Media's Coverage Of Racial Violence Is One-Sided

[Geee]

Investors Business Daily:

When I first saw a book with the title, "White Girl Bleed A Lot" by Colin Flaherty, I instantly knew what it was about, though I had not seen the book reviewed anywhere, and knew nothing about the author.

That's because I had encountered that phrase before, while doing research for the four new chapters on intellectuals and race that I added to the revised edition of my own book, "Intellectuals and Society," published this year.

That phrase was spoken by a member of a mob of young blacks who attacked whites at random at a Fourth of July celebration in Milwaukee last year.

What I was appalled to learn, in the course of my research, was that such race riots have occurred in other cities across the U.S. in recent years — and that the national mainstream media usually ignore these riots.

Where the violence is too widespread and too widely known locally to be ignored, both the local media and public officials often describe what happened as unspecified "young people" attacking unspecified victims for unspecified reasons.

But videos of the attacks often reveal both the racial nature of these attacks and the racial hostility expressed by the attackers.

Are race riots not news? Ignoring racial violence only guarantees that it will get worse.

Ignoring Reality

The Chicago Tribune has publicly rationalized its filtering out of any racial identification of attackers and their victims, even though the media do not hesitate to mention race when decrying statistical disparities in arrest or imprisonment rates.

Such mob attacks have become so frequent in Chicago that officials promoting conventions there have recently complained to the mayor that the city is going to lose business if such widespread violence is not brought under control.

But neither these officials nor the mayor nor most of the media use that four-letter word, "race." It would not be politically correct or politically convenient in an election year.

Reading Colin Flaherty's book made painfully clear to me that the magnitude of this problem is greater than I had discovered from my own research.

He documents both the race riots and the media and political evasions in dozens of cities.

Flaherty's previous writings have won him praise and awards, but this book has been met largely with silence or abuse.

However much ignoring the ugly realities that his book reveals may serve the interests of the media or politicians, a cover-up is a huge disservice to everyone else — whether black, white or whatever.