We should be getting pretty fuckin' sick of the cops saying asinine things about white murder suspects, and then having to listen to the Press Poodles report those asinine things like it's all just part of the deal somehow.
How does knowing that Dylann Roof was polite in jail or that Eliot Rodger couldn’t get laid help fix the problem at the root of the violence—that white men are seen as more human?
When Georgia law enforcement briefed the public on Wednesday morning about the 21-year-old white man who shot and killed eight people—six of them Asian women—at Atlanta-area massage parlors Tuesday night, it wasn’t helpful.
Officials made a puzzling series of claims of fact, despite being cartoonishly cautious about other aspects of the case. Officials claimed that 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long had a “sex addiction” but admitted they didn’t know whether sex work occurred at the places where Long killed people. Who told them that Long had a sex addiction? Was it Long himself?
They weren’t sure whether Long was motivated by the racial identity or gender of his victims, and thus said they couldn’t say with certainty that a hate crime had been committed, but then again, they said with certainty that before he’d committed the crimes the shooter had “a really bad day.” Who told them that Long had a really bad day? Did they fact-check that one, or did they once again simply repeat the words of a suspected mass killer into a microphone? (I think I speak for a lot of people when I say: I don’t give a flying-saucer fuck about what kind of day a mass shooter was having before opening fire.)
I don't know exactly what has to change, but I know that insistence on maintaining neutrality in the face of what is so obviously evil, is itself an evil that we have to address and eradicate.
Trump rallies are pretty much exclusively held in Trump-friendly places. That's not to say he avoids the blue states. It's just that he goes where he's welcome - he stays in the red parts, no matter what. And that little detail is kind of important. NAACP reminds us of an interesting little tidbit, via Business Insider, as reported back in March of this year:
US counties where President Donald Trump held a campaign rally saw a 226% increase in reported hate crimes over similar counties that did not hold a rally, political scientists at the University of North Texas said in an analysis published in The Washington Post.
According to a study done by University of North Texas professors Regina Branton and Valerie Martinez-Ebers, and PhD candidate Ayal Feinberg, the scientists found that Trump's statements during the 2016 campaign "may encourage hate crimes" in the respective counties.
The study measured the correlation between counties that hosted a 2016 campaign rally and the crime rates in the months that followed. The scientists used the Anti-Defamation League's map that measures acts of violence and compared the counties that hosted a rally with others that had similar characteristics, including minority population, location, and active hate groups. - and -
Branton, Martinez-Ebers, and Feinberg noted that their study "cannot be certain" that the marked increase was solely attributed to Trump's rhetoric. But they also shut down the suggestion that the reported hate crimes were fake.
"In fact, this charge is frequently used as a political tool to dismiss concerns about hate crimes," the analysis said. "Research shows it is far more likely that hate crime statistics are considerably lower because of underreporting."
