- When
the Bad Guy is Black
by Larry Elder
The double
standard slaps you in the face.
Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania. Ronald Taylor, a black man, allegedly guns
down five whites, killing three. What followed became a textbook case
on how contemporary American journalism deals with race.
The suspect's motive could not have been more clear. A black neighbor
quoted Taylor as saying, "I'm gonna kill all white people."
A white maintenance man described Taylor as disruptive ever since
moving into the apartment building, "Whenever he saw me, he'd call
me a racist pig, or white trash, or he'd make a point of walking past
me and brushing up against me. He just didn't like me."
Yet the media leaned over backwards to avoid any appearance of racism.
News anchors cautioned that we don't know whether Taylor's alleged
hatred against whites was the "primary" or "sole" reason for the shootings.
Pardon me. When did they add that requirement?
The Hate Crimes Sentencing Enhancement Act defines hate crime as:
"crime in which the defendant intentionally selects a victim, or in
the case of a property crime, the property that is the object of the
crime, because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national
origin, ethnicity, gender, disability, or sexual orientation of any
person." No mention of hatred as a "sole" or "primary" motive.
Even the police issued mild, tentative statements about whether they
considered Taylor's actions a hate crime. "There's a lot of hostility
in this individual," said Wilkinsburg Police Chief Gerald Brewer,
"so I think it's a little premature to simply define this as a racist
event." A little premature?
In August, 1999, white supremacist Buford Furrow gunned down several
people at a Jewish Community Center in Los Angeles, and shot and killed
a Filipino letter carrier. In the three days following the shooting,
over 150 newspapers wrote nearly 200 articles about the slaughter.
On November 11, 1999, in Kansas City, an Ethiopian man shot and killed
two co-workers and wounded a third person. All the victims were white.
The Ethiopian shooter, who also shot and killed himself, left a letter
referring to "blood sucker" whites. To date, how many newspapers carried
a story about this apparent race-based shooting? Eleven.
The killing of Wyoming gay student Matthew Shepherd brought screaming
headlines and around-the-clock coverage. So did the dragging and killing
of black Texan James Byrd.
Jesse Jackson parachutes into Decatur, Illinois, turning the expulsion
of seven high school kids into a referendum on race. Meanwhile, in
Missouri, a carjacker steals a car. He tries to push out a seat belt-strapped
child, and drives at high speeds, with the boy bouncing to his death
along the highway. In Michigan, a six-year-old girl is shot and killed
by a six-year-old boy. In these cases, the media informs us much,
much later that the bad guys are black. Were it the other way around,
how long before Al Sharpton holds a press conference, a somber Kweisi
Mfume of the NAACP by his side?-
- Atlanta Braves
relief pitcher John Rocker shoots his mouth off to "Sports Illustrated,"
and everyone from Jesse Jackson to Jesse James piles on. But the same
gang seemed strangely AWOL in the case of Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania.
Where's the somber gathering of the "black leadership" demanding that
Congress pass enhanced hate crime legislation? Where's the speech
by President Clinton asking some blacks to cope with their pronounced
and mostly unwarranted anti-white bias?
The double standard simply astonishes. George W. Bush must apologize
for speaking at Bob Jones University, given the institution's anti-Catholic
statements and policy against inter-racial dating. And on the question
of the Confederate flag, the media filed story after story on the
Republicans' response.
Yet the media allows Al Gore's black female campaign manager, Donna
Brazile, to derisively refer to the Republicans as the "party of the
white boys," while suggesting black Republicans J.C. Watts and Colin
Powell are Uncle Toms.
- The media sits
as both Al Gore and Hillary Rodham-Clinton trek to Harlem and kiss
the ring of Reverend Al Sharpton, a David Duke in blackface. Nevermind
that Sharpton falsely accused a prosecutor of rape. Nevermind that
Sharpton turned a dispute between a black tenant and a Jewish landlord
into a racial riff. Stirred up by Sharpton's rantings, a black man
set fire to the building in dispute, and then shot and killed several
minorities before turning the gun on himself. Nice work, Reverend.
Sooner or later, the mainstream media and the white-man-done-me-wrong
black leadership must face the facts. Black/white interracial crime
is almost entirely committed by blacks against whites. By ignoring
this, and holding black criminals to a different standard, the media
heightens tension and divisiveness.
The President's traveling Advisory Board on Race urged Americans to
be candid with one another on race. Somebody tell the media.-
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