Not All Racists are White

This article in the Statesman about an incident in Austin has one interesting line, and the inanity of that line is skirted round, even while the article implicitly contradicts it.

Police have not classified this incident as a hate crime, said Austin Police Sgt. Richard Stresing, because hate crimes target an individual specifically because of an identifying characteristic, like race.

So it appears that Sgt Stresing does not consider a brick bearing the message “Keep Eastside Black. Keep Eastside Strong” thrown through the window of a young white child to “target an individual specifically because of … race”. That decision by the police is itself racist. The Statesman does not seem to criticise the decision, even while it continues with a discussion on hate crime, implying the reporter believed this to be a hate crime. The same happens in the UK of course, when a Muslim ‘randomly’ stabs two Jews.

Note that I do not like the labelling of hate crimes, but if police do it they must not discriminate in their labelling due to the race or religion of the perpetrator.

I have already mentioned a case of white workers being sacked in favour of less-capable blacks in the USA; in the same post I mentioned a black friend’s experience of his black friends’ racist opinion on racism.

President Obama and his friend, Professor Gates, both seem to have made assumptions about a police officer due to the colour of his skin. The fact that those assumptions appear to be incorrect (the officer in question is unlikely to treat blacks and whites significantly differently, as he was specially chosen to teach a course about racially profiling) is not really relevant. It was a racist assumption.

Years ago a friend of my sister’s was murdered. He was white, and he was killed by one of a small group of youths who were not white (their race is irrelevant). It happened within a couple of years of Stephen Lawrence being killed. Yet there was no national news coverage, even when the actual perpetrator was being hunted, even when it turned out that he had left the country to the homeland of his parents. He was a youth, almost certainly without the means to escape himself. So there was a strong suggestion of a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, probably within his family or his community. Yet the media had no interest. The media that still have not stopped talking about Stephen Lawrence.

As I said before, the race/equality industry has had a role, but now there are better ways of dealing with racism. The acceptance of racism by non-whites while (rightly) condemning racism by whites is one of the failures of the equality industry. It is a very dangerous situation, which will stoke future tensions and encourage white racists. The traditional media are not helping much, and sometimes neither are the police.