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Source: NewsMax | Tuesday, March 6, 2001

Hate Crimes: A One-Way Street?
by Wes Vernon
A pattern has emerged in the mainstream media in dealing with hate crimes, i.e.,
violent criminal acts motivated by bigotry. The unspoken, unwritten ethic appears to be:
If a white commits a violent crime and the victim is a minority, that is by definition a
hate crime and worthy of front-page headlines, complete with lead stories on the
national TV news shows.
On the other hand, if a minority commits a violent crime and the victim is white, that
does not make it beyond the local media.
That is the inescapable conclusion of a NewsMax.com survey of events over a period of
months.
The Wichita Rampage
The most egregious recent example concerns a crime rampage in Wichita, Kan.

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Two young black brothers, Reginald and Jonathan Carr, have been charged with a
quadruple homicide.
The Shreveport Times, one of the few out-of-state media outlets to give this story any
publicity at all, described the chronology of the crime in which the two men abducted
five white young adults and shot them execution-style, according to the allegations in
police reports.
According to police:
It began on a night in mid-December when the brothers kicked in the door of a home
shared by three young professionals. Two women were there for an engagement party.
While one held the five people at gunpoint, the other loaded up a van with two TVs, a
computer, dishes, bedding, luggage, credit cards and wallets.
They also found a diamond ring.
That was for you, Jason Befort told one of
the young women. I was going to ask you to
marry me.
The Carr brothers then forced the young
people to take them to automatic teller
machines and withdraw money.
So thats a sheer case of robbery, right?
Wheres the hate crime?
Theres more. Apparently not at all satisfied
with the heist, the Carrs then drove their
victims to a soccer field and took turns raping
the women while the three men were forced
to watch. Then the men were forced to
commit homosexual acts on each other. Then
each was forced to have sex with the women
while the Carr brothers drank beer and laughed.
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Still nude, all five were ordered to kneel in front of the cars headlights in the snow.
Each was shot in the back of the head execution-style before the brothers drove off and
left them for dead.
Four of them did indeed die. But the fifth, Jason Beforts fiance, feigned death, then
got up, bleeding from head to toe, and walked a mile in subzero weather to the nearest
house, where an elderly couple called 911.
It was later learned that this was the last stop on a crime rampage wherein the two
black men had robbed a convenience store, kidnapped a man the next day and pistol-
whipped him after forcing him to withdraw money from an ATM before letting him go,
and violently robbed a 55-year-old cellist with the Wichita Symphony Orchestra and
shot her in the spine. She died about three weeks later.
The district attorney in Wichita has concluded none of these crimes was motivated by
racial hatred.
That has drawn a howl of protest from many in the community. Aside from the fact that
the victims were of a different racial group from the perpetrators, they note the
following:
1. The extreme sadism and violence went way beyond what was necessary to
successfully complete a robbery.
2. As far as anyone knows, there was no warrant issued to search the residences
of the accused to determine if they may have been motivated by racial hate
literature.
3. There is no record of questioning close friends, family, neighbors or associates
to determine if the two brothers had at any time expressed anti-white bigotry.
NewMax.com asked the local newspaper, the Wichita Eagle, to send us the original
story of the violence involving the Carr brothers, which was done. However, when we
later asked for any information as to possible controversy on the ethnic or cultural
angles to the crime, the newspaper did not respond.
The question is relevant in light of the coast-to-coast, wall-to-wall, night-after-night
coverage of the outrageous murders of Matthew Shepherd, a gay man in Wyoming, and
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James Byrd Jr., a black man in Texas. In both of these cases, law enforcement
authorities went the extra mile to establish that a hate crime had been committed.
Why, critics wonder, has there been no publicly acknowledged similar investigation in
the Wichita case?
Ignored by the Media
Other examples of a news blackout of reverse hate crimes include:
In Arkansas, two homosexuals were charged with sodomizing and killing 13-year-old
Jesse Dirkhising. The boy died from suffocation after being bound, gagged with
underwear in his mouth, blindfolded, taped to the bed, and sodomized by one gay man
while the other gay man watched.
This happened shortly after the Matthew Shepherd killing. The latter was big national
news. For months, the former did not get beyond the borders of Arkansas. Even after
the Washington Times ran the story, the rest of the national media did not give it
significant coverage.
On Feb. 28, a story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported on Mardi Gras or Fat
Tuesday celebrations in that city wherein 72 people were treated in hospitals, including
two with life-threatening injuries. The PI story makes no mention of a racial angle.
But one of its accompanying photos shows at least five black men surrounding a white
woman in what appears to be a threatening manner. Has a hate crime investigation
begun in this case?
A convicted child molester, Nathaniel Bar-Jonah, was released by Massachusetts
authorities only to be nabbed a few years later in Montana, charged with butchering a
10-year-old boy in Great Falls and dining on his remains with unsuspecting friends. Was
the nation informed by the national media of this possible hate crime?
Most of the world is well aware of the New York City police officers charged with
shooting a black man whom they mistook for a wanted rapist. The officers were
ultimately acquitted, but not before a long trial filled with political ramifications.
Later, when another police officer shot a minority who was not guilty of a crime, the
heat of the New York media was turned not on the police officer but on Mayor Rudy
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Guiliani, a perennial target of racial demagogues such as Al Sharpton. Little, if any,
attention was paid to the police officer in this case. I learned later, in reading a column,
that this particular officer was himself a minority, a Hispanic man.
Question: Does the uneven justice meted out to the officers in these two cases in and
of itself constitute a hate crime of sorts?
In 1999, a gunman entered a Fort Worth Baptist Church and massacred seven people,
shouting, I can?t believe you believe this junk!
ABCs Dean Reynolds said the FBI found writings that condemned religion and law
enforcement. But did the media that had tried to connect Matthew Shepherd?s murder
with religious conservatives now use that same standard to make a connection in this
case with those who castigate religion?
No national media outlet mentioned this as a hate crime. Instead, this was an
opportunity to beat the drum for the old left-wing chestnut, gun control.
In June of last year, New York Citys annual Puerto Rican Day parade was the scene of
violence against more than 50 women. The Electronic Telegraph reported: Reeking of
alcohol and marijuana, 15 to 25 men surged through the busy south-east corner of the
[Central] park spraying their victims with water and beer, tearing off their clothes
and sexually abusing them.
Later, National Review would comment that the New York Times and liberals in general
are bending over backwards to avoid the simple observation that the young men who
harassed and assaulted women in Central Park were all blacks and Hispanics.
No national TV outcry about hate crimes here.
The New York police, in this case, were accused of not moving aggressively enough to
rescue the women and dealing with the perpetrators. Some believed that with the
battering the police had taken from racial demagogues in the city, police officers did not
relish another political assault accompanying TV videos of the uniformed police night-
sticking minorities. It was as if they were saying, Next time you need a cop, call Al
Sharpton.
The double standard has extended beyond hate crimes.
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The Unabomber-Gore Connection
The Oklahoma City bombing, which was, in reality, mass murder, resulted in a
Clintonian assault on conservative talk show hosts and the Republican House
leadership, notwithstanding the lack of any connection whatsoever.
But when the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski was collared in Montana and found with Al
Gore?s Earth in the Balance heavily underlined, no dots were connected there in any
national news stories or, of course, at the Clinton White House.
Examples are endless. Many thoughtful Americans are wondering when and if we are
going to get back to considering a violent crime an abominable act regardless of who is
the perpetrator or the victim.
Columnist Paul Craig Roberts says the assault on white males has been going on for
three decades. He compares it to the assault on Jews by German intellectuals during
the half century before the rise of Hitler.
There are those who note that George W. Bush drew 27 percent of the black vote when
he sought re-election as governor of Texas in 1998. This is phenomenal for a
Republican and perhaps a sign that the president who says he is a uniter, not a
divider can finally bring the country together despite his failure to do as well with the
black vote in his run for president.
His opposition to a Texas hate crimes bill indicates President Bush considers this kind
of legislation to be divisive. Judges and juries have the responsibility of determining,
case by case, when a violent crime merits extra punishment for an especially evil
motive.
Many who have ventured to speculate on the outlook for the 21st century see a picture
that is not pretty. They see terrorism on the rise on American soil, to say nothing of
threats of nuclear and biological warfare.
It can be argued that at this juncture of our history, Americans need each other as
never before, and that we can best help each other with a de-emphasis on tribal
prejudice and an increasing emphasis on the commonality of our experience as
Americans.