Enjoying Washington’s spring tradition of African American Family Day
(Note, April 26, 5 p.m.: The discussion in this entry still continues. In the latest comment, James N.
says that he brought his family into the Zoo, notwithstanding his qualms about African American Family Day, because he didn’t want to appear “racist” in front of his children, and so ended up exposing them to a dangerous and frightening situation.)
Because of James N.’s two e-mails earlier this afternoon from the National Zoo in Washington, where he and his family were enjoying the Monday after Easter, which also, to his bemusement, turned out to be African American Family Day, which then turned into an African American riot, VFR was the first publication in the country that reported on the events at the Zoo.
James now sends a story from Fox 5, which was posted at 4:58 p.m:
Stabbing at National Zoo During African American Family Day
WASHINGTON—D.C. Police tell FOX 5 a teenage boy was stabbed inside the National Zoo in Northwest.
We are told the teen was stabbed several times. EMS received several calls of a stabbing in the vicinity of 2900 block of Connecticut Avenue. The teen was transported as priority one trauma patient.
Easter Monday is traditionally African American Family Day at the National Zoo. Easter Monday has been a Washington-area multicultural tradition that spans more than 100 years.
A witness tells FOX 5 the scen was chaotic as police evacuated the zoo. She says people were stumbling over each other as they ran from the zoo.
More details as they come into the FOX 5 Newsroom.
Fox mentions the single stabbing, not the riot that James reported at 3:45 p.m.: “a small riot broke out—or maybe it was a flash mob. Running, cursing, beating bystanders, then fighting among themselves.”
UPDATE: Here is a more detailed story from WUSA9, dated 6:04 p.m. Supporting James N.’s e-mail, it indicates that there was at least on other attack in addition to the stabbing:
Teen Stabbed At National Zoo
WASHINGTON (WUSA)—A teen was taken to the hospital with serious, potentially life-threatening injuries after he was stabbed at the National Zoo on Connecticut Ave NW today. Zoo officials say zoo police do have one person in custody and that person will be turned over to DC police.
A spokesperson for the National Zoo tells 9NEWS that there was an altercation at the zoo earlier this afternoon and that all the people involved in the altercation were escorted out of the zoo.
Parents at the zoo tell 9NEWS NOW that they are concerned and disgusted by what they saw happened at the zoo. They also say some children witnessed the altercation, and one woman says she saw very little security at the zoo.
A woman who was at the zoo with her son reported seeing about 20 to 30 boys picking on another boy, and then throwing a water container at him. Next, she says, the group jumped the boy. [LA replies: That is the standard black gang behavior, a group varying in size from a few to an entire mob, ganging up on one helpless individual.]
Police say there were approximately 15 people in the group. They say the stabbing happened around 3:20 p.m. and that the victim suffered other injuries in addition to stab wounds.
The zoo spokesperson said that the zoo was closed due to capacity. The Monday after Easter is usually a popular family day at the zoo.
D.C. authorities received a second call in the 2600 block of Connecticut Avenue at the intersection with Woodley where another male was attacked by a group of people. That male was bleeding from the mouth and nose when emergency personnel found him. Some believe this group may be the same group of people that stabbed the teen at the zoo and that the group may be moving and targeting others.
Some teens 9NEWS NOW’s Delia Goncalves spoke to at the zoo say they had been reading on Twitter for at least a week, tweets that said there was going to be a fight at the zoo. [LA replies: That’s recent innovation that has been added to African American tradition of mob wilding: They announce or build up to the attack using electronic communications.]
Police are looking for the group.
Zoo officials have released a statement:
This afternoon there was an altercation at the Smithsonians [sic] National Zoo sometime during mid to late afternoon. While we can confirm that one individual was stabbed and left the Zoo, we cannot confirm anything about the individual who was wounded because he left Zoo property. We do have a person in Zoo police custody and that individual will be turned over to the Metropolitan Police, who are on site and working closely with us.
The Zoo is at capacity today with more than 25,000 visitors. As standard procedure, with such large crowds we close the gates to any additional visitors. The Zoo buildings close at 6 pm; the grounds close at 8 pm.
- end of initial entry -
Mark Jaws writes:
Living in the DC area and having taken my kids to the National Zoo on several occasions, I am shocked at the stabbing which occurred at the National Zoo today which marred its celebration of African American Family Day. Who would have ever guessed that such a random tragedy could happen on such a festive day?
James N. writes:
The bottom line: Going to a public event that caters to an African American crowd is a very bad idea.
Mark A. writes:
Reading James N.’s brilliant comment made me think of something:
Ever notice that liberals are some of the most paranoid people when it comes to safety (e.g. bicycle helmets, avoidance of firearms, cars with 20 airbags), yet, as you say, they will deliver themselves to savage blacks like Christ going to the cross?
Shrewsbury writes:
A VFR reader writes, “Ever notice that liberals are some of the most paranoid people when it comes to safety … yet, as you say, they will deliver themselves to savage blacks like Christ going to the cross?”
1. When did Mr. Auster say that? [LA replies: I’m not sure if I ever phrased it exactly like that, but certainly I keep pointing to the phenomenon of liberals delivering themselves into the hands of black killers.]
2. Actually, no, I haven’t noticed. It has always seemed to me that liberals are extraordinarily careful about keeping their own precious hindquarters out of the way of black attacks, while forcing other white people to suffer for their “racist” sins—as if the sacrifice of Jesus had consisted of nailing a Roman soldier to the cross.
LA replies:
Yes, of course, some white liberals are personally cautious, others are personally naive. The personally cautious ones tend to be the liberal elite, who help deliver the naive liberals into the hands of killers.
Your argument is similar to the argument that liberals don’t feel “guilty” about race, because liberals love themselves and think OTHER whites are guilty. The correct reply to that argument is that some white liberals love themselves and view other whites as guilty; while other white liberals actually do feel guilty. As I’ve pointed out many times, what both groups have in common is their belief in white guilt. So the distinction between the two groups is not that important. It’s the same here. Some liberal whites protect themselves from black violence; other liberal whites don’t. But both groups share the world view that results in whites delivering themselves into the hands of black killers.
April 26
Mark Jaws writes:
I heard this morning on the local news station WTOP that yesterday was the 100th anniversary of African-American Family Day. The event was probably initiated with the advent of the NAACP. If its original founders could see what the African-American Family has been turned into courtesy of libralism and federal welfare programs, they’d probably be become sick with disgust.
Due to my job as an intelligence analyst, I have done a fair amount of research into the social structure of traditional African societies, particularly the Ashanti peoples in western Africa. While no one would ever classify the indigenous people of sub-Saharan Africa as sophisticates, the mechanisms they devised to keep folks happy and in their place worked for very well for them. And in some ways it made a lot of sense. Enter slavery, colonialism, and liberalism to give us what we have today.
Paul, author of the blog
Stuff Black People Don’t Like, writes:
Readers of your site and other sites that deal with the reality of black America SHOULD go to these events and take cameras with them and Flip Cams to document what the media will not.
Go to Job Fairs in predominately black cities and festivals like this and see what happens. Yes, you should take every precaution possible, but this is how viral videos are made.
Don’t give anyone a reason to think you’re there to cause trouble. Just show up. That’s 90 percent of the battle right? Just showing up?
James P, writes:
Mark Jaws writes,
I have done a fair amount of research into the social structure of traditional African societies, particularly the Ashanti peoples in western Africa. While no one would ever classify the indigenous people of sub-Saharan Africa as sophisticates, the mechanisms they devised to keep folks happy and in their place worked for very well for them. And in some ways it made a lot of sense. Enter slavery, colonialism, and liberalism to give us what we have today.
I reject the idea that slavery was somehow external to “traditional African society” or imposed on it from the outside. Slavery was very much a part of traditional African society. Wiki notes that “about a third of the population” was enslaved in West Africa long before the European powers colonized the region. If any external force was to blame for slavery in “traditional African society”, it was not white European Christians but Middle Eastern and Ottoman Muslims. Islam began to spread in western Africa centuries before European colonial powers arrived on the scene. Pre-colonial African Islamic kingdoms ruthlessly conquered and enslaved their neighbors, and of course Arabia and the Ottoman Empire had a great appetite for African slaves long before the Trans-Atlantic slave trade commenced.
To be sure, traditional western African society was arguably less dysfunctional than modern African-American society, but to contend that pre-colonial Africa was a happy Garden of Eden is simply untenable. The “mechanisms” the pre-colonial African states devised to keep their folks happy and in place included war—always a good diversion for obstreperous surplus males—and slavery—in which surplus males were either put to work or sold, thus exporting the social problem. One cannot say that colonialism “gave us what we have today”, because colonialism, at least in its late 19th century guise, suppressed both of these practices—predatory regional war and slavery—thus improving the lot of the average African male relative to the pre-colonial era. Most of the evils West Africa endures today—the appalling chaos, death, and destruction—are not the product of colonialism but of the collapse of colonialism. If you lived in Ivory Coast, would you rather be ruled by Nicolas Sarkozy? Or by Laurent Gbagbo or Alassane Ouattara, both of whom command armies of machete-wielding cannibals and rapists? The collapse of colonialism was a product of liberalism, and thus it was liberalism, not colonialism, that brought chaos, death, and destruction to the Third World just as it did to our inner cities.
Lydia McGrew writes:
Question: How did the National Zoo attract such a high number of blacks (apparently not a number of black families) to the Zoo on Monday? Was it just the declaration of Monday as a special day honoring black families? This seems a little improbable. I can’t help wondering, as a conjecture, if the Zoo gave special admission rates to blacks on Monday. That would be fairly blatantly illegal, given the existence of anti-discrimination laws. As I say, this is just a conjecture, but perhaps some of your readers can confirm or disconfirm it.
James P. writes:
Regarding Lydia’s question, National Zoo is free, though it is not in a “black” area and there would be a Metro or parking cost to get there. Thus, the blacks did not receive a special reduced admission price, though one could say the non-blacks were charged an extra non-monetary price in that they had to endure the violence, crime, and disorder that were unleashed by some of the blacks.
LA writes:
In another entryk today, I revisit the subject of how whites—for example when they see a group of threatening-looking black thugs—police their own heads to get rid of the unruly racist stereotypes they find there.
James N. writes:
I must confess that, when I drove up to the National Zoo yesterday and saw the Celebrate African American Families Day signs, my first reaction was to turn around. Instead, I went in and subjected my family to being terrorized (but not injured).
At the time, I did not know the history of Black Monday at the Zoo—had I known, I of course would not have gone.
I fear, however, that my better judgement was overcome by a wish not to appear “racist” in front of my children. I’m still struggling to have a reasonable discussion with them about what happened, what it means, and the implications for how they should conduct themselves when they are older.
Even front-line VFR correspondents, it seems, are susceptible to avoidance of crimethink.
LA writes:
I was thinking of various approaches that you could have taken to avoid going to the Zoo that day that wouldn’t necessarily involve expressing concerns about black violence or appearing “racist.”
You could have said one of the following:
- “The Zoo is having African American Day. It’s going to be a mob scene. Let’s go to the Zoo tomorrow instead.”
- “I don’t believe in having special days for people because of their race. In America we’re not supposed to recognize people’s race officially; we’re supposed to see people as individuals. They certainly wouldn’t have a White Family Day at the Zoo, and they shouldn’t have a Black Family Day either. I don’t think we should go to the Zoo today.”
- “Since it’s a special day for black families, we wouldn’t fit in. Let’s go tomorrow instead.”
LA adds (April 27):
By “mob scene” I did not mean anything like “dangerous mob.” I simply meant “very crowded,” as when people describe a crowded club or restaurant as a “mob scene.”
James N. replies:
All good suggestions, but they presuppose that I myself do not suffer from the intrapsychic tensions that I so readily identify in my white liberal compatriots.
It would appear that it’s not so simple.
Jack S. writes:
I read with interest James N.’s experience at the zoo. He is one of your best correspondents and I always read very closely when I see his name. This experience was actually the best life lesson in race realism he could have given his children. Lessons such as these, especially when learned at a young enough age, are burned into the mind in a way that no amount of liberal brainwashing by the media or school teachers can ever change. I myself learned the truth about race relations in an integrated New York City public school many years ago and I have never forgotten those lessons.
Greg W. writes:
I feel for James. He, like many whites, is a victim of our government’s demand that we look the other way, even when we have that gut feeling that something bad is going to happen. Most government officials, like our own armed forces, would rather James have risked his life in the name of diversity and tolerance and anti-racism. If a few thousand whites have to be murdered at the hands of blacks in an integrated society, that’s a small price to pay for diversity and the strength it provides our nation.
Jim C. writes:
Yes, I try to protect myself from the black underclass, but let’s not forget all the great cultural contributions blacks have bestowed upon the United States. Let’s be smart about crime, but most blacks are not from the underclass and therefore should be treated as individuals.
Paul K. writes:
There is a book that I recommend to anyone concerned about crime: The Gift of Fear, by Gavin de Becker. De Becker discusses at length how important it is to listen to forebodings that often warn of danger and are often based on information processed at an unconscious level. Though the book is full of useful tips, some on very subtle matters, De Becker NEVER ONCE mentions that the reader is far more likely to be victimized by a black man than by anyone else and that it is therefore doubly necessary to be on guard when dealing with one. It is a striking omission and underscores the fact that this basic truth is an unmentionable in our society. De Becker was featured on the Oprah show, which gave a tremendous boost to his book sales, and which opportunity surely would not have been offered had he drawn the connection between blacks and crime.
James P. writes:
Paul K. wrote:
There is a book that I recommend to anyone concerned about crime: The Gift of Fear, by Gavin de Becker. De Becker discusses at length how important it is to listen to forebodings that often warn of danger and are often based on information processed at an unconscious level.
It is precisely those valuable forebodings about blacks that good Eloi suppress in order to avoid the mental discomfort of feeling like a racist. What kinds of things do the Eloi tell themselves right before they are attacked? “Remember all the great cultural contributions blacks have bestowed upon the United States … Most blacks are not from the underclass … Blacks should be treated as individuals…. (thud) OUCH!”
Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 25, 2011 05:44 PM | Send