Posted on 08/28/2015 11:09:33 AM PDT by huckfillary
On August 26, 2015, a deranged black male who claimed he had been the victim of racism in the media industry, shot and killed two young, very talented and promising journalists in Roanoke, VA, at point blank range. Incidently, they were white. By legal definition, it was a hate crime. An act of violence motivated by racism or homophobia is a hate crime. But victimhood in this country evokes two completely polarized responses--by the political and media establishment, the criminal justice system, and the respective communities.
I haven't heard the term "hate crime" mentioned once in all the many hours of news coverage since the event. Al Sharpton is nowhere to be seen nor heard. Neither is Black Lives Matter, for that matter. Victimhood only matters when the victim is a member of one of the officially sanctioned victim classes. If not, you're just an unfortunate statistic.
The affected communities also reacted very differently. Unlike the black communities in Baltimore or Ferguson, the white communities in Roanoke aren't aflame. No curfews are in place. No mothers are screaming with unbridled vulgarity at their miscreant sons, grabbing their hoodies, and shaming them into submission on national television. Cars aren't being torched; neither are CVSs. Convenience stores remain open and doing a brisk business. With the exception of the grieving at victims' employer, WDBJ-7, all businesses are going about their business. The mayor of Roanoke hasn't asserted that the rioters need their "space" for anger, or that wanton property destruction is just another legitimate form of expression protected by the First Amendment.
Politicians reacted differently. There are no police to demonize, so they to had find another scapegoat---guns--as though guns can fire themselves accurately at a target of their own choosing. Politicians that prey upon minorities from the Dear Leader on down have cynically seized the issue to push for more gun control. Gun control may or may not be effective in curtailing such gratuitous acts of violence, but the politicians loudly promoting gun control in the wake of these incidents are most assuredly not doing so for humanitarian reasons. They most certainly are using these tragic incidents for self-promotion, to satisfy their insatiable urge to assert more control over lawful citizens, to push their consistently tried-and-failed agenda, and to rationalize their exaggerated sense of self-importance and usefulness. Politicians that don't routinely practice the politics of racial division, however, who have to chosen remain silent on the issue, are guilty of cowardice and hypocrisy. God forbid they should risk alienating the Black Panthers or the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Rightly or wrongly, our reactions to events are clearly determined by perspective. But no matter the number of perspectives, there is but one objective reality, one truth. One thing is for certain, all of us---blacks, whites, rioters, police---are victims of the victim mentality. When some of us are taught from Day One in our homes, schools, and churches that someone else bears the blame, and should bear the cost and consequences of our moral failures and poor choices, all of us are victims.
Well said.
I am hearing that Alison Parker’s family may be Jewish. If so it stands to reason that Flanagan may have had anti-Semitic hatreds that he acted on when he killed her.
Charleston did not riot when a deranged, moral idiot of a white man shot black people at their church.
Another deranged moral idiot of a black man used those murders to shoot white people in Roanoke.
For what it’s worth, Roanoke managed to usher in the era after the Civil Rights Act without the first riot, due to the hard work of local businessmen and a Republican black pastor, Noel Taylor, the first black Mayor of the city.
Oh, there have been flareups here and there, but all in all, we’re not a place that has seen the problems like the big cities have endured, thank goodness.
Good point. Sadly, I have to admit I had forgotten about Charleston. I will rewrite and repost with the necessary revisions.
On the basis of a single look at the video of an unknown white kid entering the Charleston church, they declared that a hate crime.
That deranged punk probably wasn’t as far away as Orangeburg in his flight before “hate crime’ had been repeated a hundred times in the media. Geraldo got in almost as many references to “hate crime” in each 90 second interview he did for the next 2 weeks.
How soon, if ever, will this loser’s racist manifesto be relealed?
I want to know if Time Magazine’s going to put Dylan Roof on the cover like they did with Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev...
Or because a fellow journalist was involved will they show more respect? I’m guessing they’ll show more respect than they showed toward everyday American citizens who aren’t part of the media elite.
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