Salon Writer: 'Our Real Problem Is White Rage'

On Monday, Edward Wyckoff Williams of Salon.com put his finger on the real problem with America’s simmering racial conflict in the aftermath of the George Zimmerman verdict: “white rage.” Wyckoff Williams claimed, “in the American South it seems white folks suddenly believe that decorum and charm are a proper response to unspeakable acts of violence and unconscionable injustice…. Sanford police coyly ‘tolerated’ the actual killing of an unarmed black child, but yet refuse to ‘tolerate’ any anger expressed for the acquittal of his murderer. This is the new Jim Crow realized.” In other words, when a Hispanic man kills a young black man in self-defense, that’s thanks to white people being angry.

Wyckoff continued, “This arrogant call to remain calm in the face of such fatal injustice reveals a basic disregard for the humanity of black people. It is this fundamental disconnect — an unwillingness or inability to see African-Americans as fully realized human beings — that allows whites to blindly ignore the need for equal treatment and equal justice.” In fact, Wyckoff says, “white rage” lies behind President Obama’s political troubles: “President Barack Obama is not immune — as he’s become the target of incessant ‘white rage’: race-baiting attacks, prejudice and bias even prior to his election. The Republican Party and its neo-Confederate Tea Party wing has been committed to invalidating his political and legislative legacy as much as the Zimmerman jury invalidated the civil rights of Trayvon.”

To demonstrate that this pernicious “white rage” permeates America, Wyckoff cites two white race riots…from 1921 and 1923. The sentence for being black, Wyckoff says, is “death without parole.”

Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).