Most episodes of black mob violence are not this straightforward: Unwitting predators hurling racial expletives. In front of witnesses. In broad daylight. On a busy street corner.
But that is what happened in Brooklyn earlier this month when a black mob assaulted a young white couple. Some cases of racial violence are so blatant and horrific that even the most determined editor cannot ignore them.
But other than that, most editors say they do not report black mob violence because they have no evidence of “racial motivation.”
That is what the editor of the Virginian-Pilot said after a mob of 50 black people beat two of his reporters — and he did not even run a news story on it.
These are the same editors who find grist for copy in a steady stream of stories about black caucuses, black churches, black colleges, black businesses, black TV, black radio, black music, black neighborhoods, black history, and other race-based institutions.
But when it comes to an epidemic of black mob violence, these same editors dummy up.
In Jackson, Mississippi, a group of black teenagers killed a white senior citizen. A veteran of World War II. The second such attack and murder of an 80-something year old veteran in two months. The incident didn’t generate the kind of public outrage that would have arisen had the victim been black and the perpetrators white. It didn’t even warrant coverage by major news outlets. So far, no one has connected the two similar killings, ruefully declaring it is open season on old white men.
In New Haven, 500 black people attending a party called “An All Black Affair” were fighting and destroying property in and out of a downtown restaurant. Then they took it outside to two other venues, leaving violence and chaos in their wake. No one was arrested. Police were too busy with crowd control, we are told.
Did you you read about it?
How about the 200 black students at the Virginia State University who rampaged through the campus, assaulting people and destroying property. One person was stabbed. One arrested. At Howard University, 9 black people were hospitalized after a riot broke out at a homecoming hip hip concert. Did you read about that incident?
How about the group of black people who tore through a New Jersey commuter train, sending four people to the hospital after beating and robbing them?
Or the group of black people at the University of Minnesota who robbed and assaulted four separate groups of white students last weekend? Racial violence is an everyday fact of life in the Minneapolis area.
Did you read about that?
How about the thousands of black bikers who converge on Fresno twice a year? When they met earlier this month, 13 people were shot, one fatally. The Washington Post said it was a multi-racial gathering. People who were there called it the West Coast version of Black Bike Week.
Did you read about it?
This list is very long, very recent — and very incomplete.
Every single incident of black mob violence, by itself, does not merit attention from the national media. But together, they form a pattern that every reporter in every newsroom in America knows about. But refuses to say.
Maybe that is what Eric Holder meant when he said we are a nation of cowards when it comes to race. But I doubt it.
Cross-posted at White Girl Bleed a Lot