Baltimore Sun reporter: “Not all” the victims were white

A VFR reader forwarded to Justin Fenton of the Baltimore Sun the VFR entry, “Baltimore’s black youth intifada,” in which I discussed Fenton’s piece about the wave of violent youth attacks on people in downtown Baltimore. In his e-mail, which was also sent to me, the reader used grossly offensive language against Mr. Fenton. I told the reader I was repelled by what he had written and I also forwarded to Mr. Fenton my two e-mails in which I reproved the reader. Mr. Fenton then wrote to me and the reader:

All the emails I’m getting about how I’m a coward for not printing that these are attacks by blacks on whites is making me really second guess the issue of when to print race in crime stories.

Because you’re all wrong.

If I’d printed the races of the victims, you’d know that they’ve been white, Hispanic, Asian and black. Yes, the majority of the victims were white, but not all. It’s fascinating to me that someone could spend so much time pontificating about this white-on-black crime and others sending horribly profane and downright crude emails when your assumptions are incorrect.

I wrote back:

Mr. Fenton:

This is written to you, not to ___ _____, who is not going to be welcome at my site or my Inbox for a long while after the disgusting language he used.

You write:

If I’d printed the races of the victims, you’d know that they’ve been white, Hispanic, Asian and black. Yes, the majority of the victims were white, but not all. It’s fascinating to me that someone could spend so much time pontificating about this white-on-black crime […] when your assumptions are incorrect

Before we speak about the victims, I notice, first of all, that you don’t deny that all the perpetrators were black. Yet you declined to say anything about the race of the perpetrators in your article, except in the case of one attack. And, as I pointed out, in that one instance you left it to the victim, George Williams, to suggest that the motive of the attack was racial, and you put Williams on the defensive where he had to deny that he had provoked the attack by using a racial epithet. But since all the perps in all these attacks have been blacks, obviously they didn’t need to be provoked by racial epithets in order to carry out these attacks (unless we’re going to assume that ALL the attacks were provoked by racial epithets coming from the victims). If you had pointed out in your article the TRUTH that ALL the perps in these attacks have been blacks, the absurdity of the gang’s charge that they had attacked Williams because he had used a racial epithet against them would have been exposed. But you didn’t supply that truth. You left Williams, the victim of the violent attack, having to deny that he had used a racial epithet.

Similarly, in your e-mail you don’t come out and state that all the perpetrators of these attacks have been black. Rather, exactly as in your article, you leave it to the reader, in this case me, to infer that that is the case. How do I infer it? Because if I had been wrong when I said that all the attackers were black, you would certainly have told me so, thus demonstrating my wrongheadedness and racial prejudice. The fact that you didn’t take the opportunity to inform me that not all the attackers were black, proves that all the attackers were black.

Now, when it comes to the victims, you say that “the majority of the victims were white, but not all.” “Not all” means a little short of “all.” Meaning that the overwhelming majority of the victims were white. Meaning that almost all these crimes were black on white crimes. Yet you didn’t say that in your article. You withheld from the reading public essential information about the nature of these attacks.

If you had written an honest article and described the racial nature of these attacks, attacks in which all the perpetrators were black and the great majority of their victims were white, instead of promoting the Baltimore Police Department’s evasive line that these attacks are “random,” and that no one has any notion of the nature and motive of these attacks or of what to do about them, you wouldn’t have exposed yourself to the deserved criticism you have received from me and others.

Regards,
Lawrence Auster

Justin Fenton writes:

I’m perfectly willing to have a rational conversation about this, and I appreciate that you don’t endorse the vitriolic emails.

You say: “you left it to the victim, George Williams, to suggest that the motive of the attack was racial”

That’s because Mr. Williams was the only one to say that he believed the attacks were racially motivated. I asked the question to all the victims that I was able to speak to. I am a reporter, not a columnist, or a mind reader for that matter. If the police said they believed the attacks were racially motivated, I’d have printed that. If the victims had said they believed the attacks were racially motivated, I’d have printed that, and in the case of Mr. Williams, I did. But as far as pointing to this as an overall trend, it wasn’t happening, and I’m not in the business of forcing a theory where no one I am interviewing is placing one.

As for putting Mr. Williams on the defensive, I asked if he believed the attacks were racially motivated. He said yes. I asked what led him to believe that, and he responded that the kids accused him of shouting a racial epithet. In that case, of course I have to ask if that is true and print that he denies saying such a thing.

The fact of the matter is that these types of black-on-black incidents are far too common in Baltimore. The fact that we’ve received a smattering reports that whites, but also blacks, Asians, and Hispanics have been attacked downtown lately doesn’t seem to make it any more racial than those other attacks, which is why I don’t think the police are pursuing these as hate crimes. If they do, we will write that they are doing so.

LA replies:

I appreciate the further e-mail and explanation. I think this is a worthwhile exchange.

For the moment, just one point. I am not concerned with the category of “hate crime,” i.e., a crime that is accompanied by explicit expressions of racial or other group animus. Not only am I not concerned with it, I am against the very concept of “hate crime,” since the ordinary criminal laws if properly enforced are sufficient to punish people for criminal acts, and hate crimes automatically become ideological crimes in which one type of “hate” is punished and others are not. What I am concerned with is crime, more particularly, with interracial crime, more particularly yet, nonwhite crime against whites. The implicit belief, or perhaps the official belief, in our society that only officially designated “hate crimes” have racial significance, diminishes the importance of the total phenomenon of interracial crime, most of it by blacks, which, in fact, is systematically ignored.

More on this later.

David B. writes:

Justin Fenton goes to great length to avoid the fact that blacks are “racially motivated” in attacks on whites. We see that all the time from reporters. Miss Jaimie Satterfield in her coverage of the Knoxville Atrocity does the same.

Mr. Fenton writes, “The fact of the matter is that these types of black-on-black incidents are far too common in Baltimore. The fact that we’ve received a smattering reports that whites, but also blacks, Asians, and Hispanics have been attacked downtown lately doesn’t seem to make it any more racial than those other attacks, which is why I don’t think the police are pursuing these as hate crimes. If they do, we will write that they are doing so”

Didn’t the story make it clear that most victims were white? It is very hard to pin a liberal down on this issue. I know from experience. Mr. Fenton also has the liberal delusion that if it is not a “hate crime,” it isn’t as bad.

LA replies:

It’s analogous to the way the liberal media cover Muslim violence. After the crime occurs, they flood the zone with, “The killer was not connected with Al Qaeda, the killer was not connected with Al Qaeda, he was acting on his own” As though that’s the ONLY thing that matters. Meaning, only if the jihad killer or attempted jihad killer is formally part of a formally designated terrorist organization does his act rise to the threshold of Muslim terrorism. The fact that individual Muslims throughout the ages have spontaneously responded to the call to jihad, the most sacred thing a Muslim can do (and also the only sure way for a Muslim to enter heaven), is never recognized.

The same here. Liberal society creates something called a hate crime, meaning an explicit expression of hate against a group occurring in conjunction with a criminal act of violence. The explicit expression of racial animus in the area of hate crime is analogous to the formal membership in a terrorist organization in the area of terrorism. Once that artificially narrow classification of racial hate crime has been constructed, anything short of it, anything a little different from it, is not seen as a racial crime. So the ubiquitous phenomenon of black hatred of whites, black revenge against whites, acted out continuously in our society, is never recognized.

Van Wijk writes:

You wrote to Justin Fenton: “in that one instance you left it to the victim, George Williams, to suggest that the motive of the attack was racial, and you put Williams on the defensive where he had to deny that he had provoked the attack by using a racial epithet.”

It’s interesting how often this comes up as a defense. Let’s say for the sake of argument that the victim did use a racial epithet. Would this have justified his assault? Would it justify murder? [LA replies: The plain implication is yes, it would justify murder. The liberal default position is white guilt and white responsibility for black mayhem.]

Ask this of a liberal and he will say that, well, he’s against violence of any kind. But the unspoken consensus among liberals is that, yes, it would justify assault and murder. This fact may help further explain their total silence on black-on-white crime, since every white victim of black violence is an implied racist. [LA replies: I wrote my previous inserted reply before I read this paragraph. So our answers to your question were the same. You’ve stated it very well.]

Ferg writes:

Justin Fenton wrote:

“… pontificating about this white-on-black crime”

Note, white-on-black, not black on white. Not quite right on his part. Freudian slip?

David B. writes:

As Ferg noted, Mr. Fenton made the Freudian slip of writing “white-on-black crime” in his first note. In his second, he wrote, “black-on-black incidents.” Is a liberal capable of writing “black-on-white crime”?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 07, 2009 05:56 PM | Send