http://www.kansas.com/205/story/86731.html Posted on Mon, Jun. 04, 2007 LEONARD PITTS: ENOUGH WITH PHONY WHITE VICTIMHOOD It always amazes me when white people put on the victim hat. As in victim of racial oppression. By any measure -- health, education, economics, employment -- white Americans enjoy a superior standard of living. If that's racial oppression, sign me up. But still, one occasionally hears mewling noises from that subset of my white countrymen who feel put-upon by big, bad racial minorities. This is one of those times. And Knoxville, Tenn., has become the capital city of that lunatic fringe. It seems that in January, a young white couple, Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, were victims of a brutal crime. They were carjacked, kidnapped and raped. Cleaning fluid was sprayed into Christian's mouth. She was stuffed in a trash can and apparently suffocated. Newsom was shot and set afire. His body was dumped. Five blacks, one a woman, have been arrested. The story made headlines around Knoxville. It was unnoticed nationally. That has changed. A constellation of white supremacists and conservative bloggers has pushed the story into the national limelight as illustration of their argument that news media, constrained by political correctness, refuse to report black-on-white crime while pulling out all the stops when crime is white on black, as in the Duke University lacrosse debacle. I would see their Duke case and raise them a Central Park jogger, but what do I know? Anyway, bloggers such as Michael Oliver have chastised the "liberal, biased, mainstream media" for missing the Knoxville story. He asked, "Had the roles been reversed, would the media ignore such a horrific crime?" Truth is, media ignore horrific crimes all the time. Space is limited and growing more so. Which means the story that catches fire usually has some element beyond gruesomeness to sell it. In the Duke case, it was class, privilege, sex and race that did it. Not that I expect Oliver or other "oppressed" white people to pay attention to something so trivial as fact. They're too busy demanding that this case be tried as a hate crime -- even though police say there's no evidence the couple were targeted for any other reason than that they were there. And on May 26, white supremacists held -- I kid you not -- a "rally against genocide" in Knoxville. Part of me thinks I should consider the source and let this slide. But the argument being advanced here is so utterly, abysmally, stupidly, self-servingly wrong that I cannot help but respond. Black crime against whites is underreported? On what planet? Study after study and expert after expert tell a completely different story. For instance, there's "Off Balance: Youth, Race and Crime in the News," a 2001 report that concluded: Blacks and Latinos are underrepresented in news media as victims of crime and significantly overrepresented as perpetrators, based on crime statistics; newspaper articles about white homicide victims are longer and more frequent than those about black ones; and interracial violent crime is more likely to be reported, even though it is just about the rarest kind of violent crime. And here I'm obligated, because I'm black, to say that if the defendants in this case did what they are accused of doing, I'd be happy to see them rot under the jailhouse. Sadly, that needs saying, because there are people who will not take it as a given. But with that obligation fulfilled, let me add that I am likewise unkindly disposed toward the crackpots, incendiaries and flat-out racists who have chosen this tragedy upon which to take an obscene and ludicrous stand. I have four words for them and any other white Americans who feel themselves similarly victimized: Cry me a river. Leonard Pitts, a columnist for the Miami Herald, appears in Opinion on Mondays. © 2007 Wichita Eagle and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. http://www.kansas.com
His quote "And here I'm obligated, because I'm black, to say that if the defendants in this case did what they are accused of doing, I'd be happy to see them rot under the jailhouse. Sadly, that needs saying, because there are people who will not take it as a given." The reason it's not taken as a "given" are incidents like the O.J. trial. Plenty of blacks knew the man was guilty and were happy to see him walk. One of many such instances.
I'm forced to read Pitt's bullshit in his home paper, the Miami Herald, a few times a week. He's a moron. Would I rather be the 5th generation descendant of a slave here in America or back home in Somalia or Sudan? Bottom line. blacks kill whites in the U.S. at a per capita rate 50 times that of visa versa. News wise I guess blacks killing whites is dog bites man. So common it's hardly newsworthy.....
Pitts wrote a decent column right after Sept 11, 2001, clearly it was the last intelligent thing he wrote. He's obviously threatened when its demonstrated to him that his race doesn't have the monopoly on victimhood.
There's only one point to make. If this had been in reverse, if five white people had raped, tortured, murdered, then discarded the bodies of two black people in the trash, would it be national news? Yes it would. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson would have raced each other down to Knoxville to be the very first to hold press conferences denouncing the act and calling for Justice. There'd be live coverage of daily press conferences by the governor and the police to tell the progress of the investigation. It'd be a circus much like the Duke case. But since it was white victims and black crimminals, it's not news. And Pitts leaves out one detail, she was raped while her boyfriend was made to watch. You can count on Pitts to cry you not a river, but an ocean.