I view this dynamic the same way I view accidents involving military aircraft.
Back in the Seventies when I was a jet mechanic in the Navy, I was surprised at the number of aircraft accidents that occurred within my sphere of awareness.
At sea, a plane would go over the side on launch. A plane might leave and never come back. A helicopter goes into the ocean. Heck, I saw four planes crash with my own eyes in just my four years in.
The thing that surprised me was how unaware the country at large was about these things. Unless you lived on a base or in a community surrounding a base or knew someone on that ship, you would never hear about it.
These are crashes where a plane didn’t hit a house or anything like that...it disappeared into a forest, mountains or ocean somewhere.
And I was just one person. Multiply this by the number of military personnel all over the globe, and you get an idea of the scale.
With these types of racially motivated incidents, unless you live in a city, town or locality where it happened, you would never know. The people and those they know who were in the mall or 4th of July celebration where it happened know, as do the friends and families of people hurt and killed, but the rest of the country is oblivious, and it is because the media deliberately suppresses the facts. Those of us who are aware are not saying all black people take part in these things and they don’t all approve, that is a given.
But to hide our heads in the sand is appalling.
And it is because people are concerned they will be branded a racist for pointing out reality. That is extremely disconcerting.
Same here. A base I was one lost 7 F-111s in a short period. Half were human error and half not. Nothing in the press, national news, or even said past maybe a few months after. The pilot community was buzzing about it but frankly, no one else in the world could care less.
Perception wins all the battles, reality wins all the wars.
You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time. But you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
And other platitudes and cliches that apply.