Today, the New York Post ran a short item about Ashanti's Twitter stalker. As ridiculous as that sentence is, it's not the most ridiculous aspect of the piece. No, it's that in the headline, Ashanti was misidentified as "RiRi," which is Rihanna's nickname. Apparently, the New York Post thinks all black male R&B singers are rappers, and all black female R&B singers are Rihanna.

This is just the latest in the Post's routine conflation of one black person for another. In the past, the paper has confused Mary J. Blige with Keri Hilson, BET founder Bob Johnson with Johnson Publishing's Linda Johnson Rice, and Angela Davis with Dorothy Pitman Hughes. The paper has been accused of systematic racism behind the scenes, which complements the overt racism that has run on its pages.

The headline of online version of the Ashanti item currently reads, "Ashanti stalker accosts judge over Twitter stalker," so that's better. Ashanti's actual nickname is "Little Libra." Stevie Wonder named her that apparently without giving thought to how headline unfriendly it is.