Thursday, April 12, 2012

Walter Williams: Still racist!


While that may seem like a fairly judgmental title, it's really just an attempt to accurately translate Walter's own title, "Media Dishonesty and Race Hustlers". How does that count as a 'translation'? Here's a fun exercise - try to imagine someone who isn't a racist non-ironically using the term 'race hustler'. Can you do it? Thought not. So, let's see what this racist has to say for himself!

"When NBC's "Today" show played the audio of George Zimmerman's call to a Sanford, Fla., police dispatcher about Trayvon Martin, the editors made him appear to be a racist who says: "This guy looks like he's up to no good. He looks black." What Zimmerman actually said was: "This guy looks like he's up to no good or he's on drugs or something. It's raining, and he's just walking around, looking about." The 911 officer responded by asking, "OK, and this guy -- is he black, white or Hispanic?" Zimmerman replied, "He looks black." NBC says it's investigating the doctoring of the audio, but there's nothing to investigate; its objective was to inflame passions."

Absolutely, Walter, you're completely right. NBC shouldn't have edited the tape to remove the context, it was an utterly dishonest and scumbaggy move. Just like you shouldn't have used the term 'doctored' to prejudice your audience against their actions, also manipulative and scumbaggy. And Zimmerman shouldn't have said 'fucking coons' soon after the exchange that was played on TV. Can we all just agree that mistakes were made? Wait, of course we can't, because compromise is anathema to you, isn't it?

"In his Associated Press article titled "Old photos may be deceptive in Fla. shooting case," Matt Sedensky pointed out that the photos carried by the major media were several years old and showed Zimmerman looking fat and mean and Martin looking like a sweet young kid."

There you go again, assigning malicious motives without any basis for your assumptions. And again, just as your dislike of black people isn't a reasonable cause for assuming they're all trying to steal your Lexus, your dislike of 'the media' isn't evidence that they're trying to pull a fast one on people. Isn't it possible that they were using the only photo of Zimmerman they had available?

Have you seen a current photo of Zimmerman? In that mugshot he looks fat and mean, but also kind of schlubby, maybe even the kind of out-of-shape lout that a 17-year-old kid might have been able to successfully threaten the life of. That's not what he looked like on the night of the attack. Now that we've all seen the police station security camera footage, we know that the current, gun-firing Zimmerman is lean and muscular, with a shaved head. The kind of guy who puts on a leather jacket but leaves it unzipped, so as to better show off his tight T-shirt. The old Zimmerman looks mean. The new one looks scary. If the media was truly trying to bias people against the shooter, wouldn't they have gone through hell and high water to get a current photo?

"Jesse Jackson told the Los Angeles Times that "blacks are under attack" and that "targeting, arresting, convicting blacks and ultimately killing us is big business," adding that Martin is "a martyr." President Barack Obama chimed in by saying, "If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon.""

Walter presents this without comment, so I'd like to congratulate him. For once, he didn't make the world dumber by adding his two cents! In fact, I'm going to go one step further and applaud him for so openly indicting the private prison system! Kudos, Walt!"

Walt then lists a few cases of black-on-white violence that he feels were underreported in the media. I'm not going to list them all here, since every conservative news outlet has already done that work for me a thousand times over. The tactic being used is to shock people with the idea that black people occasionally kill white people, and then indict the media for not running with those stories day and night for weeks on end the way they (eventually) did in the Martin case. Two things, Walter: A) Since you were able to name-drop those crimes pretty quickly, I'd suggest they probably were covered adequately in the media. 2) None of the cases you mention has the kind of narrative that can be spun out over weeks of broadcasts - in every one, the stories follow the tradional crime reporting structure - Horrible crime - search for perps - perps are caught - move on to next horrible crime. The reason the Martin case continues to captivate people worldwide is the unusual narrative structure - Horrible crime - police let criminal go - outcry over injustice - authorities humiliated into taking action. Do you have such a poor understanding of storytelling that you can't understand that this is a more interesting tale?

Of course, there's one other possible reason - the 'man bites dog' scenario. To explain, Walter and people like him (specifically the KKK) have so effectively put forth the idea that the natural state of black people is to be marauders constantly on the prowl for white victims to sate their brutal, unnatural lusts that it's no longer 'news' when a crime fitting those parameters actually happens. After all, Walter, if you spend years telling America that black people are monsters, and then a black person does something monstrous, do you really expect America to be surprised?

"None of those black-on-white atrocities made anywhere near the news that the Trayvon Martin case made, and it's deliberate. Editors for the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune admitted to deliberately censoring information about black crime for political reasons, in an effort to "guard against subjecting an entire group of people to suspicion.""

I'm not saying you're a liar, Walter, but wow, is this the kind of statement you should really be sourcing. Also, I've got to say, those editors are doing a terrible job of keeping an entire race from having suspicion heaped upon them. I mean, isn't that basically all you do?

"One doesn't have to be a liberal, conservative, Democrat or Republican to see the danger posed by America's race hustlers, who are stacking up piles of combustible racial kindling and ready for a racial arsonist to set it ablaze."

Hey, you've made a mistake there - let me fix it for you. "-America's race hustlers, who are racially stacking up racial piles of racially combustible racial kindling and are racially getting racially ready for a racial arsonist to racially set it rablaze." Isn't that better, and more representative of your theories?

"Recruiters for white hate groups-"


Hold on there... I thought white racism was a thing of the past! Didn't you write a whole article about how it's basically impossible to be a racist any more? Anyhoo, now that you've invalidated most of your opinions, I'll let you continue.

"Recruiters for white hate groups must love President Obama's demagoguery in saying that a son of his would look like Trayvon but not saying that Melissa Coon's 13-year-old son, who was set on fire, could have looked like a son of his. After all, the president is just as much white as he is black."

Okay, now you've just crossed the line into flat-out dishonesty. Why am I saying 'crossed the line'? You live on the other side of that line. Be truthful for one second in your life, Walter - do you really think the president is as white as he is black? Anyone who isn't baldly misrepresenting the current state of race relations in America for their own purposes will freely admit that isn't how it works. Why don't you check in with one of those white supremacist groups (whose opinions you agree with an uncomfortable amount of the time) on the subject. Ask them what percentage a person has to be black before they stop qualifying as white in America. Ten bucks says the answer is 'any'. And then they'll hurl some racial epithets your way, because they don't care that you agree with them about most everything - they'll be judging you by the colour of your skin, as opposed to the content of your character.

"Even if the president and his liberal allies in the media and assorted civil rights hustlers don't care much about blacks murdering whites, what about blacks murdering blacks? During a mid-March weekend in Chicago, 49 people were shot, 10 fatally, including a 6-year-old black girl, making for more than 100 murders this year. Philadelphia isn't far behind, with murder clipping along at one a day since the beginning of 2012. Have we heard Obama make a statement about this carnage or that most homicide victims are black and that their murderers are black? No, and we won't, because black-on-black crime, like black-on-white crime, does not fit the liberal narrative of the continuing problem of white racism."

So Walter comes to his closing argument - because blacks are murdering blacks, racism isn't a thing any more! I won't spend too much time on this one, since we covered this exact territory just two weeks ago, and I don't want to come across like a broken record - not that doing so bothers Walter.

So I'll just remind Walter that, disgustingly, the news is a business. Novelty sells. Is it both disgusting and an absolutely disgrace that so many Americans shoot each other every year? Yes. Is it surprising? No. Not even close. I don't know how to solve the problem, and I'm pretty sure Walter's (and America's!) solution of 'lock up as many black men as possible' has been a demonstrable failure.

One thing I'm sure won't help all the black people being killed every year in America? Attempting to use their deaths as proof that white racism isn't a problem any more.

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