The
predictable happened as soon as the race of the three teens charged in the Oklahoma
slaying of Christopher Lane, a young white Australian baseball player was known.
Two are black. The cry immediately went
up yet again that whites are in dire peril from being victimized, and likely
murdered by young blacks. There is not a
shred of evidence or even the hint that Lane's murder was racially motivated.
The teens themselves could only say that they killed him because they were "bored"
and that he happened to be an accessible and convenient target. This in no way
minimizes the horror and tragedy of their alleged act, and prosecutors wasted
no time in filing charges against them as adults. Oklahoma is a tough death
penalty state, and it's almost certain that the death penalty will loom large in
consideration against the two black teens that are charged with first degree
murder in the killing, their age notwithstanding.
Meanwhile,
the FBI's annual figures on homicide rates in America repeatedly show that of
the thousands of murders in the nation annually only a minuscule number of
whites are killed by blacks. The plain fact is that whites are likely to be
murdered by other whites, and blacks by other blacks. Yet, it's because
interracial murder, more specifically black on white murder, is so rare that it
lends itself to fear, sensationalism, and hysteria. The clamor even extends to
the press. It's now become a ritual for right wing bloggers, and talk show
hosts, to brow beat the national media for supposedly clamping a wall of
silence on black on white murder cases because it fears inflaming racial
tensions, and is scared stiff that it will be called racist for talking up
black on white crimes. Yet when whites assault or murder blacks the press and
civil rights leaders supposedly leap over each other to blare it out as
headline news. This supposedly proves that the national press is somehow in
collusion with civil rights leaders to cover up the alleged epidemic of black
on white murders.
This
is a false, self-serving, and cheap ploy to knock the press and civil rights
leaders. Yet, the horrific murder of Lane does cast a troubling glare on an
aspect of violent crime in America that isn't much talked about beyond race
baiting digs at the media and civil rights leaders. And that's the reasons that
blacks do kill whites. Even though the numbers are small, a higher proportion
of whites are likely to be killed by blacks than whites killing blacks. As in
the Oklahoma slaying, there is no evidence that the murders are racially
motivated, whites are targeted because they are perceived to have valuables in
the home, cash, a luxury car, or other conspicuous objects of value that
criminals seek out and that poor blacks aren't likely to have. In other words,
these crimes are almost all cases of garden-variety street crime. The alleged Oklahoma
teen shooters prove that point. There is no talk about getting whites in their Facebook
page rants, but rather an exulting of the pseudo tough guy, gangster life
style.
Prosecutors
in trying to determine whether to prosecute an interracial murder or attack as
a hate crime or not have to figure out is their racial animus in the crime. For
it to be a hate crime they have to prove that a black intentionally targeted a
white victim solely because of their color. That's takes hard evidence of
racial taunts, threats, writings, or statements by the perpetrator to prove
race was the motivating factor in the attack. In the absence of that evidence,
the charge that the attack was a hate crime won't fly.
The
suggestion that the national press engages in a cover-up to quash murders
committed by blacks of whites because it's afraid to offend blacks is just as absurd.
The better explanation is that crime news is so routine that unless the accused
murderer is O.J. Simpson, Phil Spector, or Robert Blake or a name celebrity, or
that in the case of the alleged killers in Oklahoma they are teens, and the explanation
they give why they killed is so jaw dropping and senseless that it alone
insures that it will become a leading news story.
Still,
black-on-white violence anywhere stirs fear among some whites that crime-prone
blacks are out to get them, and they'll seize any opportunity they get to
commit violence against them. When blacks say or do nothing about these attacks
it is taken by some as a tacit signal that blacks put less value on white lives
than black lives. This is ridiculous. But that won't stop some from still
screaming loudly that the murder of Lane proves there's a double standard in
interracial murder cases. There's nothing of the sort but his heartbreaking
murder unfortunately will just reinforce that belief.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He
is a frequent MSNBC contributor. He is an associate editor of New America
Media. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio
Network. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KTYM 1460 AM Radio
Los Angeles and KPFK-Radio and the Pacifica Network.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
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