Before his encounter with the Knockout “game” and racial violence, Paul Lane was “a lefty. As left as you can get,” he said. He supported Obama. Intends to vote for Hillary. Or least he did.
That was up until November 7, 2013, the day Kenneth Johnson walked into the Contra Costa library and played the Knockout game. Said Lane, a librarian:
It was 2:49 in the afternoon. And this black guy, I won’t say he was a kid, he was 21 years old, comes into the room in the library. I was helping a 67-year old guy with history and old movies, because I know that stuff. He was smiling as if he knew the guy I was helping. Then he — Johnson — walks up to the patron and hits him on the side of the head as hard as he can.
Lane yelled at Johnson to stop hitting the patron. He did. Then he jumped over Lane’s desk and starting hitting and kicking him. It got real bloody real fast. As Lane later recounted:
So the guy jumps over the library desk and started beating me. And hits me about 20 or 25 times. I can’t remember exactly ‘cause I’m kinda blocked out a bit. Yeah he really whaled into me. He decked the patron with one one punch. He hit me in ear. In the side of the head. The top of the head. I was bleeding from the nose, eyes, mouth, ears.
Lane crawled into the other room and asked for help. Then it was over. Later, the newspapers would say the injuries were non-life threatening. Which of course depends on how you define life: The library walls were spattered with blood. Lane cannot pick up a book, let alone think about going back to work. He has headaches and “major concussion issues.”
Johnson left the library the same way he arrived: His mother drove him. But in their rush to get away, first they could not start their car. Then Johnson insisted on taking the wheel. His erratic driving made him easy to find. Within 30 minutes he was in police custody.
Then the real games began. Ralph Malatesta knows them well. Two years ago, he was the victim of a similar attack 3000 miles away in Delaware. The police caught his attackers, bloodied and bruised, after Malatesta refused to turn over his money. Said Malatesta:
It turns out they had been on a robbery spree in that neighborhood for weeks. And five people were willing to press charges. But every time it came up for a trial, we would all show up in court, but the robbers asked for a continuance. So the five other people got sick of the delay and stopped showing up. But I stuck with it and they were eventually convicted.
Kenneth Johnson and his lawyer are using the same playbook. So far, they have delayed the court proceedings at least twice. But that doesn’t matter to Lane. “They cancelled it to see if I would really show up the next time. I did. It’s very exhausting and I do not have any stamina as a result of the beating. But I’m not giving up.”
Meanwhile, in the local papers, police say they want help with the case. Especially the motive. They just can’t figure out why Johnson did what he was alleged to have done. Why anyone would.
Maybe they should call former prison psychologist Marlin Newburn. He spent 30 years in the criminal justice system learning about motives and racial violence. And hatred. Up close and personal. He has seen a lot of this: The violence is about hate. And the hate is about race.
To people who practice this type of racial violence, all non-blacks are the enemy since they were weaned on the idea that whites/Asians/Hispanics/Martians were ‘keeping my people down.’
They may be functionally illiterate, and I have yet to meet one that wasn’t, but their older family members or people in their neighborhood along with the popular culture drove that early message into their skulls.
They believe that they have some black toxic-tribal license to attack, and the more brutal, the more ‘down with the struggle’ they are. The degree of viciousness also demonstrates just how manly (or womanly) they are. In other words, the more sadistic, the higher the social and personal power status.
It’s also great street cred for them, the sacred status for assaulting the all-pervasive and imaginary white power structure, and in regard to Asians and Hispanics, those people are just ‘takin’ jobs’ from them.
The people who practice this kind of racial violence — like the Knockout game – have imaginary, social injustice tags as legitimate reasons to assault all non-blacks.
To say the black assaults on non-blacks isn’t racist is a blatant lie. Black predators are racist to the bone. Most all live the part in prison.
As Lane’s case winds through the system, Lane is keeping an eye on all the media coverage the Knockout game is receiving all over the country. He has a hard time believing what he is reading — and hearing. “I listen to left-wing radio,” he says. “And I could not believe it when I heard my favorite radio personality — Stephanie Miller — said the Knockout game does not exist. That’s crazy.”
Lane’s entire life is upside down. He and his wife are moving to a safer place. He probably won’t be able to return to work. At least for a while. “I can’t get beat again,” he says. “I’ll die. I’m a liberal Obama supporter but that didn’t stop the violence on me. I have serious concussion issues and my trust for young African American men in particular is now less than zero.”
PS: The New York Times continues to insist the Knockout game is a myth.
Cross-posted at White Girl Bleed a Lot
