed, is I will continue to speak up for my people no matter if [society] likes it or not.”

LeBron, I bring news. Society could care less what you have to say.

You see, Mr. James, you are preaching a false gospel, one that proclaims humanity as irredeemable and incapable of growth. You catch only glimpses of the truth and are blind to large swaths of the same.

Racism is real, and it is a problem. However, it can be confronted and defeated. Not by the soft bigotry of low expectations or the excusal of uncivilized behavior based on ancestors’ oppression utterly unknown by the present generations. This perpetuates the problem. Our own Jeff Charles, Kira Davis, and Jennifer Oliver O’Connell have written often, with passion and authority, about matters of race. Try reading their words once in a while instead of your bubble-brained echo chamber compatriots. (Also, shell out for a VIP subscription. I’m quite confident you can afford it.)

LeBron, the only real solution to racism is the transformation of hearts and minds through faith in Jesus Christ, allowing His love to fill us and the Holy Spirit to work inside of us, so that we can see and act upon the Truth. As the apostle Paul wrote, “Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, I but Christ is all, and is in all.” The Bible condemns racism. The Bible proclaims liberty and unity in Christ.

This is the call to action you should heed, LeBron. This, and this alone, is the change. It’s not popular. It’s not trendy. It will make you persona non grata at ESPN and variations thereof. But compared to eternal life with Jesus and the ability during your time here on earth to effect real growth in people, we at the sports desk believe it’d be worth it.