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April 12, 2007
The Media's Racial Double Standard
Recognize these two? I'm betting no.
Their names are Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom. What happened to them has been all but ignored by the major media, and shows just how selective the media is in its outrage over heinous crimes.
Compare the attention given the Duke case with that accorded a far more heinous crime, one whose victims have thus far failed to arouse the sympathies or even the notice of those who found so much enjoyment in their condemnation of the lacrosse players. Chances are, unless you live in Tennessee, you will not recognize the names Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom. Christian, 21, and Newsome, 23, both of Knoxville, were driving through that city together on the night of January 6 when they were kidnapped and murdered. Newsome’s burned body was found along some railroad tracks on January 7. Christian remained missing for two more days until her body, stuffed in a trash can, was found in a home not far from where Newsome’s was found. Police and prosecutors allege both victims were raped before being killed. Yes, both. Three men and a woman have been charged with the crimes in a 46-count grand jury indictment handed down in Knoxville on January 31.I did a quick search on Lexis/Nexis today using two names. Here are the results:The story was given a few brief mentions on the AP wire, which were in turn carried on the Fox News and ABC News websites, but you’ll find no mention of the crime in the online archives of CNN, MSNBC, CBS News, the New York Times, or the Washington Post. Run a similar search for stories on the Duke case and you’ll be sifting through the results for hours...
...Only the carnival surrounding Anna Nichole Smith’s death kept the Grant murder from being the Story of the Month. Yet the murders of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsome are known to almost no one outside Tennessee. Why?
It’s simple: the four suspects accused of killing Christian and Newsome are blacks from the inner city of Knoxville.
Uh oh, we’re not supposed to talk about such things, are we. We’re careful to step ever so gingerly around issues of race and crime, except of course when there is an opportunity, as in the Duke case, to point to a group of privileged whites and say, “See? Look at how badly they’ve behaved! Look at how they treated that poor black single mother!” And in the Michigan case we can look down our noses at a prosperous suburban white family and say, “Look how screwed up they are!” A visitor from a foreign land might read the news and suspect America was plagued by rampaging hordes of collegiate lacrosse players and middle-aged suburbanites. And all the while the far more serious problem of violent crime among minorities in our inner cities is almost completely ignored.
"Channon Christian" - 5 results.
"Reade Seligmann" - 125 results.
Think about how much coverage the non-rape in Duke received. Imagine the amount of coverage this story would have gotten if the races had been reversed - if it had been a young African-American couple who were kidnapped, raped, tortured and murdered by four white men.
We'd never hear the end of it.
It's no secret that America has a problem with race. That problem is not helped when the media intently focuses on race in one crime, but completely ignores it in another. There are times when race is central to a crime, but viewing all crime through the prism of race is not always appropriate.
Why were the media and the community of Durham so quick to bring up the issue of race in this case? Why did we see story after story talking about "white privilege?" Why did the media so willingly inflame the racial tensions of a town and the nation? Yes, there were allegations that racial epithets were hurled at the victim, but you know what? There were also allegations of rape and torture. As we've seen, though, it was all a lie.
Why does the media only play up the racial angle of a crime when the victim is a minority?
I'm not trying to suggest we have an equal time provision for crime, or that the media should never report the race of either a victim or a perpetrator. I do believe it's time to ask the question of why they play it up in one case and not in another, of why they're so willing to throw gasoline on the racial fire in one case and put out the flames by refusing to report on another.
As I've said, America has a problem with race. In order to solve a problem, one must first be willing to stop playing games with it, which is what the media has been doing. Start treating crime as crime instead of using it as another excuse to exorcise the demon of white guilt by writing 2,000 word essays on the nature of race in America and what a particular case says about it.
Race relations is a serious subject. As Dunphy points out in his article, so is the problem of minority on minority violence - and the problem is ignored every time the media puts political correctness above telling the truth. It's that squeamishness about race that has caused a near-blackout on coverage of the murders in Tennessee.
And it's that squeamishness, that refusal to think critically and ask hard questions for fear of being seen as racist, that has allowed a war of sorts to take place in America's cities - a wave of violence that goes unreported, unexamined and unquestioned by those we trust to report on our society. It's time for the media to start facing a fact they've downplayed for too long - sometimes, African-Americans are the perpetrators of crimes. In the case of Christian and Newsom, they committed a particularly horrible crime, one that still goes unreported. More often than that, however, they commit crimes against one another.
And as Dunphy points out, that problem won't be resolved until it's more honestly reported.
Posted by slublog at April 12, 2007 06:23 PM
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Comments
Yeah, why am I crazy?
I was raised with this crap all around me. Gary on one side, East Chicago on the other, South Chicago (not to mention POLISH and other eastern european (serbian) south chicago very nearby) while I lived in the only minorly integrated suburb oblivious of the race victim culture.
100% true, I had one friend who was a racist and we argued about it all the time, but it was always honest, the inter-racial conflicts that the rest of the nation are forced to deal with and are told that they must not ever ever ever ever ever ever ever (did I include enough?) talk about was in the Marine Corps, in boot.
I don't understand it, the blacks who I went to school with weren't "good" blacks, they were just black, some were "good" some were "bad" but they were really no different from the mexicans, like the "bad" mexicans and the "good" mexicans, or the "good" whites, or the "bad" whites.
We were students in the same school (a pretty good one at the time by indiana's public standards) and we were too busy hating our parents and our teachers at the time to hate each other, which is what children and students do.
It was in the MC and in the world of global victimhood that I first felt threatened by this standard of universal victimhood, and I realized the most victimized person was me, because I couldn't talk about how reasonable and open my environment was (at the time, not now though, this crap taints everything) because everyone thought I grew up "white bread"
If everyone has moral superiority through their own self proclaimed victimization? the only ones who suffer are the ones who are neither victims, nor victimizers.
Now, however, my hometown is SO TOTALY hickish, probably was before, at least for adults, but not for the kids, I grew up clean and clear of such things, but that doesn't matter, because I'm surrounded by angry mexicans who oppose immigration enforcement (not reform, enforcement) and angry black who think that the steel mills shut down because of a conspiracy against blacks, and retarded going nowhere white people who blame everything on everone else, cuz HEY! it worked for them.
Posted by: Wickedpinto at April 13, 2007 03:52 AM
amazing that you dont here about this this is big not imus or britny were is al sharpton that racist
Posted by: rich at April 15, 2007 10:37 PM
Knoxville's Lemaricus took the lead from Savannah's Michael 'Turtle' Thorpe this week in the Sexiest & Hardest Ghetto Black Male Felon Bragging Rights 2007 competition, http://www.svengalimedia.com/race/sexiest_black_male_felon_2006.html
This is significant b/c it is the first time anyone has bumped Thorpe from 1st place this year!
The whyte girl Thorpe slew was privileged. Her ancestors owned slaves. Thorpe was a descendant of slaves!
Posted by: chickengeorge at May 13, 2007 09:17 PM
First off let me say that i love your blog www.slublog.com a lot
now.. back to the post lol
I cant say that im 100% with what you wrote... care to elaberate?
Posted by: christian at August 25, 2008 07:49 AM