Posted on 09/01/2014 6:48:27 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Let us do a thought experiment. Suppose a black police officer shot an unarmed 18-year-old white male. We do not know the circumstances, but the victim was almost twice the size of the cop.
Can you imagine that the surrounding white community — any white community — would erupt in the sort of violence we witnessed in Ferguson, Mo.? There was a time, less than a century ago, when riots swept through white neighborhoods and blacks were lynched for petty offences. But now?
Today, most Caucasians are more sophisticated. They are better educated and have developed more dependable self-controls than then. Thus, were looting to break out in a town where they are in the majority, we would be scandalized.
Why wasn’t this the case in Ferguson? Why has the media coverage been so constrained? The answer, I believe, is closet racism; racism that exists, but is not acknowledged.
No, I am not talking about white racism, although it has not completely disappeared. Nor am I talking about black racism, which has become more virulent than its white counterpart. Rather, I am referring to media racism.
Blacks are understandably suspicious of whites. Even Attorney General Eric Holder gave a nod to their sensitivities. Accordingly, African-Americans sometimes see racism where it is absent.
But the media is another matter. How can reporters have been so “even-handed” as to portray the police the same way they did vandals and fire-bombers? Why were cops wearing protective gear accused of fanning the flames of distrust merely because of how they were outfitted?
Many years ago, when I was working for a newspaper in northern New Jersey, I was asked to cover the first Earth Day at Stevens Tech. Once I arrived on the scene, it was apparent nothing was going on. Relatively few students were milling around talking among themselves. That was all.
After I made my presence known, however, things were different. The “activists” suddenly sprang to their feet and began walking around. They also started chanting. In other words, this was a performance put on for my benefit. The objective was to garner media attention.
Does anyone imagine that the Ferguson demonstrations would have lasted as long as they did if they had not attracted sympathetic notice? Would there have been a raucous party in the streets if the marchers were not intent on obtaining their 15 minutes of fame?
To some degree, the media coverage made sense. The public has an insatiable appetite for scandalous details and the press and TV are in the business of attracting eyeballs. But why the nature of the coverage?
Reporters are clearly obsessed with a need to downplay black misconduct. Apparently, the worst thing that can happen is someone might label them racist. Accordingly, they bend over backward to avoid saying negative things about blacks.
Think about this: A black thug — a young man with a criminal record — declares the police officer in question reached out to grab Michael Brown by the throat and drag him into his vehicle. How is this credible? How could a cop, or would a cop, do this to a person twice his size?
And how did the rumor that Brown was shot in the back survive when multiple autopsies showed it was untrue? After all, it came from the same felon.
The media credulity that glosses over these absurdities owes to nothing less than racism. Members of the press do not hold African-Americans to the same standards they apply to others. Rather, they excuse behavior they would never tolerate elsewhere.
Why? Evidently because they do not believe blacks have the same ability to exercise self-control as other Americans. Yet this is racism! In an attempt to protect blacks, journalists assume they are inferior. How ironic is that?
We will never overcome racism in this country until we are honest about race. To this extent, Holder was correct when he said whites are cowards when it comes to these matters.
That's not supported by the numbers.
That is far less important than the desire of the media to help spread the liberal meme du jour.
I’m so sick of the whole subject I could throw up!
Shocking I tell you - SCHOCKING!
They’ll emphasize it until the next one comes along. They still do a dozen or so stories a day touching on Trayvon vs. Zimmerman.
He never has had the sartorial sense that the Lord gave a hippo or a homeless man.
good article
I am guessing ole Michael reached in the car to bop the cop. After ole Michael took off down the road, the cop should have called for backup.
Two wrongs didn’t make a right.
Actually, he's quite right, except that whites didn't race riot in their own neighborhoods, they invaded black neighborhoods and killed blacks there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosewood_massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_race_riot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_riot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Race_Riot_of_1919
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_Race_Riot_(1943)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knoxville_Riot_of_1919
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaine_Race_Riot
There are quite a few more. Up to the 50s race riots consisted largely, though not always exclusively, of whites attacking blacks. Since then, they've consisted almost exclusively of blacks attacking whites and each other.
For some obscure reason, in the "modern race riot" blacks almost never leave their own neighborhoods and attack their "enemies." They stay in their own areas and tear them up.
The first "modern race riot" was in Harlem in 1935.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlem_Riot_of_1935
Many witnesses (and the autopsies) show that Mr. Brown didn’t “take off down the road” but that he doubled back and charges Officer Wilson. There is no time to “call for backup” in such a situation. Now, I don’t know what size you are, but I’m 6’ & 350lbs and more muscular (and more experienced) than that 18 year old. Would you want to get on a walkie-talkie and wait for help as I came at you with the full force of my body at 25mph? When I was a civilian security policeman at an Air Guard base we’d do a little exercise where you’d have your service revolver already out and another man would rush you from 30 feet away with a rubber knife. Until you’ve done that, you have no idea how quickly someone can come upon you, pretty much before you have time to pull the trigger the first time.
I demand that this "professor" prove his allegation.
As a student of history, especially American History, the throw away line intended to equate the "rioting and lynching of blacks for minor crimes during this century" with black criminals looting, Molotov cocktails thrown at police, physical violence on camera and his claim that "whites rioting and lynching blacks" as morally equal just doesn't work.
I say to this writer, talk is cheap, prove it!
Obscure? Hardly. They know we’re armed to the teeth, have wagon loads of ammunition and won’t hesitate to shoot. Plus, despite what the idiot box tries to tell you, most veterans in general are white and most combat arms & special operations veterans are white, too.
All true.
Remember, when seconds count, the police are minutes away.
He didn't say the words "this century" he said "less than a century ago" which would be somewhat accurate, since a century ago would be 1914. There were some riots and lynchings in the period between 1920 and 1950, although pretty rare.
The key phrase is "petty offenses". Very few lynchings were triggered by petty offenses. Given the kind of media deceit that has characterized incidents like Ferguson and Crown Heights and the kind of blatant fraud a left-wing icon like Upton Sinclair got up to in "The Jungle", I'm leery of believing just about anything these people wrote back then. The (presumably black-run) Tuskegee Institute has a total number that translates to about 50 a year. The ratio of blacks lynched vs whites was about 3 to 1, which is actually less than the current ratio of black to white homicide perps.
You don’t have to know anything more about the corruption of lib media than to see a scoundrel like Tawana Sharpton with his own show on a lib channel, MSNBC. Forty years ago even the usual lib media outlets would not allow a skunk like Sharpton anywhere their buildings. Now he is praised and given his own show. If Sharpton, why not Farrakhan?
Okay. You were responding to the “petty offenses” phrase, and I was responding to the part about white riots. We’re both (more or less) correct.
It is highly probable that the great majority of those who were lynched, white and black, were indeed guilty of the crimes of which they were accused. In most cases a fair trial would have brought about an eventual execution.
In some cases, lynchings were precipitated by a black person being “uppity” or “not staying in his place.” But these were probably fairly rare, with most such incidents dealt with by floggings or other less than lethal violence. The Emmet Till “lynching” is often cited as an example of a lynching as a result of a minor offense. But of course the ET case wasn’t really a lynching at all, it was in essence an honor killing by family members of the young lady ET had been impolite to.
The problem with most lynchings is not that they were a miscarriage of justice as such, as that they were a denial of due process. And of course that the killings were often preceded by torture and carried out in incredibly brutal ways, such as burning alive. Also, the white mobs weren’t really all that concerned about whether they’d grabbed the actual black perp, since the whole process was essentially theater of the terrorist variety, with the goal of “keeping them in their place” by restating, in the most vivid possible way, that blacks were dhimmis and needed to remember it.
Of course, in white liberal and black memory, all (black) victims of lynchings have somehow become retroactively sainted as innocent martyrs to white racism. The white victims of lynchings have fallen completely down the memory hole, as they don’t fit the template.
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