When it comes to killing, only some racial recipes are newsworthy.
By Mona Charen
There
is nothing the cable channels love more than a good murder trial,
especially if the violence is spiced with the irresistible seasoning of
race. But you don’t understand much about America if you don’t know that
only some racial recipes are newsworthy. If the victim is white and the
killer is black, it’s not interesting (unless the killer is a
celebrity). If the victims are both white, it’s only interesting if the
victim or the murderer is a comely blond female (preferably a
nymphomaniac). If the victim and killer are both black, it’s a yawn. If
the victim is black and the killer is white — make way for sweeps week!
While
several channels were providing real-time coverage of the George
Zimmerman trial in Florida, a Howard University student was murdered in
Washington, D.C. The story of Omar Sykes didn’t make it to television
news except in Washington, D.C. The story of his murder was noted only
in the Washington Post’s Metro section, provoking this
question: If a white student at any college in Washington, D.C. had been
murdered on the street on the night of July 4, would it have been only a
local story?
Doubtful. A liberal columnist, noting this disparity, would very
likely attribute it to vestigial racism. I think it’s probably something
else. There is a daily death toll of young African-Americans in
America’s cities. In Chicago alone, more than 200 people (mostly black)
have been killed in just the past six months. These deaths are not
treated as major news events, I suspect, because the press is squeamish
about drawing attention to the fact that the overwhelming majority of
the perpetrators of this violence are black. If these victims had been
killed by white people, it’s a certainty that they would have been a
major national obsession. (Recall the frenzy during the ’90s when it
seemed that white arsonists were firebombing black churches. They
weren’t, but that’s another story.)
Young black males account for 1
percent of the population, yet they comprise 16 percent of murder
victims. They also represent 27 percent of homicide offenders.
Omar Sykes’s murder deserved more attention, more outrage, than it received. I don’t think he and I would agree on much. The Post
account suggested that he had a strong interest in “social justice.” I
tend to agree with Friedrich von Hayek, who said that putting the word
“social” before anything else wholly destroys the meaning of the word it
modifies. But never mind. Sykes was described by one friend as someone
who “always had a hug and a smile, every single time he saw me.” Another
said, “He was probably the most well-liked guy in my life. . . . The
world just lost someone pretty amazing.” He was a business-marketing
major and would have started his senior year in the fall. He was also
someone’s child, brother, and grandson.
The world did lose someone
amazing. Honesty requires us to admit that the relative indifference to
the violence among black inner-city residents arises at least in part
from the perception that most of the young blacks who die in the gunfire
are criminals themselves. Most are. But so what? They don’t deserve a
death sentence because they snatched a purse or two. Some are children.
(Between 1980 and 2008, 41 percent of infant homicide victims were
black.) Some are elderly. Some, like Sykes, are college students. For
every victim, there are thousands who live in fear in neighborhoods
blighted by crime. The crime rate makes poverty more intractable as
businesses are reluctant to locate in such neighborhoods, insurance is
more expensive, and civil-society institutions like churches and clubs
must divert time, energy, and expense for security.
The murder
rate has declined over the course of the past 20 years. But it remains a
scandal that African-Americans continue to live disproportionately
under the shadow of violent death. There are many reasons for the
slaughter — with family disintegration topping the list. But misplaced
delicacy about discussing the toll — for fear of “blaming the victim” —
may be helping to perpetuate the wrong.
Blacks should be up in
arms about this, as we all should be. The killer on July 4 was not a
victim. Omar Sykes was the victim. It was a front-page outrage relegated
with a shrug to the local pages — just another unsettling
black-on-black crime that doesn’t fit the script of our preferred racial
morality plays.
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