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Source: townhall.com | April 16, 2001

Yawning at Black-on-White Violence
Cincinnati is burning. Does anyone care?
by Michelle Malkin
This mid-Western city has been under siege since Monday, its downtown and
surrounding suburbs overrun by black demonstrators targeting innocent white
bystanders and businesses. Roving thugs have looted dozens of white-owned shops,
burned down several buildings, and vandalized police precincts and firestations. City
Hall, which had 28 windows smashed to bits on Monday night, is under lockdown. So is
the Cincinnati police headquarters, where an American flag was pulled down from its
flagpole and hung upside down.
CNN, which downplayed the violent rampage as a disturbance, failed to mention the
rampant outbreak of black-on-white hate crimes. Members of the radical New Black
Panther Party swarmed the streets; rioters donned masks or gangster-type bandanas.
Sympathizers laughed and cheered, waving signs with racial pride slogans like Honk if
youre black while white citizens feared for their lives.
On Wednesday night, the violence escalated. A black rioter shot a cop, who escaped
harm when his belt buckle blocked the bullet. A white female motorist in one of the
citys neighborhoods was not so fortunate. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, a mob
of black youths stopped the womans car and dragged her into the street, beating her
until other neighborhood residents rescued her. She was busted up, a witness said.
She was not the only one. In multiple scenes reminiscent of the brutal attack on white
truck driver Reginald Denny during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, black Cincinnati rioters
beat and bloodied white motorists. The assailants hurled cement bricks at their victims
as they drove by, and used baseball bats and bottles to damage their cars. WCPO-TV
reports that Protesters pulled several drivers out of their cars and hit them and their
vehicles with bricks, rocks and glass.
The ongoing violence originally stemmed from anger over a recent police shooting of an
unarmed black man. Every needless death is a tragedy. But instead of waiting for an
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investigation to establish the facts, hundreds of residents used the incident as an
excuse to wage a full-scale race riot. The mother of the police shooting victim pleaded
for peace. Nobody listened. It was a night of white terror, said Leah Sweeney-
Spurrier, who lives and works in downtown Cincinnati. It turned from a police issue to
a black-white issue.
As is typical of cowering politicians more worried about public relations than public
safety, Cincinnatis public officials failed to quell the race-based violence immediately.
Instead, a city spokeswoman went on national TV to tout the fact that they were
showing restraint and allowing citizens to vent their frustration.
Does this politically correct rationalization for black-on-white violence sound familiar?
Jewish residents of the Crown Heights neighborhood of New York City remember it well.
Mobs of white-hating rioters, venting their frustration over a car accident that killed a
young black child, terrorized that neighborhood 10 years ago while city leaders sat on
their hands. A pogrom ensued for three days, with rioters screaming Heil Hitler as
they smashed cars, stoned homes, and looted Jewish-owned stores that police were
ordered not to protect. Yankel Rosenbaum, a Hasidic Jewish student and innocent
bystander, was stabbed to death by a gang of black youths.
More recently, the Mardi Gras celebration in Seattle turned into a frustration-venting
insurrection against whites. Police said black attackers yelled racist calls-to-arms, such
as Hey, theres another whitey; lets kick his a. One black assailant ran around with
brass knuckles beating up white victims; another declared racial war as if this were
Robert Mugabes Zimbabwe. City leaders ordered cops to stand down. Kristopher
Kimes, a young Good Samaritan, was beaten to death by a gang of black youths while
trying to rescue a woman from the violence.
Mr. Rosenbaum and Mr. Kimes were sacrificed for the sake of tolerance by the pliant
milksops of political correctness. The racial chaos in Cincinnati shows that public
officials have learned nothing from their deaths. I cannot decide which is worse: the
governments cowardice in dealing with black-on-white race riots, or the rest of the
countrys apathy toward these vengeful, racist mobs.
2001 Creators Syndicate, Inc.