We recently saw news reports of blacks attacking a white on the Portland MAX (train). According to the Oregonian, and the powers that be, this attack wasn’t racially motivated. Therefore, hate-crime charges will not be pursued. We are told:
Police have made arrests. Karley escaped with just bumps and bruises. TriMet has promised a written apology and to improve security. But there’s still something hanging out there. Buckland and I couldn’t decide which was uglier: The video or the reaction to it. “People have taken a grain of sand,” the landscaper and fishing guide said, “and tried to turn it into a 200-pound boulder.”
Karley is white. Her attackers are black. For many people hiding under the hood of anonymity on talk radio and in online forums, that’s all the evidence they needed to unload: Hate crime! Racist attack! Proof of “black hate” and “black racism”!
Stop. The reality, investigators say, is that the flogging started after Karley and her attackers had a “verbal dispute” on the train. Karley made it clear that she didn’t appreciate the girls’ loud, distasteful remarks about a boy riding with her. They, in turn, didn’t like that she had the mettle to stand up for her friend. So, the thugs advanced.
Yes, Karley told me, one of the strangers referred to her as “white girl.” But it was an encounter of a hundred insults. The girls were drunk on their own spit. These are the things bullies say.
Reading this story, a sense of deja vu came over me. Haven’t I seen this before? Oh yes! Back in 2008 there was also a black on white attack – and we were told the same thing, that race was not a factor. That the white victim was just as much at fault as the “vibrant” perpetrators. In another black-on-white attack the same year, the Oregonian did admit possible racial motives – and even included the fact that racial epithets were used – but readers had to get about half-way through the article to learn that it was “African Americans” who were attacking the elderly white woman.
The black-on-white public transit crimes we read about in the news are only the tip of the iceberg. I have personally heard white victims recounting their ordeals, at the hands of blacks, in attacks that never made it to the news. Are there any white-on-black attacks on the MAX? I seriously doubt it. Whites do sometimes misbehave on the Max, but it appears that most violent incidents are by blacks.
But getting back to the first incident, an Oregonian article, printed January 13th, 2012 (but apparently missing from their webpage) helps put the racial aspect of the crime in context:
Officers arrested three young women suspected of beating and spitting on a 14-year-old Centennial Middle School student Dec. 26 on a Green Line MAX train. A bystander’s video of the attack went viral.
Rakeshia Shamone Burns, 18, her 16-year-old half-sister and the 13-year-old half-sister of the 16-year-old face counts of assault, riot, disorderly conduct, harassment and interfering with public transportation, said Sgt. Pete Simpson, a Police Bureau spokesman.
One gets the impression that there are a lot of half-siblings in the black community of Portland. But aside from that, it is obvious that the authorities threw the book at those “troubled youths”. Notably missing, of course, are “hate-crime” charges. The article continues:
In a separate incident, a mother and daughter were arrested following a fight about 3:05 p.m. Thursday about a TriMet bus near Southeast 122nd Avenue and Division Street.
Officers were told that the pair tried to use invalid transfers, then verbally abused the driver and punched two passengers who tried to intervene.
Tina Renee Duckett, 36, and Markishia Welikea Duckett, 19, were jailed on counts of assault and interfering with public services, Simpson said.
Lest there be any doubt as to the ethnicity of this mother-daughter team, here’s what they look like:
All told, the article (on page B2 in the corner) describes three separate incidents. They could not hide the race of the first two. But here is the description of the third:
On Wednesday, a 15-year-old Benson High School student was beaten about 8 p.m. as he walked to a MAX platform on North Interstate Avenue. He was catching a Yellow Line train home after a wrestling tournament when a car driver yelled at him, then punched and kicked him Simpson said.
The suspect, who remained at large, was described as in his 30s, about 5-foot-10 and 200 pounds, with a silver Toyota Avalon.
Is it just me or is there something obvious missing from the above description of the suspect? Should we take a wild guess here and assume that that assailant was black? Well, it turns out we would be right. Here are some comments from the comment section of another Oregonian article:
MSNBC is reporting that the assailant was a black man. Yep, another racist attack. What other motive could there possibly be? Supposedly police are trying to retrieve videotape from the MAX platform to attempt the ID. But if you believe the police, Tri-Met or anyone at the Oregonian (which is too PC to even give a description of the villain) REALLY want to find the assailant, you’re dreamin.I had a feeling. The O keeping it quiet to temper the story about the black mom and daughter Trimet Assault and the black teenager Trimet attack the other day. Ms Crombie, maybe you have any comment on this, sometimes reporters leave notes on these things?
Gee. The Seattle news says it was a 200 lb black adult male that administered the beating to a 15 year old white kid. No hate crimes in Portland if the Oregonian won’t print the news.
The printed version of this story in the O goes on to describe this guy as aprox 30 years old, 5-10 and 200lbs. Presumably so others can help track him down. What are the chances that the O just accidentally forgot to include his race while every other news agency is reporting that he was black? I don’t care what race he is….white, black or otherwise just print the news in it’s entirety and quit thinking you need to be so GD PC! This is exactly why the O is in the crapper.
An afterthought: I’m pretty sure that Pete Simpson, the police spokesman, is well aware of the truth. He would probably love to be able to speak his mind, but he fears for his job and his family. He probably did include the race of the perpetrator in the last case – but the Oregonian conveniently left it out.
Y’know, a commenter on my blog said political correctness was rife in the US but not as much as in the UK. I would say that’s only half-true. In the US, you’ll get certain regions that are far more hipster-ish and PC to the point that people wave it massively as some kind of flag, and the universities will be even more intellectually dishonest…
I have a US district attorney as a friend commenting on a lot of things. Usually counter to my opinion, but he certainly is well informed about issues.
Here his comment:
How many hate crimes ever get charged in the US?
If you charge them for the normal crime, adding a hate crime does not make much difference. And hate crimes are very hard to prove. You need to prove mens rea.
He says it complicates prosecution. The penalty for the crime is enough, one does not want to complicate prosecution by charging for something else that is almost impossible to prove.
Yes the press gets excited about it. He does not remember a single hate crime being charged in Wisconsin in the last few years.
In the state fair incident, police wanted to charge hate crimes, but prosecution did NOT charge for that
He said hate crimes are an enhancer that adds a little more to the penalty.
There is a danger to lose the entire case because once the jury doubts the hate crime issue they might throw out the entire case.
In the first article quotes the author writes the girls were drunk on their spit and used that as an excuse for the girls saying an ethnic slur, they said “white girl” while they were beating. I have never heard of people getting drunk on their own spit. If a white person had called a black male with the epithet “black boy” I doubt any mainstream writers for newspapers would try to excuse the incident by saying the white person was drunk on their own spit. In fact if the white person was actually drunk I doubt that would be used as an excuse for saying that racial slur.
If the races were reversed you would never hear the end of it.
OK, another country, but consider Emma West, the British woman who used some tough language on a tram in London against some immigrants–and the “British” government had her arrested.
As for the Oregonian incident, why is it that when white people demand equal justice it is suddenly “ugly?” But then again, this reveals the agenda of the DWL media, which is to disenfranchise white people by denying them their equal protection under the law.
I was expecting some MAJOR discussion disputing the district attorney comment. Or even agreeing with him. I am disappointed that nobody speaks up! You don’t have an opportunity that often.
I found some census data for 2010 showing that Oregon is 1.8% black. I was wondering whether the percentage of violent crimes in Oregon committed by blacks was significantly higher or lower than 1.8%
This must be a rhetorical question; everywhere black Africans are found, they are over-represented in crime, especially violent crime. The only possible exception I can think of is that South African “coloreds”, who are reputed to be more criminal than pure blacks. Therefore, a mixed community of coloreds and blacks would have blacks under-represented in crime. Other than that, I’m pretty sure you can count on higher black criminality as much as you can count on gravity.
I forgot to attach my link to the census data http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/41000.html