White Girl Bleed a Lot (43 page)

My favorite came from Chicago, an ABC news reader by the name of Ravi Baichwal. He calls himself a reporter and anchor,
and I think he won some Emmys, which I thought were for acting. He probably has a good looking wife and well-behaved kids. But I digress.

I emailed Mr. Baichwal telling him I was going to be in Chicago and suggested he do a story about how Chicago has lots of race riots. I told him I would be happy to help.

Dang, he got angry:

Not sure what your point is besides demagoguery. So blacks are implicated in crime in the summer.

Not news. Your perspective is not fresh or particularly interesting.

If you’re such a great writer and commentator, work to solve problems … not put this trash out—and expect someone like me to ape your perspective.

Well, I did something I am normally not that good at doing. I walked away from a fight and tried to engage the gentleman in civil discourse:

Do you feel better now?

There are two things interesting: 1) the crimes, 2) the denials.

I personally think the second is more interesting.

So why is it such a big deal to say: ‘yes, Chicago has race riots?’

He did not much like that either:

It isn’t riots. It’s disaffected youth for sure but you’re just race-baiting here and it’s meaningless.

I waded in for more:

Feel even better?

So the fact this is happening all over the country has no meaning? None?

And anyone who notices is just a racist?

I thought that was it. That my brief and unhappy encounter with Mr. Baichwal was over. But then the next day, I opened my email to find this letter bomb:

I re-read your stuff and looked at your website.

It was late last night when we were conversing and I wanted to double-check my sense of you and your thesis.

I was right. You are an idiot.

At this point, I knew one thing for sure: the guy was obviously talking to one of my ex-girlfriends. He had to have been. It usually takes people a lot longer to figure that out. I pressed on and wrote back that “It’s about facts. Not thesis.”

He didn’t like that either. You should know, fair reader, I did not target Mr. Baichwal. I did not say he was a lousy reporter because an epidemic of race riots and violence and crime happened on his news watch, and he was so busy being sanctimonious that he did not even notice, which in my book is even worse than the crime reporter in Colorado Springs who missed the train wreck on a Sunday in downtown because he was playing basketball and turned off his police scanner.

Nope. I did not say any of that. I was still hoping he would invite me on his show and dispute my facts in public, which would be impossible because I don’t explain the facts, I just report that the race riots are happening. I give the who, when, where, and how—with lots of links—but not the why.

And why isn’t anyone noticing?

This time he really was through.

I’d appreciate it now if you wouldn’t bother me anymore.

Guys like you fit “facts” into a thesis. Anyways, over and out.

When the conversation reaches this point, I always ask: Can you give me an example?

Still waiting, Chicago. Ask your Emmy-winning wife. She probably knows. And if she does not, ask one of the old dudes who remembers Mike Royko.

Anyway, here’s a smattering of some other reporters’ comments from around the country.

FROM: Steve West, Host of “Live & Local” WKVT-AM, VT

TO: Colin Flaherty

DATE: October 14, 2011

SUBJECT: Race Riots

Are you freaking kidding me? I won’t take the time to write the long list of reasons why I’m not interested in your premise. Don’t write me again, please.

Steve West

FROM: Craig Clough, Patch Editor in California

TO: Colin Flaherty

DATE: October 10, 2011

SUBJECT: Commentary on Racial Violence

I do not find this interesting, only massively offensive on an astonishing level. I feel ill just having read it.

I’m not a liberal, sir. I only responded to your ridiculous email because racism cannot be ignored by decent people in the 21st century.

Craig Clough

FROM: Mark Schieldrop, Rhode Island Patch

TO: Colin Flaherty

DATE: October 9, 2011

SUBJECT: Commentary on racial violence

This piece is woefully unsubstantiated and has nothing to do with Cranston. Sorry, I won’t publish something like this.

Mark Schieldrop

FROM: Tony Dondero, The Patch.com

TO: Colin Flaherty

DATE: October 10, 2011

SUBJECT: Racial Violence in Washington

I check the police reports regularly and what you are saying is simply not reality here. The building where I currently live has quite a few black residents in it. And I don’t see “black on white” violence.

I haven’t been beat up, had my car broken into, etc. Actually, I had my car broken into Bellevue and Arlington, Wash. in places that are predominately white or Asian and have few blacks.

So no, I will not run your piece, now or ever.

Maybe where you live is some completely alternative reality. But other than maybe some isolated incidents, I just don’t see any pattern or anything.

Frankly, I don’t think there’s any more black on white violence than any other violence. In Seattle and Portland?

Am I missing something? I just don’t see it. Are you sure you want to squander your credibility on this?

Really?

Tony Dondero

FROM: Perry Robbin, Suffield, Connecticut Patch

TO: Colin Flaherty

DATE: October 10, 2011

SUBJECT: Racial violence commentary

I also consider this submission inflammatory, to say the very least. I respect your right to free speech but I do not want to get submissions like this from you ever again in the future, they have absolutely no place in my publication.

Perry Robbin

FROM: John McKay, Michigan Patch

TO: Colin Flaherty

DATE: October 10, 2011

SUBJECT: Racial violence commentary

Wouldn’t invite this type of content even if it did come from a local voice. It is absolutely irrelevant to our community, not to mention inflammatory and agenda-based. It would be grossly irresponsible for any reputable media outlet to run this.

John McKay

Don’t get me wrong, this book is also attracting a lot of good reviews and kudos from some reporting quarters, but the quotes above are pretty representative of how reporters in big city newsrooms look at the world. Or in this case, don’t look at the world. And that is why race riots, racial crime, and violence do not get widely reported.

Note to reporters: The sanctimony thing probably works better on someone who has never broken real stories.

The hits just keep on coming.

I
n researching this book, I interviewed lots of people who simply did not believe racial violence was sweeping the country.

On my radio show, a former state-wide president of the NAACP said white people have been violent toward black people for a long time, so what is the difference? A black leader in Wilmington, Delaware, told me on the air that rioters in Greece were white people. Weren’t they? And what about Ohio State football games? They always riot after those.

They don’t, but that didn’t matter. As long as it led to his main point: How could we single out black people in America when white people are doing the same thing?

It’s all the same.

No difference.

That is what they needed to believe. True or not.

Book agents said the topic was too “inflammatory,” or simply refused to believe it. One agent from New Jersey was in the middle of the Guendelsberger race riot in Philadelphia, and
he just wanted to forget the whole thing. Others pointed to the news stories and said if it were racial, the newspapers surely would have reported it, right?

Right?

I helped an old friend write a book. Whenever I said anything stupid, he never said I was stupid. He said he admired my innocence. So for all the innocent people in the world, this chapter is for you.

Almost two hundred black people at a night club had a riot. They fought, stabbed, and shot each other. Guess they will have to take their karaoke rap night somewhere else.
¹

http://www.myfoxdc.com/story/18869975

On June 6, 2011, Alabama Adventure Land had to close because of a “borderline riot’ by crowds of black people. There was lots of fighting, fence climbing, and general mayhem at this popular water park.
²

http://blog.al.com/spotnews

In Nashville’s Wave Country in 2011 crowds of black people became “unruly” and “chaotic” and started climbing over fences. There were fights inside and outside the park. “Hundreds of people were jumping over the fence.”
³

http://www.newschannel5.com/story/14750758

A bicyclist group in St. Louis issued a warning after one of its members was beaten by a group of fifteen to twenty black people.
⁴

http://stlouis.cbslocal.com/2011/08/29/alert-for-swarm-and-slug-mobs
/

Greensboro is stepping up. Of all the cities in America that experienced black mob violence during the Fourth of July 2012, Greensboro might not have been the most vicious or the most violent, or even the most damaging, but at more than one thousand people, it was the largest.

Groups of teens—some with younger kids and babies in strollers—filled Elm Street, taunted officers, and instigated fights in a Jimmy John’s sandwich shop, according to Lankford security guard Christopher Thompson, who was off duty.

“They’re supposed to serve and protect, right? They did that,” Thompson said. “The officers really had to ‘cause if you had seen how unruly it was — it was real bad.”
⁵

At least one person on Twitter predicted the riot:

We already covered this in
chapter 5
: Only three people were arrested, including one person who was trying to rally his troops to attack the police until they pepper sprayed the junior Napoleon. It was hardly Greensboro’s first brush with flash mobs. In June 2011, downtown Greensboro had black mob violence every weekend in July.

“We’ve uncovered a series—a series!—of mob attacks in the heart of downtown Greensboro,” said the anchor for the WFMY news. “All of them planned on social media. And I know it sounds unlikely but it has happened in Chicago, Milwaukee, Philadelphia and now right here in the Triad. Every single weekend this month. It’s a violent twist on the flash mob craze.”
⁶

Then they cut to the story “you’ll see only on News 2 tonight.” Cue the victim:

“One of the teenagers came up from me behind and just punched me in the back and kicked me and knocked me to the floor. … Then, he just continued to kick me, punch me, step on me. People were screaming,” Mitchel Sommers, Executive Director of the Community Theatre of Greensboro said.

The swarm came from nowhere and the beating lasted seconds.

“Within I’d say, a minute, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds … I’m not being dramatic … hundreds of young people, just came descending upon this area,” he said. “There were so many young people. I would say all the way from across Elm Street all the way to this park. You couldn’t even get out of the swarm of young people.”
⁷

The former mayor of Greensboro had his business vandalized as well.

The comments on the reader board ran true to form: Several people say the mob was black. While others said either 1) The person is a racist for noticing, or 2) it never happened and here is why it happened.

Said one reader: “The GPD is undoubtedly covering its derriere. Whether or not these marauding “young people” constitute a true Flash Mob, they are certainly dangerous. Our local media’s description of the marauders’ racial identity is, of course,
conspicuous by its absence.”
⁸

No one was arrested during these attacks, so I guess they never happened.

But if you are mathematically inclined, could you tell me how many attacks this is? In the first few weeks of June in 2011, it happened every weekend. And was there just one a weekend? Or several? And how about the Fourth of July party in 2012? Was that one? Or twenty? They are adding up, aren’t they?

Ask the police, and their answer is almost zero attacks.

Use your own eyes and calculator, and the number grows to more than twenty-five very fast. And those are just the ones we know about in one small town.

“Parents in Vallejo are angry, but not surprised,” says a Los Angeles TV reporter in her introduction to a video where dozens of black people swarm and beat a city maintenance man. Kids are out of control, said one black parent. The others agreed. The city worker was hospitalized with a fractured skull, jaw, and collarbone. The owner of the gas station where the crime took place said that kind of thing happens all the time.
⁹

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story7254211

Early one Sunday morning in 2012 in the Lakeview area, near Wrigley Field, ten black men in a white stretch limousine pulled up in front of a neighborhood bar and started beating people up. “Witnesses told police that the attackers got out of the white limo early Sunday morning and broke the jaw of a 27-year-old man.” All while a friend filmed the action from the limo.
¹⁰

Family members of the four men arrested for these alleged
attacks in Wrigleyville claim the men were the target of verbal racial attacks, and were actually filming a music video at the time. They are members of a group called Chicago Maverick and the song is called “Take a Sip.”
¹¹