White Girl Bleed a Lot (27 page)

Police said the seven suspects “were roaming Five Points, targeting others until they came across Strange. In fact, investigators said the group tried unsuccessfully to rob or assault at least four other people.”
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Five Points is an eclectic business district that includes a number of locally owned boutique shops, art galleries, and antique shops. It is a neighborhood that is frequented by gays and is adjacent to the University of South Carolina. Lots of bars attract lots of college students.

College kids. Gay people. Harmless folks minding their own business.

The perfect prey.

After I heard about this brutal beating, I figured Columbia was such a small town, a gentile town, that this was probably an isolated incident.

My bad. There is a ton of racial violence in Columbia, and a ton of media and public officials hoping you won’t notice.

Scott Linaberry noticed. He owned two restaurants in Five Points. He watched crime after brutal crime go under-reported and under-policed, until finally he did it: He belled the cat.

“It’s OK to harass white college students, but it’s not OK to harass the black kids on the street corners,” Linaberry said. “It’s got to be said.”

Linaberry was talking about official reaction to black mob violence in Five Points. After one particularly brutal attack, the chief blamed the white victims for drinking too much. Linaberry is just one of many people in Columbia who are wondering: why racial violence is now such a regular part of the local landscape; why police are focusing on the victims and not the predators; and, why everyone is so afraid to talk about it.

In September 2010 ten black people attacked Josh Bosworth,
knocking him unconscious. Then “six more jumped on top of him, taking turns punching and kicking him” as he lay “motionless on the ground.” Bosworth suffered a broken jaw and severe bruising to the head.
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Three of the assailants, all students at Benedict, a nearby black college, were arrested. The Bosworth attack was the first of at least three violent black mob incidents in Five Points that night. One hour before the Bosworth beating, a police report states that eight black people beat up another student in Five Points, breaking his arm.
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At about the same time, four black people robbed a student and fired their guns at nearby cars, hitting at least one before they got away.
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In all of the beatings, assaults, and robberies, all the suspects were black. But the chief of police said race had nothing to do with it. “It involved guys getting into arguments and fighting, and it just goes the wrong way,” said Chief Randy Scott. He and the mayor promised to continue cracking down on underage drinking.
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Leaders of the NAACP also reject the idea that race has anything to do with crime in Columbia. They do not deny that black people are responsible for the overwhelming number of violent altercations in Five Points. They just don’t want to get blamed for it:

“I don’t see these kinds of press conferences in other neighborhoods when children are hurt or kidnapped or killed,” said Lonnie Randolph, president of the SC NAACP. According to the state, the message being sent is “the value of a student at one particular school is far more valuable than a student from another school,” Randolph said.
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Linaberry and others think the official attention is misplaced. He posted on a Five Points Facebook page:

“Why does the city permit the harassment of white college kids in the bar, under the guise of underage drinking (they have to interrupt about 50 people to find one underage, but they’d have everyone believe they bat 1000) but not black thugs on the street via a posted curfew ordinance who have no intention of ever being a customer of Five points. Civil Rights for ALL??”
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Local media is notorious for not identifying the race of the assailants. And when readers do just that on the comments page, their remarks are often removed. But not all the time: “So far all the beatings involve groups of blacks beating up white kids,” said one poster to a local news site. “But the Police Chief states there’s no racial issues going on--no gangs. However, if a group of white kids beat up a black I bet the NAACP will be all over it.”
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“Chief Scott says this was just another fight and will prosecute as such, but we all saw the video and it is evidenced by other incidents that there are groups of thugs preying on white college students,” said another student to the same site.
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In 2012 a petition was started by Eric Heineman to take back Five Points. In September they received more than fifteen hundred signatures.
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Concerned citizens also started a Facebook page to combat the violence in Five Points. It has over six thousand members. They say the violence is worse than ever and urge the police to stop blaming the victims and start paying attention to the predators.

“As a senior at the University of South Carolina, I have seen the increase in the amount of violent crime that has gone on in Five Points,” said Laura Dixon. “The Columbia Police Department’s focus on underage drinking is absurd when
there are larger issues at hand, especially the shootings, gang initiations, and beatings that have occurred in Five Points. I am of age and it is legal for me to be in Five Points, but I do not feel safe there due to the number of violent crimes that have occurred there. Please STOP focusing on underage drinking and START focusing on those violent crimes that are actually harming people.”
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The mayor says crime is down in the Five Points area. And it is safe now, but could be safer. Other students say the violent atmosphere is increasingly prevalent:

“My own experience is that groups of black men will loiter around Five Point bars and try to provoke white college students by whistling at their girlfriends, sucker punching them, etc,” said one student to the local paper. “It’s some sick concept of ‘fun’ that I don’t understand.”

Despite the quasi-official media blackout on the racial violence, at least one columnist spoke out last summer:

“Even then, we still have an 800-pound gorilla in the room that must be dealt with: Was this a racially motivated beating?” wrote Warren Bolton. “That’s not a discussion many people feel comfortable having. But let’s be real. When eight black boys jump on a lone white boy — or if it were the other way around — the question of race will be raised in private circles, if not publicly. Our nation’s and state’s unfortunate racial history and the seen and unseen vestiges that remain today have laid that upon us. If we don’t confront it, it’ll destroy us.”
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By 2013 the black mob violence had started again. Several people were attacked and at least eight guns shots were fired. Even the local paper found it hard to avoid: “Many accuse police of
focusing on underage drinking instead of policing gang members who roam the popular entertainment district.”
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But curiously, the one local media person who did at least mention the “800-pound gorilla,” was now throwing victims back under the bus.

Announced Mr. Bolton: “Let’s admit it, Five Points has a drinking problem.”
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Meanwhile, over the holler in Spartanburg, the sheriff is not waiting for the victims to come to terms with their supposed drinking problems. He is urging all women to get concealed weapons permits and to start carrying guns.

“No Drama” City has its own brand of brutish, racial nastiness.

Locals are losing the ability to wish it away.

S
eattle is a cocoon of racial harmony. Just ask them. Seattle has “fewer problems with racism than other cities,” says the blog So Seattle: “Ethnic tensions … seem less tangible than in other places.”
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Seattle may not have the day in, day out racial violence of a city like Chicago, or the peculiar racial lawlessness of small-town Peoria. But more and more people are paying attention to the increasingly visible and brutish mayhem that groups of black people are visiting on veterans, old people, young people, gay people, Asians, and even a pregnant woman.

And the local reaction: Most cannot believe it is happening.

Let’s start with seventeen-year-old Jessica Redmon-Beckstead. In December 2010 she was riding the bus with her boyfriend when five black girls started to taunt, attack, kick, punch, and rob her.

All the time they were laughing. One even complained about a broken fingernail.

“My girlfriend’s pregnant,” shouted the boyfriend as they punched her and kicked him in the face.

“We didn’t hit her in the stomach,” yelled one of the women. That got a few laughs. And the violence was all caught on video.
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According to the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
, the suspects were all riding the bus with free passes from Seattle Public Schools. Within a few weeks, all five were arrested, charged, and convicted.

Six months later the baby was born healthy.

The day after the attack, King County Sheriff Sue Rahr rushed to assure the peace-loving people of Seattle this hyper-violent episode was an “isolated incident” and could have happened anywhere.

She was half right: It could happen anywhere, and often did. But it was far from an isolated incident. Even the local TV news reporters figured that out. Bus rider Gil Costello told the local Fox affiliate, violence on the bus “happens all the time. They just never report it.”

The Fox station reported a few months before, a disabled man was “terrorized” on a bus, then punched in the face and knocked out. All in black and white.
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At the end of 2011 an Iraq war veteran in a suburb of Seattle was riding the bus when he confronted several black passengers who were using foul language, including the dreaded “N” word. They attacked the Marine. He fought back and drove them off the bus. The shaken suspects were last seen quickly leaving the bus. No arrests were made.
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Let’s stay near the bus for one more attack. Make that two. It is hard to keep track. This one at the hands of a killer.

In the summer of 2011 Ondrell Harding beat a guy to death. Allegedly. Actually there was not much disagreement about that. At least five people saw it: The victim’s wife and preteen son, and, of course, a few members of Harding’s crew. The district attorney did not file charges because he could not figure out who
started
what, not who
did
what.

Four months later, Harding and five of his pals beat up another guy. They told police
they
were the ones who were attacked. That’s quite a back story: one lone guy at a bus stop attacks six black men. This time the DA filed charges. Harding got three months in jail.
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Maybe it would have helped if the DA had known about Harding’s rap songs he posted on his MySpace page. Kaegan Hamilton, a writer for the Seattle Weekly wrote that Harding was known as the rapper Doe Boy and that being:

far from repentant, Harding has bragged about his exploits in rap songs posted on his MySpace page. “When you look me in my eyes you see a coldblooded killer,” he sings in one verse. Another track has the ominous title “I Will Kill a Man.”
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True that.

Next.

Almost as sensational as the black mob beating up a pregnant teenager is the case of the Seattle teenager, who in 2011 was assaulted and tortured for several hours because he was white. And “they started bringing up the past—like slavery—being like, white people did this,” said the victim.

“They started bringing up the past - like slavery - being like, white people did this,” Shane said.