Hiding Black Interracial Crimes
By Walter E. Williams
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
If you're like I am, you've heard scores of media reports about the
2006 Duke University rape case, in which three white lacrosse players
were falsely accused of raping a black stripper at a wild party at the
home of one of the team members. These guys, convicted by the news
media and Duke faculty, were later found innocent. It turned out that
Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong was running for re-
election. In seeking the black vote, he concealed DNA evidence that
would have exonerated the lacrosse players.
You might remember hearing scores of stories about the 1998 murder of
James Byrd, a black man who was stripped, chained to a pickup truck
and dragged through the streets until he was decapitated in Jasper,
Texas. The incident provided fodder for the NAACP and others to attack
then-Texas Gov. George Bush, during his 2000 election campaign, for
not supporting hate crime legislation. It turned out that two of
Byrd's murderers were sentenced to death, and the other, life in
prison.
Diego Olivaries, 3, marches with other protesters with a banner
calling for the release of the 'Jena 6' outside the U.S. Justice
Department in Washington October 2, 2007. Last week tens of thousands
of black Americans from across the United States marched in the
central Louisiana town of Jena calling for charges to be dropped
against youths comprising the 'Jena 6' in a protest reminiscent of the
U.S. civil rights era. 'Jena 6' is made up of six teenagers accused
over an assault on a white teenager at Jena high school in December.
The six became a symbol for wider concerns about discrimination
against young black males by the U.S. criminal justice system. REUTERS/
Jason Reed (UNITED STATES)
Related Media:
VIDEO: 'Jena Six' Case Sparks March on DC
VIDEO: Plea Deal Reached for Jena 6 Teen
I don't know about you, but it was just recently that I heard about a
gruesome murder in Knoxville, Tenn., that is far worse than the false
charges in the Duke rape case and is at least as horrible, if not more
so, than the dragging death of James Byrd. Unlike the Duke rape case
and the Jasper lynching, the national news media's coverage of the
interracial Knoxville murders paled in comparison. On Jan. 6, 2007,
University of Tennessee student Channon Christian and her boyfriend,
Christopher Newsom, were carjacked and kidnapped in Knoxville. Both of
them were later murdered.
According to a 46-count indictment, suspects Darnell Cobbins,
Lemaricus Davidson, George Thomas and Vanessa Coleman, all blacks, are
charged with committing rape, including sodomy against Christian and
Newsom, both of whom are white. After being raped, Newsom was shot
several times and his body was found burned along nearby railroad
tracks. Christian was forced to witness her boyfriend's rape, torture
and subsequent murder before she was ultimately raped, tortured and
murdered. The police discovered her body inside a large trash can in
the kitchen of the home where the murders took place. Before disposing
of her body, the murderers poured bleach or some other cleaning agent
down her throat in an effort to destroy DNA evidence. Trial dates have
been set for next May.
What have we heard from the NAACP, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and
others who rushed to judgment and outrage as they condemned whites in
the cases of the "Jena 6" and Don Imus when he referred to the Rutgers
ladies basketball team as "nappy-headed ho's"? Where were the national
news media and public officials? You can bet the rent money that were
the victims black and the perpetrators white, Knoxville would have
been inundated with TV crews, with Jackson, Sharpton and other civil
rights spokesmen and politicians from both parties condemning racism,
possibly blaming it all on George Bush.
According to the 2004 FBI National Crime Victimization Survey, in most
instances of interracial crimes, the victim is white and the
perpetrator is black. In the case of interracial murder for 2004,
where the race of victim and perpetrator is known, more than twice as
many whites were murdered by a black than cases of a white murdering a
black. The failure of civil rights leaders, people like Jackson and
Sharpton, as well as politicians to vocally condemn black-on-white
crime -- and the relative silence of the news media in reporting it --
is not simply a matter of double standards. It's dangerous, for it
contributes to a pile of racial kindling awaiting a racial arsonist to
set it ablaze. I can't think of better recruitment gifts for America's
racists, either white or black.
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