Considering what a national outcry was caused by the killing of Yankel Rosenbaum by a black mob and the beating of Reginald Denny during the Rodney King riots, I think you’re being extremely naive in suggesting the media wouldn’t care.
Then you should be pitting yourself for being woefully ignorant of the actual facts.
Maybe, but I think when the media reports on hate crimes you need to consider the underlying logic of hate crime legislation. That being that the crime is one that extends beyond just the individual being hurt. It is often a means of intimidating and terrorizing a larger group or people. It’s a crime against the community. As unacceptable as it is when a minority attacks a member of the majority, the reality is it doesn’t usually have the same chilling effect as it does when the reverse happens. This is generally true for a few reasons:
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There is generally not a long, recent history of discrimination and systemic prejudice against the majority. There is no history of Hispanics, for example, attacking White people, and making laws to criminalize being White.
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Members of the majority generally don’t have to live, work with, or work for members of the minority. Most Black people, for geographic and socioeconomic reasons, don’t have the luxury to avoid White people if they want to. If for some reason, Blacks were in fear of their lives as a result of intimidation coming from a local group of White people, they generally don’t have a choice to not interact with Whites without great hardship.
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For numerical reasons, minority violence towards the majority, in aggregate, doesn’t represent a clear and present danger to the majority’s existence or way of life. White people were never rounded up and put in camps, or targeted for wholesale extermination.
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Media hesitance to report on minority crimes also comes from the common tendency of the viewers to treat minority crimes as irrational; as maniacal and hysterical actions that are the result of one’s race and background. Media members are generally responsible enough to not fan these flames. They know harping on a Black guy robbing an old lady will have negative consequences for all Black guys in that area, whereas a White guy doing the same will not have that effect. Just as Timothy McVeigh, and a plethora of White school shooters don’t make people fear White kids, or separatists in the same way many now fear Arabs and Muslims because of terrorism here. they recognize they have the ability to shine a light on things, and that they need to use that spotlight in a responsible way.
When the media reports these things, they usually implicitly consider these things. Regardless of how you feel about the propriety of it, when most Black parents heard about Trayvon Martin, they immediately feared for their own children. It affects them on a personal level regardless of how likely it is something might happen. Even if hate didn’t inspire George Zimmerman, his actions put the fear of God into any Black parent with teenagers. The same cannot (generally) be said for Whites. When you read about a Black guy beating a White guy several states away from where you are, are you fearful?
Fair or not, when minorities see other minorities as victims of hate crimes, it feels more like a personal attack. Race and ethnicity, as a minority, are inextricably tied to identity in America. Most people in the majority don’t have those same ties. I know few White people who have strong opinions on being White, and all that that entails. For most of them, it’s just never been as issue. Most minorities I know cannot say the same. That alone makes things like Trayvon Martin’s shooting more newsworthy as the number of interested parties is often far greater, and they are impacted on a far deeper and personal level. It may not be fair to the White guy who is a victim of a hate crime, but it’s not some PC liberal agenda to pretend minorities are better than others.
“4. Media hesitance to report on minority crimes also comes from the common tendency of the viewers to treat minority crimes as irrational; as maniacal and hysterical actions that are the result of one’s race and background. Media members are generally responsible enough to not fan these flames. They know harping on a Black guy robbing an old lady will have negative consequences for all Black guys in that area, whereas a White guy doing the same will not have that effect. Just as Timothy McVeigh, and a plethora of White school shooters don’t make people fear White kids, or separatists in the same way many now fear Arabs and Muslims because of terrorism here. they recognize they have the ability to shine a light on things, and that they need to use that spotlight in a responsible way.”
Insightful post. I agree, media often do have an agenda, Im not sure I agree with you fully on the reason but clearly the agenda is there. According to you the reason in paternalistic: black people can’t handle the truth sometime.
I prefer news to be news; as in as far as possible portraying what is going on in the world. I do not think that minorities need to be patted on the head and be held from certain sensitive news. Actually I find that idea disgusting and (yes I will use that word) racist.
Wow. That’s not even remotely close to what he said.
I think you misunderstood me, or perhaps I wasn’t clear. Whenever a reporter comes across any story, they need to consider the ramifications of their reporting on the larger populace. Consider a situation where you find videos of soldiers desecrating the Koran and/or dead bodies. Do you publish the pictures? It’s a balance between the public’s right to know, whether the story is newsworthy, and if there are any negative consequences to reporting it. In the case of pictures of soldiers, they are often held back, or not reported on because doing so would endanger the lives of all soldiers in the field regardless of how they behave. What about if you find proof that a popular celebrity is in the closet. Is it fair to out them?
That same balancing act applies to all stories. If a headline read, “Black mugger robs unsuspecting rich White people”, it would likely make things more difficult for every Black guy in that neighborhood. A responsible reporter must acknowledge that even a factual account of events can often incite a widespread, and disproportionate backlash against undeserving people. That has to be a consideration in matters like this. Most people already have an conscious or unconscious bias against minorities. Writing stories that you know will serve to perpetuate those detrimental biases can be dangerous. You can probably say that that is fairly paternalistic, but I think the sentiment comes more from wanting to control their work, and how it’s used. Not because they think minorities are too sensitive, or because of some liberal PC agenda.
Despite your profession that you want news to be news, I don’t really believe you. Like most people, you want news to be factual accounts of things you care about. Once you introduce all of those biases, you have to acknowledge you are not really asking for news to be news, you want it to be stories that can inform your opinions on things, and can allow you to make prudent decisions in your life. The fact that hate crimes against Whites may get short shrift in the national news cycle, generally has no more bearing on your life than a typhoon in India. That’s my point. When a gay kid gets dragged to death, the gay community cares on a visceral level. To an individual, the act reinforces the, often valid, belief that homosexual can be a liability for them. If a White guy gets beaten up for being White, other White people may care, but they don’t start worrying that being White will work against them.
Reporting is not just regurgitating facts, your need to parse them in a way that accurately reflects the situation, and the world as you see it. The world, as it currently exists, is not one where one’s Whiteness is a consideration in most circumstances. Shining a spotlight on the few situations where it is doesn’t serve to accurately reflect how the world really is.
The paragraph I meant to quote. Is this french for black people think like children?
Gee, scamartistry what do you mean?
I am going to assume you asked this question in good faith. That said, I don’t think such reactions mean Black people think like children. I think it means that the very real, yet almost unbelievable lengths people have gone to as a result of, and in the name of racism and bigotry has given many minorities as different appreciation for what is possible. It doesn’t seem possible that the government would use people as lab rats to test diseases. It doesn’t seem possible that the government would sterilize people. It doesn’t seem possible that they would lock everyone who looks like you up in an internment camp. It doesn’t seem possible that the NYPD would shoot you 41 times as you reach for your wallet. It doesn’t seem possible that that same PD would sodomize you with a plunger. It doesn’t seem possible that half the country would go out of their way to change their state constitution to prevent you from getting married. The list goes on and on.
All those things, in the abstract, may not be very likely to happen to any individual, but they do happen often enough to people who happen to look like you, that minorities are justifiably more cognizant of the possibility that their lives could be irreparably affected by it.
Of course it would be, The usual crowd only needs one half-white suspect, not 20. 
That’s certainly nothing close to what he said. If that’s what you want to say, you should be careful of our rules about being a jerk.
Don’t accuse other people of trolling in this forum, orcenio.
I can also state with certainty if packs of whites (10 to 40 of them) were bum rushing businesses, attacking blacks in parks-malls-fairgrounds-bike paths-etc screaming “get that black mother f—r!” the mainstream news would 1) not have stalled on most of the incidents , 2) go out of their way to call them “flash mobs” or some other ridiculous generic term designed to remove the race component, 3) and absolutely would have ginned up as much imagery of the KKK as possible.
Of course Jessie, Al, Obama, and the usual gaggle would be on every channel every day too.
Any counterfactual hypothetical can be stated with certainty. It never happened, so you can’t be wrong about what would’ve happened if it did. That’s what makes this kind of theorizing generally useless as an argument.
Please leave your juvenile insults elsewhere. They have no place in a debate.
I can be certain of the outcome, yes indeed.
Do you have an alternative prediction on what would happen if tomorrow and over the next 6 months if whites en-masse start chasing down blacks and beating the snot of them?
Why would the media avoid using the term “lynch mob” while at the same time playing up KKK imagery? Your (2) and (3) above make no sense together.
No, I don’t have an “alternative prediction,” which is a fancy way of saying I don’t feel like making up a story that suits my preconceived opinions to try to convince people I’m right about something else. It’s a waste of time and doesn’t prove anything.
The 2nd point was that the media would NOT have went out of their way to use generic wording to remove the race component -if it were whites pulling those stunts.
Considering the fact that blacks have not been “en-masse chasing down” whites, for the past 6 months, your comment makes little sense.
Beyond that, considering the way the media covered the killing of Yankel Rosenbaum during the Crown Heights riots as well as the beating of Reginald Denny, your suggestion that the media ignores black on white crime is demonstrably false.
Whooooosh!