Hate-crimes hypocrisy

In response to The Racial Tit-for-Tat of Crime Reporting:

I would agree that pointlessly dwelling on the race of the perpetrators in the recent spate of black-on-white crimes would be wrong, Joel, but I don’t think it’s “pointless” at all.  For one thing, unlike the phatasmagorical politically-conjured boogeyman of trigger-happy white and “white Hispanic” neighborhood watch guys hunting down black youth for sport, gang violence is a very real menace, to young people of every racial background.  It is highly likely that the murders of both Chris Lane and Delbert Belton had gang connections.  In Lane’s case, the local man who turned in the perps is convinced they were gangster initiates, and believes his own son would have been the next victim.  

That’s something our high-profile “civil rights leaders” should be dealing with, but since it doesn’t fit into Democrat statist politics, and doesn’t provide the sort of protest-rally vibe they thrive on, they’re not interested.  Jesse Jackson’s incredibly callous comment that random murders like Lane’s are “frowned upon” offers an unpleasant insight to their mindset.  And he only bothered with that comment, days after the murder, because of the “tit-for-tat” reporting you seem to be chastising.  Jackson, Al Sharpton, and their colleagues are creatures of the media.  The media is is only going to change if it faces relentless criticism for its biases and hypocrisy.

There is also good reason to suspect the shooter in Lane’s murder of racial motivations.  There’s far more evidence to suspect him of a “hate crime” than George Zimmerman.  His social media postings also refer, perhaps as an empty boast, to violence committed because of the Zimmerman verdict.  It’s not “tit-for-tat” score-settling to ask hard questions about the definition of a “hate crime,” and whether the “climate of hate” created around the Zimmerman trial influenced this young killer’s behavior.  

None of these events are happening in a vacuum.  Sadly, the Lane and Belton murders are not the first crimes of their type to be under-reported by the media.  The shadow of Zimmerman hysteria looms large over us.  Are we now supposed to pretend none of that actually happened?  Just forget about the dedicated efforts to railroad Zimmerman as a racist, and the way the facts of the case have been twisted into false, racially divisive mythology that’s still being pumped into the minds of both adults and children, to this very day?  You mentioned Trayvon Martin’s parents, and saluted them for having faith in the justice system.  Well, they didn’t have enduring faith in it, because ever since the trial concluded, they’ve been sending out emails nakedly asserting that Zimmerman stalked and murdered their son.

We’re just supposed to sit quietly and let that mythology grind onward, creating the atmosphere of racial tension that media-savvy hucksters thrive on, and Democrats exploit for votes?  We’re not supposed to point out the hypocrisy of how the Justice 4 Trayvon machine falls dead silent when gang violence claims thousands of lives, killing people from all racial backgrounds?  We’re supposed to forget all about the disgusting liberal efforts to create a “Climate of Hate” narrative to silence conservatives after the Tucson shootings, and just let bygones be bygones, instead of challenging these people to defend the climate of hate they have created?  

We’re talking about control of the narrative now and in the future, not just squabbling over the final draft of history.  Do you imagine for a moment that if we politely refuse to notice events like the Lane murder, it will slow Zimmerman obsessives and their media buddies down for a moment when it’s time to manufacture the next great racial drama?  We’re not just talking about winning some exchange of headlines, we’re talking about influencing the culture… and as the Left well understands, that struggle is won through both volume and repetition.  The false racialist narrative of the Zimmerman case is bad enough on its own, but it’s also distracting attention from real problems.  The people yelling about “gun culture,” as part of a coordinated political agenda to motivate voting blocs and cut into the Second Amendment, are drawing attention from the very real problem of gang culture.  As we should all have learned by now, malevolent cultures spread rapidly into the void left when society refuses to actively defend its positive values.