I don’t celebrate “Be Kind to Stupid Black People Week.” I apply the same standard to Caucasians.

Kelly Tilghman, an on-air commentator for the Golf Channel, might well qualify for my Stupid White Person of the Decade at the end of 2010. Can you believe this dimwit said as a joke that Tiger Woods' golf competitors might want to lynch him in a back alley as a way of getting an edge?

Oh, she’s apologized up the wazoo for the remark. And the Golf Channel has suspended her for two weeks (I’ve heard the suspension is with pay; if that’s true, then it’s not a suspension. It’s what you and I call a vacation.).

Woods has said he and Tilghman are good friends and that he wasn’t offended by the “joke.” Now, what else would you expect a black man who refers to himself as a “Cablinasian” to say? Woods has no more idea how utterly stupid and offensive Tilghman’s remark was than Tilghman does. No wonder they’re good buddies.

Woods’ agent said the golfer considers the matter closed. Honchos at the Golf Channel called Tilghman’s choice of the word lynch “inadvertent” and added that “she did not intend (it) in an offensive manner.” In other words, Tilghman’s ignorance is her defense.

Well, class, it looks like we’re going to have enroll Tilghman in that little-known and seldom-attended course called “School The Caucasian.”

Here’s why what Tilghman said is worse than the spate of nooses being hung around the country.

First, we’re not sure who’s hanging the nooses. Here in Baltimore, local black leaders went on a rant after a noose was found in a fire station, until they learned that it was a black guy who was the culprit.

Second, not all lynching victims were hanged. In fact, the black folks who were only hanged actually got off easy.

Before you go ballistic and get offended by that last sentence, read what routinely happened to the black folks who weren’t just hung.

“Lynchings were not simply executions. Often the victims were first tortured, sometimes for hours, before they were murdered. Men were castrated and women disemboweled. The form of execution was just as often burning at the stake as it was strangulation; the death throes were long and horrible. Afterwards, the corpses were sometimes ripped apart, and pieces of the victims sold as souvenirs.” That comes from a book called “Buried In The Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America.”

Author Elliott Jaspin went to great lengths to tell readers just what occurred during lynchings. He could have added one other detail: In addition to cutting up the black bodies and handing the parts around as souvenirs, members of lynch mobs took pictures of lynchings and sold them as postcards.

According to the Archives at Tuskegee Institute, 4,743 people were lynched in America during the years 1882-1968. Black victims accounted for 3,446 of the lynchings, and 1,297 whites were lynched. The racial group that made up only 11 percent of the population accounted for 73 percent of the lynchings.

That doesn’t just make lynchings lynchings; they bordered on genocide.

For all the talk about how Tilghman’s use of the word "lynch" was inadvertent and how she meant no offense, Tilghman and her defenders know one thing: If she had been talking about a Jewish golfer, she would never have said “inadvertently” or with no offense that his competitors should get together and gas him in an oven.

The word is that Tilghman has a history degree from Duke University. So she’s heard of the Holocaust. She knows that kind of comment about a Jewish golfer would have been out of bounds. And even if she were stupid enough to say it, those rushing to her defense with all this talk of “inadvertent” and “inoffensive” language wouldn’t be uttering such nonsense.

But some Americans feel it’s perfectly okay to know about the Holocaust and be totally ignorant about the true history of lynching in this country, especially as it relates to black people. You can bet Tilghman hasn’t read Jaspin’s book and that it’s not even on her “to buy” list. It’s a safe bet Mr. Cablinasian hasn’t read it either.

Rev. Al Sharpton wants Tilghman fired, but that would give the folks who run the Golf Channel a chance to replace her with someone just as ignorant. Someone please FedEx a copy of Jaspin’s book to this woman. Send one to Tiger too.

Add both to what’s bound to be a long list of folks who need to “read a book, read a book, read a blankety-blank book.”