In Wichita, Kansas one of the most gruesome mass murder trials
of the last decade is wrapping up.
It entails the kind of “hate crime” that garners
national attention. But there is a reason you haven’t heard
about it ““ the alleged perpetrators are black while the
victims were white.
The dirty secret behind this lack of coverage is simple: our
nation’s moral watchdogs are afraid to recognize the
“Wichita Rampage” as a hate crime because doing so
would cast doubt on the myth that only whites commit race-based
crimes. There is a fear that such a “revelation” would
heighten tension in a country that is already a racial
tinder-box.
The Wichita case is no exception. According to police reports,
brothers Reginald and Jonathan Carr (both black) allegedly
kidnapped two white men and three women after robbing them at
gunpoint. They then transported the victims to an abandoned soccer
field and proceeded to rape the women. The Carr brothers then
forced the men to engage in gay acts while they laughed and drank
beer.
Soon after, the victims were forced in a line and shot in the
back of the head execution-style.
But despite the heinous nature of the killings, Wichita District
Attorney Nora Foulston has refused to even investigate the
possibility that these acts were motivated by racial hatred. The
U.S. Department of Justice has displayed a similar reluctance to
dig up the facts.
In the era of Matthew Shepherd and James Byrd, this should be
equivalent to a civil rights scandal. So where is the outrage?
According to Akbar Shabazz of the black conservative group
Project 21, a glaring double standard exists because the
acknowledgement of race-motivated minority-on-white crime is not
“politically correct.”
It was, however, perfectly politically correct for the media,
politicians and law enforcement to call for a thorough
investigation of the possible racial motive behind the Inglewood
police brutality case, in which the victim was black and the
perpetrator white.
It was also politically correct for authorities to go the extra
mile to determine if the vicious murder of Matthew Shepherd was
hate-inspired.
But as the Wichita case illustrates, the rules change when the
victims are white and heterosexual.
According to the most recent Department of Justice National
Crime Victimization Survey, whites committed acts of interracial
violence at a rate of 62.55 per 100,000 cases, while the black rate
was a much higher 3,493.63 per 100,000.
But disturbingly, FBI Hate Crime Statistics for 1999 indicates
that whites were far more likely to be charged with hate crimes.
The FBI reports that 2,030 whites were charged with hate crimes
compared to 524 blacks.
Given this country’s past history of racism, it is only
reasonable to expect a slight statistical slant as authorities go
the extra mile to protect blacks from white hate crime.
But since its inception, hate crime legislation has behaved more
like a one-way street. As a result, the racial ramifications of
cases like Wichita are routinely ignored. For a society that
espouses equality, this perversion of justice should not be
passively accepted. Hate crime legislation was enacted to protect
all Americans from hate-based crime. But its biased enforcement is
patently un-American.