Basically, a young couple in Knoxville was "carjacked, kidnapped, raped, and finally murdered during an ordeal of unimaginable terror in January."
The victims were white. The four people charged with the crime are black.
Some are complaining that:
A) It would have been a big national news story if the races in the case had been reversed.
B) It should be prosecuted as a hate crime.
As for point A, I think that's true. The press likes white-on-black violent crime stories. That's partly because they fit the overarching narrative of black victimization, and partly because such stories are relatively rare:
In 2005, there were more than 645,000 victims of cross-racial violent crimes between blacks and whites in the U.S. In 90 percent of those crimes, black offenders attacked white victims.Please note that this addresses violent crime only. I bet that if you did a study of cross-racial business fraud, you might find some strikingly different numbers. Also, it's hard to capture accurate cross-racial police brutality statistics, but I bet that runs the other way too.
As for point B, I think this sort of crime had to involve inner rage of some sort. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the killers bore some animus toward white people. But it would be hard to prove as the key motivation, which is one of the troubles with hate crime laws in the first place.
Why does someone decide to shatter
Another person's life one day?
For the victims it doesn't matter.
They're destroyed either way.
2 comments:
"It would have been a big national news story if the races in the case had been reversed."
Who knows. Maybe. Maybe not.
Did you ever see this site when it was making its way across the internet a while back?
"Who knows. Maybe. Maybe not."
On reflection, I have to say you're right about that "maybe." There are SO many violent crime stories weekly, and only a few make it big on a national basis. I'm guessing the "white on black" nature of the crime would help it bit - but maybe not enough.
It also helps when someone who has an ongoing campaign of some kind seizes on a crime as a perfect example of what they're fighting against. That's what's going on with this couple, after all - conservative groups have seized upon the case. Much like Jesse Jackson seizes on some cases, and lets others slide.
As for WWWA, I saw some version of the idea. I feel like I saw a comedian doing it. Pretty funny.
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