The black press has moved on. So have the daily newspapers. We aren’t hearing as much as we used to about knockout attacks. Members of the National Association of Black Journalists do not want to talk about this phenomenon, while other than to say it is a myth.
But the knockout “game” continues. The first few days of Black History Month were rife with such incidents. The Hudson Reporter carried this story:
A Manhattan man who was assaulted on Sinatra Drive early Sunday morning told police that he believed he was the victim of the “knockout game,” according to a police report. The game, in which groups of youths suddenly assault a random victim with the goal of rendering him unconscious with a single blow, made local headlines late last year when a homeless Hoboken man was killed on Third Street by a group of Jersey City minors whom prosecutors said were playing the game.
… As he was walking, he was struck once on the left side of his face by a man he could only describe as African-American and 5 feet 10 inches tall, said the police report. Another man was with the alleged perpetrator. The victim fell to the ground, and apparently asked his attacker why he had assaulted him, to which the assailant only said, “What are you going to do about it?”
He did the only thing he could: Stayed down until his attackers left. Then he went to a doctor who he told him he had “several facial fractures that would require surgery.”
Across the river in Brooklyn, the latest case of knockout received scant notice outside of the Jewish press. Arutz Sheva reported:
A young Yeshiva student was attacked as he was on his way home. He was attacked just a few feet from the entrance to his home.
As he approached the building, a youth followed him, and in an instant began attacking him. He struck the Jewish man several times on his head, without saying a word, the student said later. Eventually the student lost consciousness and fell down on the sidewalk. He regained consciousness to find himself lying face down on the cold sidewalk. Amazingly, his attacker was still there.
He left when a neighbor came to the stricken man’s aid, running into a nearby building. Police said they could not go into the building and look for the alleged assailant because the victim was not able to identify him.
Local religious leaders said they were not going to put up with this anymore and wanted more police protection from the relentless violence.
Which is pretty much what they said after the other dozens of racial attacks in their neighborhood over the last two years.
Tampa had a two-fer over the weekend. While hundreds rallied in Miami to remember the death of Trayvon Martin and to vow to work together to prevent more white-on-black violence, the Tampa area was the scene of several cases of black mob violence and black on white crime. Hundreds of black marauders descended on the Florida State Fair, destroying property and attacking police and other fair goers. One of the their victims was an old lady in a wheelchair who was robbed.
Across the bay in St. Petersburg, black mob violence erupted again on the Pinellas hiking and biking trail. A resident of the area breaks it down:
I live in Clearwater close to Tampa and all the local news outlets were falling all over themselves to point out it was just some rambunctious teens. Meanwhile four more people were mugged on the Pinellas Trail and had their phones, bikes, and wallets stolen by — you guessed it — some more “youths.”
In less than a week, there were at least three incidents of racial violence on the trial — part of a pattern of more than a dozen over the last two years in St. Petersburg. Black mob violence on hiking and biking trails throughout the country is a regular feature for some trail users.
In Rochester, N.Y., this week, a hundred black students rioted and fought with police at Frederick Douglass High School and Junior High until a few dozen police were able to break it up with pepper spray. Then a fire alarm went off and the melee spilled out onto the street where it continued. Seven were arrested. Two students were Tasered. And many students were treated for exposure to pepper spray.
Johnson City, Tenn., is the kind of place where people try to get away from what they think are big-city problems. But black mob violence happens in small towns, too. Now Johnson City is on the list as well. Over the weekend, a pedestrian found resident Matthew Brookshire unconscious on the street. Bleeding. The Johnson City Press reported the details, as spare as they were:
There were witnesses to the attack that reportedly involved several black men who assaulted Brookshire then ran off. “He was waiting to cross the road and the black males, one of them hit him in the head,” said Katelyn Breeding, the woman who found Brookshire. Then a witness saw Brookshire go down and hit his head on the ground. There he was surrounded by the mob who punched him and kicked him in the face, said WJHL TV News.
Breeding saw the black mob leaving the scene. They were laughing and joking and “jumping up and down, saying phrases like “We got him. We beat him.”
And, oh yeah, Brookshire is in critical condition.
Toya Winder had her life-changing experience in 2010. Last week, the Ledger-Enquirer in Chattahoochee Valley, Georgia (there’s that small town thing again) published her story in a recap of black crime in the area.
Winder was beaten and robbed and almost died:
Winder’s nose was fractured in two places, and her left eye socket broken. The whole left side of her face was smashed in, and she needed stitches in her forehead and elbow. Winder, 49, says it breaks her heart that the attackers were two young black men who appeared to be between 18 and 20 years old.
That meant no more magical thinking for Winder:
Before this incident, I was one of those black women saying, “These young black men shouldn’t go to prison. These 16-, 15- and 14-year-olds who do these crimes, they should get out, go to juvenile detention and be rehabilitated,” she said to Ledger, while telling her story at a Muscogee County Victims Witness Assistance meeting at the Government Center. “But when you’ve got two guns in your face, and these boys standing over you saying, ‘You b—-,’ and they don’t give a damn about you … I immediately changed.”
Not everyone in Winder’s town changed. The paper talked to J. Aleem Hud, executive director of Project Rebound Inc., an organization that aims to empower black youth. Hud says he know who is responsible for the epidemic of black crime in America: White people.
Hud said black people survived slavery by sticking to African village traditions. But that ended with school integration:
Many black children went to white schools where they were placed in special education classes, away from the nurturing of black teachers,” he said. “Desegregation disrupted the values and folkways of our community, disrupted our lifestyle, made us vulnerable to drugs. And once drugs came in, it changed the entire order of the African-American community.
He did not say it, but any Critical Race Theorist will tell you that black people may be using drugs, they may be selling drugs, but white people are the ones bringing drugs into black neighborhoods.
Hud said the community will have to return to its roots to regain a sense of identity. That’s why he promotes the principles of Kwanzaa, an African-American holiday that’s observed in December.
In Chicago, Deonta Mackey won’t be celebrating any more Kwanzaa holidays. When he and two of his friends saw a middle-aged white guy all bundled up against the cold, pumping gas in a lower middle-class neighborhood this week, they thought they had an easy mark.
A classic soft target. They did not know they were about to pull a gun and demand the valuables of an off-duty Chicago cop. “As the sergeant handed over his wallet and other valuables, he reached for his gun and shot the gunman in his head, police said. The other two men fled the scene,” reported DNAinfo web site.
And it was all captured on video.
And all this happened a few days before and after hundreds of people gathered in Miami to remember Trayvon Martin, and how, says Ebony Magazine and Daily Beast, white fear caused his death, along with the “death[s] of countless others.”
