I am writing in response to Susan Reimer's column, "Adrian Peterson's version of 'Parenthood'" (Oct. 16), which borders on the reprehensible and intentionally plays on some of the Baltimore public's worst fears.

First, Ms. Reimer's subtle implication that Adrian Peterson is somehow at fault for the beating death of his infant child because he was absent from the toddler's life is both illogical and offensive. Second, and more important, her use of racially-coded language, which compares athletes like Mr. Peterson to children and overly-sexed animals, relies on the kind of sophist cant that actually serves to maintain sexism and violence against children in the name of citizenship. Referring to Dan Marino does nothing to strip the essay of this key, time-tested rhetorical strategy. For more than a 150 years, white moralists like Ms. Reimer have drawn on stereotypes of young black men and women to define what citizenship is and is not. Today, the technique diverts attention from real issues, namely institutionalized patriarchy and racism's role in sustaining it in the United States.

Her essay only appeals to readers because it plays on white, middle-class anxieties about the supposed impact licentious black bodies have on society. Ms. Reimer even asks whether Mr. Peterson "should be having sex with waitresses and dancers." According to her, having children with multiple women — or worse yet, working-class women — is, in her words, a "sin." Notably, we learn nothing substantive about any of the potentially loving and mutually supportive relationships mentioned in her essay. This is because Ms. Reimer does not actually care about them. Instead, she cares about whether celebrities embrace her idea of the proper nuclear family and, in turn, prove themselves as moral and hence proper citizens.

The true sin here is that Ms. Reimer's choice to pick on statistically insignificant, low-hanging fruit deflects public attention from the fact that four children die every day in the United States because of child abuse.

James Dator, Baltimore