Are Race Riots News?
by Thomas Sowell
Recently
by Thomas Sowell: The
Invincible Lie
When I first
saw a book with the title, White
Girl Bleed A Lot by Colin Flaherty, I instantly knew what
it was about, even though I had not seen the book reviewed anywhere,
and knew nothing about the author.
That is because
I had encountered that phrase before, while doing research for the
four new chapters on intellectuals and race that I added to the
revised edition of my own book, Intellectuals
and Society, published this year.
That phrase
was spoken by a member of a mob of young blacks who attacked whites
at random at a Fourth of July celebration in Milwaukee last year.
What I was appalled to learn, in the course of my research, was
that such race riots have occurred in other cities across the United
States in recent years – and that the national mainstream media
usually ignore these riots.
Where the violence
is too widespread and too widely known locally to be ignored, both
the local media and public officials often describe what happened
as unspecified "young people" attacking unspecified victims for
unspecified reasons. But videos of the attacks often reveal both
the racial nature of these attacks and the racial hostility expressed
by the attackers.
Are race riots
not news?
Ignoring racial
violence only guarantees that it will get worse. The Chicago
Tribune has publicly rationalized its filtering out of any racial
identification of attackers and their victims, even though the media
do not hesitate to mention race when decrying statistical disparities
in arrest or imprisonment rates.
Such mob attacks
have become so frequent in Chicago that officials promoting conventions
there have recently complained to the mayor that the city is going
to lose business if such widespread violence is not brought under
control.
But neither
these officials nor the mayor nor most of the media use that four-letter
word, "race." It would not be politically correct or politically
convenient in an election year.
Reading Colin
Flaherty's book made painfully clear to me that the magnitude of
this problem is even greater than I had discovered from my own research.
He documents both the race riots and the media and political evasions
in dozens of cities across America.
Flaherty's
previous writings have won him praise and awards, but this book
has been met largely with silence or abuse. However much ignoring
the ugly realities that his book reveals may serve the interests
of the media or politicians, a cover-up is a huge disservice to
everyone else – whether black, white or whatever.
Even the young
hoodlums who launch these mass attacks on strangers would be better
off to be stopped now, rather than continue on a path of escalating
violence that can lead to a lifetime behind bars or to the execution
chamber.
The
dangers to the nation as a whole are an even bigger problem. The
truth has a way of eventually coming out, in spite of media silence
and politicians' spin. If the truth becomes widely known, and a
white backlash follows, turning one-way race riots into two-way
race riots, then a cycle of revenge and counter-revenge can spiral
out of control, as has already happened in too many other countries
around the world.
Most blacks
and most whites in the United States today get along with each other.
But what is chilling is how often in history racial or ethnic groups
that co-existed peacefully for generations – often as neighbors
– have suddenly turned on each other with lethal violence.
In the middle
of the 20th century, Sri Lanka had a level of mutual respect and
even friendship between its majority and minority communities that
was rightly held up to the world as a model. Yet this situation
degenerated over the years into polarization and violence that escalated
into a civil war that lasted for decades, with unspeakable atrocities
on both sides.
All it took
were clever demagogues and gullible followers. We already have both.
What it will take to nip in the bud the small but widely spreading
race riots will be some serious leadership in many quarters and
that rarest of all things in politics, honesty.
Race hustlers
and mob inciters like Al Sharpton represent such polarizing forces
in America today. Yet Sharpton has become a White House adviser,
and Attorney General Eric Holder has been photographed literally
embracing him.
July
17, 2012
Thomas
Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford
University. His Web site is www.tsowell.com.
To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other
Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators
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