In response to Hate-crimes hypocrisy:
I understand Joel’s distaste for “tit for tat” race crime reporting. As conservatives, we embrace Martin Luther King’s dream for a colorblind society, so obsessing about race is anathema to us.
Besides, like he said – everyone already knows there’s a huge crime problem in black urban areas. And hopefully everyone knows that blacks commit interracial violent crimes at a much, much greater rate than whites.
One relatively new form of black-on-white assault, the “knock-out game”, has become popular in urban neighborhoods, and would seem to have increased in number since Trayvon Martin’s shooting eighteen months ago. Sometimes the attackers even explicitly say, “justice for Trayvon!” to remove any doubt.
So while many of us on the right chafe at the thought of pointing out the horrible cases of black on white violence that practically happen on a daily basis, now – the left tries to parlay their racial grievance mongering over a case that had nothing to do with race into legislative gain.
The NAACP recently released principles for what it would like to see in so-called Trayvon’s Laws at the state and local levels:
Ending racial profiling;
Repealing stand your ground type laws;
Creating law enforcement accountability through effective police oversight;
Improving training and best practices for community watch groups; and
Mandating law enforcement data collection on homicide cases involving people of color.
And this president! This community organizer who must politicize everything….must turn every crisis into an opportunity for some political cause, passed up his chance to diffuse racial tensions and help heal the nation on two different occasions. The first opportunity arose two weeks after the Trayvon Martin story surfaced.
Via Jack Cashill at the American Thinker:
“Obviously this is a tragedy,” said Obama solemnly in response to a planted question. After some empty bromides about everyone pulling together and the like, the president cut to the chase: “But my main message is to the parents of Trayvon–If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.”
By this time, the White House had access to all the information the Sanford Police Department did. The courageous step for Obama would have been to defend the Sanford Police Department and to demand an end to the media lynching of George Zimmerman. As an African American, he had more latitude to do this than a white politician would have. Instead, he chose to identify fully with the black “victim.”
And then again, six days after the Zimmerman not-guilty verdict:
Obama made an unexpected appearance at a routine White House press conference specifically to address the “Trayvon Martin ruling.” As a first priority, Obama sent his “thoughts and prayers” to the family of Trayvon Martin. As to George Zimmerman and his extended family, still in hiding after a year and a half of death threats, Obama offered not a word of hope or encouragement. Nor did he rebuke those whose threats forced the Zimmermans into an internal exile.
Expanding on his remarks from more than a year prior, Obama once again identified himself with Martin, now even more intimately. “Trayvon Martin could have been me thirty-five years ago,” said Obama. Although at seventeen Obama was living in Hawaii with his white family and attending an exclusive prep school, their color apparently was bond enough.
I’m just not one to sit quietly and allow this type of injustice and hypocrisy to stand. The left should be ashamed of themselves, but moral cretins that they are – they need our help to make them feel shame. I guess that means tit for tat crime reporting. I will go on the offense. (Not here, of course – on my own blog.)
By the way, can you guess who said this?
“There is nothing more painful for me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start to think about robbery and then look around and see it’s somebody white and feel relieved. How humiliating.”
Would you believe Jesse Jackson “in a rare honest moment twenty years ago.”
A little more honesty like that and a lot less grievance mongering out of the racial grievance industry would go a long way toward healing racial tensions in this country.