Please God, Don't Let the Suspect Be Black!
By Reverend Rahelio Soleil
So many differences between blacks and whites have been described by comedians, race commentators, bloggers, and observers in general that it is unlikely any observation has missed the radar.
I think I have one.
There is a little known black phenomena called the "cringe."
What is that you ask?
The cringe happens like this:
A news account of some abominable crime - usually involving rape and/or murder - hits the airwaves. The details are slowly revealed. As a black, you have a single question - or fear - at the front of your mind that causes you to think "please Lord don't let the perpetrator be black."
There are three possible outcomes. The perpetrator is white, thus you relax into the normalcy of being an empathetic person feeling disturbed by the fate of the victim.
The perpetrator is white, thus you relax into the normalcy of being an empathetic person feeling disturbed by the fate of the victim.
Or, the perpetrator is one of those often forgotten - but monumentally present - races barely in the black/white debate, in which case you respond as above, maybe with a twist of racist indignation about those Mexicans or Asians or so on.
The last option is the most feared one. Slowly the details of the crime unfold and at the end there is a picture. The perpetrator is black.
Damn! That's when you cringe.
You know that a criminal of any other color is just a criminal, but a black one feeds into the mainstream's inability to tell us apart. For a white criminal, color is not a motivator for the crime, but we know how the color black is perceived to be loaded with danger. A black perp only proves a proclivity for evil in our skin.
The good folks (or tired bastards) at American Renaissance are provide a public service by keeping tabs on the criminal predisposition of blacks at their site. The page is called "Blacks in Charge" and it is basically a rap sheet of how blackness equals humbug.
For $8.95 you can get a detailed account of the color (black) of crime from Vdare. Sure, Vdare is a looney bin of white paranoia, but don't count them out.
The degrees of separation, as I've written before, from these seemingly underground nutty farms to the shiny mainstream of American media is not too distant.
From Fox News to The Weekly Standard to The Spectator Magazine.
Frontpage magazine recently reprinted an account of black murderers Reginald and Jonathan Carr from the entirely racist viewpoint of American Renaissance.
There is no distinction between the crazies like David Duke and the neo-crazies like David Horowitz.
For further proof of the mainstreaming of the frothing white nuts, see the unremarkable flare up about Bill Bennett's comment:
"...I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could -- if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down."
Black folks know what white people think. At times it amazes us how whites have the luxury of ignorance while we have always had to know ourselves and know whites as well as ourselves.
They are clueless about us, but we know them well. This is why we cringe when we see a black perpetrator. We know some whites are not nuanced enough to separate the majority of us from our criminal minority.
So, when a black rapist or robber or thief is uncovered it reminds them of what a problem black is for America - not that blacks, like everyone else, have people who commit crime.
So, add Cynthia McKinney to your Malkin talking points and place it right up there with the infamous Withchita murders by the Carr brothers. Put Ray "Chocolate City" Nagin in there with the "black criminals" of Hurricane Katrina.
The pestering thing about the "cringe" is that it makes you conflicted.
On the one hand, you feel anger against the perp, you have revenge fantasies for the SOBs that do such evil things. Secretly, you wish for the animal to get just punishment.
Yet, because you know they are linked to you, because you know whites consider color drive the crime - thus making you partly criminal - you reflexively make excuses for the perp. He's had a hard life. Racism. Poverty. Lack of job. The usual story.
I wonder if white people cringe when white people mess up. When a deputy director of Homeland Security solicits a 13 year old for sex over the internet, something that ironically is within Homeland Security's authority to investigate - do they cringe?
When the Duke University lacrosse team gang rapes a woman and hurl racial insults at her in the process, do whites cringe?
When two NYPD detectives are convicted of being hitmen for the mob, do whites cringe? When a string of white female teachers make a national trend of having sex with children, or when Dateline NBC busts long lines of professional white men who seek sex with children, does it make whites cringe?
These stories can go on and on, but never are they spoken of as a problem with the color white. People rarely mention that child molestation is a national problem and white men are many times more likely to be the perps. Arson is a problem, guess who does it? We're witnessing a meth scourge, guess who drives it. These are problems, but they're not white.
I guess the cringe is a black thing. Whites don't have to cringe because they know we see the difference between white crazies and white "normal" people.
Maybe they should cringe too.
Reverend Soleil is a commentator on American life. He blogs as AmericanHotSausage
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