“How America Destroys Black Families.”

When The New York Times posted an essay under that headline the other day, I did what was intended. I allowed myself to be lured inside.

Surely I will gain insights into – whatever.

When I see an unfamiliar byline, I go directly to the typically slender identification lines at the end. I should have stopped there.

The decidedly non-academic, remarkably incurious television writer Kashana Cauley must have thought up these lines after a long evening of blind drinking.

Her shallow, petty, stunningly unoriginal rant should have – but doubtlessly will not – embarrass her.

Theoretically, she was complaining that the premature (but natural) death of the 27-year-old daughter of Eric Garner – a New Yorker who died at the hands of police in 2014 – was a tragedy. Okay. A heart attack killed her.

She raged against police brutality, which might have worked except she just screamed, incapable of debating or enlightening, just bellowing incoherently.

As a woman of unapparent skills, Ms. Cauley repeated lines that appear daily in newspapers:

• Garner’s death was caused by law enforcement racism.
• The armed Michael Brown’s death by racist cops in Ferguson was not because he had just committed a crime and was resisting arrest but by racism.

Ms. Cauley writes that since America’s founding, “black families have had to struggle to survive.”

Purposely, the impressively uninformed Ms. Cauley offers zero data to buttress her wild-eyed claims.

Sorry, kiddo. You fail.

The closest she came was when she threw a broken dart at a broken board. She said that her answer was wherever it landed. Even on the floor.

Without evidence, Ms. Cauley wrote, “Millions of black family members were killed during the slavery and lynching era, from 1877 to 1950.”

She should be ashamed for sloppily, intentionally mishandling a subject worthy of serious study. It does not deserve an uneducated woman’s sarcastic, fact-free howl.

A comedy writer, she is a joke when she tries to be serious.