A stunning lack of perspective

For the #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading it’s all about racism. From Sunday’s Washington Post:

    ‘Lynchings in Mississippi never stopped’

    By DeNeen L. Brown | August 8, 2021

    JACKSON, Miss. — Since 2000, there have been at least eight suspected lynchings of Black men and teenagers in Mississippi, according to court records and police reports.

    “The last recorded lynching in the United States was in 1981,” said Jill Collen Jefferson, a lawyer and founder of Julian, a civil rights organization named after the late civil rights leader Julian Bond. “But the thing is, lynchings never stopped in the United States. Lynchings in Mississippi never stopped. The evil bastards just stopped taking photographs and passing them around like baseball cards.”

    Jefferson was born in Jones County, Miss., which was an epicenter of the Ku Klux Klan’s reign of terror during the civil rights movement. “Coming from Mississippi and seeing stuff intersect, talking about this stuff is like talking about what happened down the road,” said Jefferson, a Harvard Law School graduate who trained as a civil justice investigator with Bond.

    In 2017, Jefferson began compiling records of Black people found hanging or mutilated across the country. In 2019, Jefferson began focusing her investigation on Mississippi. In each case she investigated, law enforcement officials ruled the deaths suicides, but the families said the victims had been lynched.

    Historically, lynchings were often defined as fatal hangings by mobs, often acting with impunity and in an extrajudicial capacity to create racial terror. Crowds of White people often gathered in town squares or on courthouse lawns to watch Black people be lynched.

There’s much more at the original.

DeNeen L Brown is an award-winning reporter, but she is also someone who very much has an agenda:

    Brown has written extensively about the country’s history of racial terror lynchings and massacres. After Brown’s 2018 story on the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre was published on the front page of The Washington Post, the mayor of Tulsa announced he would reopen the city’s search for mass graves of Black victims of the massacre. In October 2020, the city discovered a mass grave that may be connected to the massacre. Scientists will begin examining the remains this summer.

    Over more than three decades, Brown has been a ground-breaking reporter, with a strong writing voice uncovering stories about the Black community. At The Post, Brown covered night police, education, courts, politics, arts, theater and culture. She has been a staff writer in the famed Style section of The Washington Post and a staff writer for The Washington Post magazine, where she wrote award-winning narratives.

The problem is that, for an award-winning reporter, this article was not exactly the epitome of good journalism. Miss Brown extensively covers the mission of Jill Collen Jefferson, but provides virtually nothing in corroboration, and nothing that might call into question Miss Jefferson’s statements or conclusions.

    “There is a pattern to how these cases are investigated,” Jefferson said. “When authorities arrive on the scene of a hanging, it’s treated as a suicide almost immediately. The crime scene is not preserved. The investigation is shoddy. And then there is a formal ruling of suicide, despite evidence to the contrary. And the case is never heard from again unless someone brings it up.”

Is Miss Jefferson’s statement true? Miss Brown never investigates or questions it. She then proceeds to list the eight victims that Miss Jefferson alleges to have been lynched:

  • Raynard Johnson, 17: June 16, 2000: “There’s enough circumstantial stuff here that warrants a serious investigation. We will not rest until those who committed this murder are brought to justice,” Jackson told demonstrators before leading a march to the pecan tree where Raynard was found. “We reject the suicide theory.” In February 2001, the Justice Department announced it ended its investigation into Johnson’s death: “The evidence does not support a federal criminal civil rights prosecution.”

In other words, the federal Department of Justice, during the Administration of President Bill Clinton, investigated the evidence, and couldn’t find sufficient evidence to conclude that there was a lynching. Though the younger George Bush was President by the time this was announced, it was the first month of his term.

  • Nick Naylor, 23: January 9, 2003

Mr Taylor’s family claims that this was a murder, but no evidence other than that claim is provided.

  • Roy Veal, 55: April 22, 2004

A state police spokesman said that Mr Veal’s death was consistent with suicide, but that the case is with the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation. No other information is given.

  • Frederick Jermaine Carter, 26: December 3, 2010: Frederick Jermaine Carter was found hanging from a tree limb in a White neighborhood in Greenwood, Miss. The state medical examiner ruled Carter’s death a suicide. Relatives called it a lynching and demanded for a federal investigation. Derrick Johnson, then-state president of the Mississippi NAACP, told reporters that the community had “lost all confidence in the ability of local law enforcement to investigate” the case of Carter’s hanging. He called on the Justice Department to investigate. A spokesperson for the department declined to comment on the case.

Note that Mr Carter’s death occurred in December of 2010, and the federal Department of Justice was under the control of President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, men not at all inclined to cover up a lynching and, especially in the case of Mr Holder, men not at all afraid to stir up divisions if they believed there was an incident of racial injustice or civil rights violations.

  • Craig Anderson, 49: June 26, 2011

This case actually was proven to be a hate crime, and three teenagers were convicted in federal court.

  • Otis Byrd, 54: March 19, 2015

Mr Byrd was paroled in 2006 following a 1980 conviction for murder. Miss Brown’s article noted that the FBI and Justice Department launched an investigation, but stated that there was no evidence to prove Mr Byrd’s death was a homicide. This was under the Obama Administration.

  • Phillip Carroll, 22: May 28, 2017: Phillip Carroll was found hanging from a tree in Jackson, Miss. Police called the death a suicide. Early reports said Carroll had been found with his hands tied behind his back. Police denied that account. “If there’s any other information or evidence that anyone may have to make us believe that it may not be a suicide, again, we’re open to any information and any evidence to aid us in the investigation,” Jackson Police Commander Tyree Jones told reporters. “But as of right now, we don’t have anything other than the fact that his death has been ruled a suicide.”

Jackson Police Commander Tyree Jones is black, so he’s not the type to cover up a racially motivated lynching.

  • Deondrey Montreal Hopkins, 35: May 5, 2019: Deondrey Montreal Hopkins, who lived in Columbus, Miss., was found hanging from a tree on a bank of the Luxapallila Creek. Columbus Police Chief Fred Shelton said Hopkins’s death was not a homicide. The Justice Department declined to comment on the case.

That’s it, that’s the end of Miss Brown’s article. And other than one, which was a matter of public record, there is no evidence of anything other than speculation by concerned parties and family members that these deaths were lynchings.

That does not mean that some of these cases weren’t actually murders, murders by people clever enough to have left no incriminating evidence. It also does not mean that some of these cases, if homicides, couldn’t have been carried out by black men rather than white. This is the problem with the award-winning reporter’s reporting: it’s nothing other than the speculation of Miss Jefferson. Were I the editor of The Washington Post, I would have read this story, and rather than give it the huge title seen on the newspaper’s website, I would have returned it to her with the instructions to get more, because this is agenda-driven journolism,[2]The spelling ‘journolist’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term … Continue reading not journalism.

I entitled this article “A stunning lack of perspective,” for a very good reason. DeNeen Brown was very, very concerned with eight possible lynchings, over the past 21 years, yet in St Louis, Missouri, as of August 7th of this year, there have been 109 homicides, and of those 109 murders, 100 have been of black victims, 81 males and 19 females. St Louis, with a population of 294,890 is almost evenly divided between black and white residents, yet 91.74% of the murder victims there are black. Miss Brown is very concerned with eight homicides of black men over 21 years, while more than eight black men have been murdered in the Gateway to the West every single month!

And of the 49 known suspects in those killings, 48 are also black, while one is listed as race unknown.

Why doesn’t that concern Miss Brown? While I cannot read her mind, one suspicion immediately comes to mind: there is no political advantage for the left to note the tremendous black-on-black homicide rate in America.

I use St Louis statistics because St Louis is not only a very high murder rate city, but one of the few to publish the racial statistics along with the other numbers. Other murder centers like Chicago and Philadelphia publish the numbers, but we generally don’t find out the racial breakdowns until the end of the year. P F Whalen noted, near the end of July, that Philadelphia has the Highest Murder Rate Of The Largest U.S. Cities,[3]In something of a stunning development, in the two weeks between the end of Thursday, July 22nd and Thursday, August 5th, Philly has only eight reported homicides! As often as I have reported on the … Continue reading but as far as the racial numbers are concerned, we don’t have the breakdown. We only know that last year, 86% of homicide victims were black, in a city that is only about 44% black. Of course, I have noted, uncounted times, that The Philadelphia Inquirer doesn’t care about homicides in the city unless the victim is an innocent, like Christine Lupo, a “somebody,” like a local high school basketball player, or a cute little white girl, like Rian Thal.

At least the Inquirer’s motives are clear: publisher Elizabeth Hughes has stated that she wants to make the Inquirer an “anti racist news organization,” and paying attention to the appalling black-on-black homicide rate in the city runs quite contrary to her goals.

Whether that is how the editors of The Washington Post think, I do not know.

Perspective is important. Yes, those eight men who died, over 21 years, in Mississippi, are important, but are they really more important that the 322 people who have poured out their life’s blood in Philadelphia’s mean streets? The only difference that I can see is DeNeen Brown’s apparent assumption that some or all of them were killed in lynchings by Evil White Men.

References

References
1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.

2 The spelling ‘journolist’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
3 In something of a stunning development, in the two weeks between the end of Thursday, July 22nd and Thursday, August 5th, Philly has only eight reported homicides! As often as I have reported on the carnage in the City of Brotherly Love, I am shocked.

Could the credentialed media get any more fawning of Joe Biden?

Sometimes I believe that this would be the more accurate spelling.

The Democrats and their willing allies in the media have attacked President Trump every way of which they could possibly think, reasonable or otherwise, and I suppose that it worked: they defeated Mr Trump in the 2020 election. Now The Philadelphia Inquirer is praising Joe Biden, and slamming the President, because Mr Biden has pets while Mr Trump does not:

Major and Champ Biden are about to make the White House warm and furry again

by Alfred Lubrano | November 16, 2020

Of the more than 500 million Americans who’ve ever lived, fewer than four dozen have ascended to the presidency.

It’s hard to relate to a group that exclusive. But pets that dig up the Rose Garden, chew tassled loafers in the West Wing, and have accidents under the Resolute Desk are the great equalizer: There are more Americans who live with animal friends — around 66%, studies show — than those who don’t.

“Pets humanize presidential figures who seem remote,” said Andrew Hager, historian-in-residence at the Presidential Pet Museum, formerly in Williamsburg, Va., now awaiting a new home. “Seeing the most powerful person in the free world romping on the floor with a dog looks so much more like you or I — a very different image than a person in a suit behind a podium.”

When he moves into the White House in January, the already avuncular President-elect Joe Biden will morph into Romper-in-Chief, cavorting with two German shepherds, 12-year-old Champ and nearly 3-year-old Major, who will become the first shelter animal to live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Biden and his grandchildren picked out Major at the no-kill Delaware Humane Association in Wilmington in 2018.

For the last four years, the White House has been a kibble-free zone. Although President Donald Trump has been accused of emitting racist-rousing dog whistles, he hasn’t owned an actual dog.

Yeah, no bias there, huh?

My family have pets. We have had cats around for as long as I can remember, but until we moved to the farm, we never had a dog. Why? Dogs require a lot more room to run around, and until we moved here, we never had what I thought to be enough room. Now we have the room, and my wife brought home a puppy in May of 2019. This summer, another dog just moved in. No, we didn’t seek him, but he just moved in on his own.

We have an outdoor feeder for the cats, and that has meant that we’ve had ‘visitor’ cats show up to eat as well. Floyd, our 21-toed polydactyl cat, just showed up, skinny as a rail, charged in the house when I opened the door and immediately attached himself to my wife. Right now, we have four cats, two dogs and two chickens, plus any other critters which just show up. Living on the border of the Daniel Boone National Forest, animals abound here; we see deer on the property frequently, and I’ve found bobcat tracks. There are bears and coyotes in the forest, and the dogs regularly growl and bark when they sense creatures I cannot see in the National Forest.

So, I’m not exactly an anti-pet person.

Yet President Trump is.

“Donald was not a dog fan,” wrote the outgoing president’s first wife, Ivana, in her memoir, Raising Trump. “And Chappy [her poodle] had an equal dislike of Donald.”

Trump is believed to be the only president other than James Polk (in office from 1845 to 1849) not to have a pet, Hager said, adding, “Even the impeached, sad, racist, drunk Andrew Johnson fed flour to mice friends he kept.”

To which I say, “So what?”

Mr Trump, long before he became President, moved around a lot. He had his suite in Trump Tower in Manhattan, his golf course digs in New Jersey, and his resort home in Mar-A-Lago in Florida. Believe me, it was no fun at all moving four cats from Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania to the farm in Kentucky, and we only had to do that once; what would it be like having to move pets around between New York, New Jersey and Florida several times a year?

Pets are simply not part of Mr Trump’s lifestyle, and he recognized that, apparently early on. If he wouldn’t be a good ‘father’ for pets, then he shouldn’t have them, and chose wisely enough not to do so, even though it might have helped him politically.

In 2017, Trump reportedly said he was “embarrassed” by the cats, snake, and rabbit (Marlon Bundo, subject of two children’s books) living with Vice President Mike Pence and his family. The Atlantic reported that the menagerie inspired Trump to label the Pences “low-class” and “yokels.”

“Animals are so against the Trump Fifth Avenue brand,” said Hager, who credits Trump for being “self-aware enough” to realize it’s best he avoid bonding with all creatures, great and small. In February 2019, the famously germaphobic president said his getting a pet “feels a little phony.”

And he apparently wasn’t phony.

So now the media are fawning over Mr Biden’s dogs. He adopted from a rescue shelter! He might have named a dog in honor of his late son, Beau!

The Inquirer article wasn’t listed as “Lifestyle” or “Human Interest” or “Opinion.” It was presented as a straight news story. Mr Biden hasn’t even taken office yet, but The Philadelphia Inquirer is already working on his 2024 re-election campaign.
________________________________
Cross-posted on RedState.