The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘An Important Discussion’

Posted on | January 27, 2019 | Comments Off on ‘An Important Discussion’

 

Three weeks ago, the shooting death of 7-year-old Jazmine Barnes in Houston was all over CNN, but the story disappeared once police arrested two black suspects in the drive-by shooting (see “Media’s Anti-White Bias Makes Houston Drive-By Shooting National News,” Jan. 7).

However, Ashe Schow offers this thoughtful update on the case:

The family of 7-year-old Jazmine Barnes regrets calling her tragic murder a hate crime, a claim which led to a white male being falsely accused of the attack.
Young Barnes was killed in a drive-by shooting on the morning of December 30, 2018. Her mother was driving her and her four sisters in Houston, Texas, when a man opened fire on their vehicle. In the confusion, Laporsha Washington, Barnes’ mother, saw a white man in a red truck speeding away, and believed he was the shooter.
The shooting became a viral news story, and suddenly Washington’s description of a white male suspect became a “hate crime,” according to KPRC2 in Houston.
“Buffin said once word about the shooting became news, it went viral. From there, activists swarmed her family — listening to Washington and her daughters’ description of a white gunman. They told them the shooting likely was a hate crime,” KPRC2 reported.
Activist Shaun King amplified the sketch of the man and emphasized that it was a “hate crime.” King then started asking about a man who had been arrested for purse snatching after Barnes’ murder, strongly implying this man may be connected to the case. This led to the identified man and his family receiving death threats.
A week after Barnes’ murder, two black men were arrested for the crime.
Now Barnes’ family regrets the role they played in misidentifying an innocent man.
“We apologize. We apologize,” Mary Buffin, Barnes’ great aunt, told KPRC2. “The thing that’s bothering me is that someone was falsely accused.” . . .
Eric Black, 20, and Larry Woodruffe, 24, were arrested for Barnes’ murder. Both are African American men. Police believe the white man in the red truck sped off just after the shooting to protect himself.
Law enforcement officers also believe the two men mistook the car Barnes and her family was in for another vehicle belonging to rival gang members when they opened fire.
Even though a man was falsely accused of a horrific and racist crime, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez didn’t seem concerned, suggesting it had launched an “important discussion” on racism.
“This death has sparked a lot of discussion on many different levels,” the sheriff said at a press conference earlier this month. “We know that there is an important discussion that does need to take place about race, about the real fear and concerns that hate crimes are in an uptick across this county. We also need to talk about gun violence.”
This is a common defense when a claim of racism or sexism turns out to be bogus. Activists have been using some iteration of the “important discussion” line for years. It is especially prevalent on college campuses after a hate-crime hoax has been perpetrated.

You know what we need to have an “important discussion” about? The irresponsible way that CNN and other national news organization jump on any claim of racism as an excuse to portray America as a country defined by hatred — for which, they suggest, Republicans are to blame. It’s not just racism, either. As I recently pointed out (“The Media’s ‘Climate of Hate’ Myth,” American Spectator, Jan. 18), transgender activists and the media have falsely claimed that Donald Trump’s election is to blame for an alleged “epidemic” of anti-transgender violence. In 2016, Ashe Schow described how the media excuses these hoaxes:

Falsely accusing someone of a crime is never okay and society should never excuse it. Sadly, today’s culture allows anyone to accuse someone of rape or racism and seek forgiveness by claiming the false accuser just wanted to “start a dialogue.”
In the recent race hoax at State University of New York at Albany, where three black women started a fight on a bus and accused a dozen white people of attacking them for being black, a professor at the school claimed they were justified because they started a conversation on race.
“My white students have said this has opened up conversations,” said Sami Schalk, an assistant professor in SUNY Albany’s English department. “Things that are inadvertent, small, but that these white students have no experience with, not being a person of color on this campus.”
The three women who claimed to be the victims of a racial attack are currently being charged with assault (as videos show one of them threw the first punch) and filing a false report.
Another recent hoax, this one involving a lesbian professor at Central Michigan University who claimed she was attacked for her sexuality by a man at a Tony Keith concert, also included the “starting a dialogue” excuse. Professor Mari Poindexter said she made up the story (and punched herself in the eye to fake evidence) “because she wanted to raise awareness about the social hardships of people in the LGBTQ+ community.”
After Rolling Stone’s article about an alleged gang-rape at the University of Virginia was proven to be a hoax, media outlets — including MTV — rushed to suggest that the article “may have unintentionally started a conversation that’s bigger than the controversy itself.”

Here’s a suggestion: Let’s “raise awareness” that the reason activists are always willing to perpetrate hoaxes to “start a conversation” is because they know the media are willing to act as their accomplices.

It’s almost as if fake news is the enemy of the people, or something.




 

 

Category: Media Bias, Racism

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