Race and Roil: The Myth of Race War

[mks_dropcap style="square" size="52" bg_color="#000000" txt_color="#ffffff"]A[/mks_dropcap]s a Conservative reader of Conservative blogs I can tell you that there are many dangers to which Conservatives would like to alert you. There is the danger of the national deficit, which has reached $17 trillion dollars. There is the danger of the federal government ever expanding in power, as we see with the recent developments of Obamacare, Common Core, and an EPA that is developing almost unlimited power over the free market. There is the danger of Radical Islam, of illegal immigration, and of abortion. And there is yet another danger that is frequently mentioned, one that threatens the very fabric of our society, not to mention our very lives - and that is the danger of the upcoming Race War as evident by the sudden escalation of Black-on-White violence.

This is a very prevalent theme. WorldNetDaily (WND), for example, the fringe right-wing site previously mostly known for its incessant questioning President Obama’s birth certificate, posts stories about ‘Black mobs rampaging through out cities and killing Whites’ several times a week - always with the inevitable eye-roller that ‘no one else in the media to report this’. So frequent is their reporting of Black mobs terrorizing White people that one wonders how it is possible that there are any White people left.

WND frequently publishes Doug Giles, a writer who has dedicated countless columns to Black Mobs Terrorizing Whites. Recently Giles wrote a column titled “Another Black on White Beatdown: Why George Zimmerman Carried a Gun and Why You Should.” The “you” here seems to be White people. Giles advises not only concealed carry, but martial arts and traveling in packs as well. What has sparked Giles latest ringing of the racial alarm bell? Three teenagers - no, sorry, let’s quote him accurately , “three, weed-dealing black teenaged thugs” - beat up a White teenager on a school bus.

Another one of WND’s favorite columnists, Colin Flaherty, is ever busily promoting his self-published book, White Girl Bleed A Lot, which is essentially a scrapbook filled with anecdotes of African Americans committing crimes against Whites. Many of these crimes are horrific. Easy to see why this book has become the bible of the “Grab your guns, White America! Race war is coming!” crowd, especially after it received a favorable review from Dr. Thomas Sowell.

David Horowitz’s site, FrontPageMag.com, isn’t quite as alarmist as WND, but it isn’t certainly isn’t hesitant to exploit White fear by showing the pictures of Blacks accused of killing a White person. I emphasize the word “accused” because this site finds it difficult to wait until these accused murderers are actually found guilty of the crimes with which they are accused before they burn the youths in effigy. Perhaps this is because they are too eager to have their readers post their comments on the story - which are invariably along the lines of “these people are animals”, “I wish Zimmerman had killed more of them”, and, of course, “If Obama had a son, this is what he would look like” - to wait for an actual conviction.

Not all of these alarmists are the White right-wing fringe types. Victor Davis Hanson, the brilliant writer often read in National Review and a favored guest for us at AACONS, isn’t, and he wrote how he warned his sons to avoid Black people. Nor is African American American Thinker columnist Taleeb Starkes and he argues against the prospect of a continuing or future race war only because “A race war requires at least two engaging races, whereas the reoccurring black-white intra-racial violence is overwhelmingly one-sided (black).”

Bill O’Reilly recently reported while doing a segment on The Factor (“Killing White People”?) the “unbelievable” statistic that “in 2011 91% of Black Americans who were murdered were murdered by other Black Americans.”

I actually struggle to comprehend why O’Reilly finds this statistic so “astonishing.” But then, racial alarmists do not rely on actual facts as much as they rely on the fear and anger they can invoke from relating horrific yet anecdotal crime stories.

[mks_pullquote align="left" width="300" size="24" bg_color="#000000" txt_color="#ffffff"]Not all Black-on-White crime is racially motivated. They are not battles in a war against Whites. Nor are they acts of revenge for past sins. Many are simply robberies. [/mks_pullquote]

It has always been true that most murders are intraracial. As Ann Coulter wrote, and discussed with us on our radio show, “looking at the race of the victims is just another way of looking at the race of the murderer.” The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) report that between 1976 and 1997, 94% of African Americans who were murdered, were murdered by African Americans.

This is also not unique to African Americans, of course. Murderers overwhelmingly murder those closest to them; meaning their spouses, family members, friends, associates, and neighbors. According to BJS, during the same 1976 to 1997 time period, 85% of White murder victims were killed by other Whites.

It is also worthwhile to point out that not all Black-on-White crime is racially motivated. They are not battles in a war against Whites. Nor are they acts of revenge for past sins. Many are simply robberies. In fact, according to the FBI, of all the crimes committed against White people in 2010, there were only 575 anti-White incidents.

Furthermore, not only is interracial murder, even Black-on-White murder, a small percentage the overall murder rate, this figure is also skewed by the frequent classification of Hispanics as White. This is significant because Hispanics also live in the same inner cities as Blacks, and are subject to the same outrageous crime rate as Blacks. And in some areas, such as Compton, reports are that racial conflicts and even gang violence have occurred between the two groups, much like when other groups such as the Irish Catholics immigrated in large numbers to inner cities.

Author Tim Wise has an interesting look at interracial crime statistics. He writes in an essay titled “Race, Crime and Statistical Malpractice: How the Right Manipulates White Fear with Bogus Data”:

Given the relative population percentages of whites and blacks, blacks are actually more likely to be interracially murdered by a white person than vice-versa. After all, as for homicides where the race of the offender is known, 447 B-W murders as a share of the white community is 2/10,000ths of 1 percent (0.0002) of all whites killed by blacks, which is 1 in every 500,000 white people who will be killed by a black person in a given year; meanwhile, 218 W-B homicides as a share of the black community is 5.5/10,000ths of 1 percent (0.00055).

So although interracial homicide is incredibly rare in either direction, any given black person is more than 2.75 times as likely as any given white person to be interracially murdered, with roughly 1 in every 180,000 black persons being killed by a white person in a given year.

Wise certainly seems to contradict Starkes’ claim about the one-sidedness of interracial violence.

This is not to excuse murder. Every murderer should be punished. There can be little in life more tragic than losing a loved one to the hands of a murderer, regardless of the race of the victim or the murderer. I can barely even imagine it.

But we should not listen to the exaggerated claims of race war by alarmists who do nothing to substantiate their claims. These alarmists do not us safer by roiling, exploiting, and heightening racial tensions between us. They do not make us wiser. Rather, they make us bigots.

--DK