The Beltway Sniper Case: What's Race Got to Do with It?

Toogood Reports ^ | 30 October 2002 | Nicholas Stix

[junta]

You are right, Leftists have a racial obsession bordering on the pathological. I think if Mugabe was elected mayor of NYC and began to redistribute the property of working class whites in the boroughs (though not of white libs in Manhattan) they would say very little in opposition.

[aristeides]

Just heard on WMAL: MD police spotted Caprice speeding on Beltway an hour after the shooting of Pascal Charlot in D.C. on Oct. 3, ran the tag, and found nothing; MD police again spotted the car and ran the tag the day before the bus driver was killed -- he was killed Oct. 22, so this would have been Oct. 21.

By the way, I heard a retired police officer call in to Sam Donaldson's talk show on WMAL about an hour ago. The officer said that police in the area have been instructed not to practise racial profiling against blacks or to stop cars with blacks without a very good reason.

[annalex]

All decisions, I am sure, were done by an alphabet agency committee and not by Chief Moose himself. That way, the system never places any personal responsibility on anyone. Yet the results were truly criminal: a suspicion of a white perpetrator was published and a suspicion of a black one was not, delaying the capture.

The links to Islam were actively downplayed by the media, based solely on the assertion that "I am God" would not have been written by a Muslim. That would be understandable as an attempt to reduce panic. But the media did nothing else to reduce panic and in fact, greatly increased it with vacuous 24-hour coverage.

[aristeides]

Did the tarot card in fact say, "I am God"? The facsimile of the cover sheet of the three-page letter published by the Washington Post over the weekend had, "Call me God". Isn't that likely to be what the tarot card said too?

[aristeides]

On that point, here's a paragraph from a local paper's story: Region's three-week struggle with 'God' and fear :

Three days later, a 13-year-old student at Benjamin Tasker Middle School in Bowie was grievously injured with a single bullet as he was being dropped off for school. The shooters left a tarot death card at the scene, telling the police, "Call me God."

[rdb3]

Have you had much personal exp. living in a black community? Perhaps if you truly have you would see things a little different.

Still waiting...

[oceanperch]

I grew up in a black community and have first hand expereince.
There was allot of pressure on the few friends that I had by the muslims not to have anything to do with me because of my white skin.
I also grew up in a non white household (not my blood relatives).

So much hate against non blacks.
Needless to say I relocated to a part of the country when I was raising my son to an all white community and after that have remained here. SOooo glad I found this place. Mostly retired and fisherman.

I even ran in to an old classmate who could not stand the mind set of our home town he found a community like mine in the adjoining state. He never fell into the hate whitey mindset and could not wait to move and has been a fisherman ever since on the Washington Coast. Yes he is black and chose not to fall into the mindset.

It was not like this in my home town pre MLK's death.

It was so violent after the few white folks living there moved out.
Kinda hard to explain the mindset of this Black community you had to live through it to understand the hate.

I have heard that other "like" communities were pretty much the same.

[rdb3]

It's tough for you to differentiate, isn't it?

[oceanperch]

I know what I lived through and glad to live elsewhere.

[rdb3]

Well good for you. It still doesn't take away from the fact that you simply apply a one-size-fits-all approach.

That's a fact.

[oceanperch]

So be it.

[rdb3]

So be it.

Be it so. With "conservatives" like you, who needs enemies?

Your one-size-fits-all approach doesn't help. It hinders. Then again, maybe that's the goal.

[annalex]

Did the tarot card in fact say, "I am God"?

I don't know. I am quoting a TV analyst, don't remember who, from memory. The point that was made, whatever the precise text of the card, is technically a valid one, that a devout Muslim would be reluctant to identify himself with God even obliquely. Indeed, the killer was not an especially devout Muslim, nor were the 9/11 terrorists (some of whom visited nightclubs), nor were the Chechen terrorists (some of whom were gassed, then shot, nursing a bottle of Cognac).

The supposed non-musulmanity of the sniper was a canard injected by the media deliberately, and so was the notion that the sniper must be white. The notion that the police might stop nonwhite drivers or look for Nation of Islam members scared them more than the snipings.

[UCANSEE2]

To answer the question in the title, RACE has nothing to do with it. Allegiance to a different country or military group other than the US is what has to do with it!

[annalex]

Race has to do with it precisely this:

Color of the skin is a characteristic that is useful in catching suspects. That is because bystanders can see the color of the skin, but they can't see foreign allegiances. So, when a suspicion falls on a certain skin color, the public needs to know that. If the suspicion is weak and leaves other possibilities, then the public should know that as well.

But this is not what happened. When a suspicion was on a white perpetrator, that was broadcast, and even amplified by the media. Donohue, for example, played a silly and gratuitous statement by a black lady saying, semi-jokingly, that the sniper must be white because she just knew it. (Donohue later admitted that airing it was a mistake). When the suspicion shifted to a black man, as this article proved it must have, that was not communicated to the public at all. This perverse adherence to political correctness cost lives.

[Biblebelter]

One of the great disappointments for liberals in the last millenium was that Richard Jewell was innocent. He so looked part that Ned Beatty played in Deliverance. But when it comes to hate, no one trains haters better than the man with his own nation, Mr. Farakahn. It comes as no surprise that the accused once was under his influence. But as disappointing as it was for Michael Moore and his ilk to find the accused killers of color, tied to Islam, and one an illegal alien; they still have hope as long as our government pretends that the anthrax terrorism was perpetrated by a home grown academic type terrorist.

[mrustow]

What's race got to do with it? As far as Pete Hamill and Al Sharpton are concerned, EVERYTHING.

You got that right! Thanks for the article, mrustow.

Sure thing, Ms. Delsoul.

[Victoria Delsoul]

LOL!!!

[Victoria Delsoul]

;-)

[mrustow]

Good column

Glad you liked it.

I read Pete Hamill's column the day it was published, and thought it was nonsense.

Yeah, ol' Pete can't write on race with a straight face -- like every other mainstream writer in New York.