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Jewish World Review /June 19, 1998 / 25 Sivan, 5758

Larry Elder

Is Jasper ‘America'?

JASPER, TEXAS -- Along with Rosewood, the Tuskegee Experiment, the murder of Emmett Till and the beating of Rodney King, Jasper shows that "racism is alive and well in America." That, at least, remains the mantra of many black leaders.

In Jasper, three white supremacists with ties to the Aryan Nation and the Ku Klux Klan offered a ride to a black man. They chained the man to their truck and dragged him two miles. Authorities found parts of the man's body -- head and limbs -- strewn over a country road miles long. It's a hideous example of a vicious hate crime against a black man.

Of course Jesse was on the scene in Jasper. Would you think he wouldn't be?

The question is not whether the insidious nature of this murder warrants the international headlines or the condemnation of President Clinton. It does. But does Jasper reflect, as the Congressional Black Caucus says, a "deep and vicious racism in this country"?

Jared Taylor, in his book "Paved with Good Intentions," writes: "Shouldn't a nation of bigots target blacks most of the time? At least half of the time? Of course, it does not. When whites commit violence, they do it to blacks 2.4 percent of the time. Blacks, on the other hand, choose white victims more than half the time."

In 1995, the FBI documented 8,000 hate crimes, over half of which involved black victims. In 1992, however, of the nearly 6 million violent crimes -- murder, rape, manslaughter, armed robbery and felonious assault -- nearly 20 percent involved a different-race victim with a different-race perpetrator. Of the nearly 1 million interracial violent crimes, 90 percent involve a black offender and a white victim. Now, if you assume a race-based motive in less than 1 percent of the black perpetrator/white victim violent crimes, you still reach a number equivalent to all of the yearly hate crimes in the entire country.

Of the million black perpetrator/white victim crimes, how many involved a race-based motive? Who knows? But when several black youths on a "wilding" expedition attacked a white female Central Park jogger, few in the media speculated whether the victim's race played a role in her attack. On the other hand, O. J. Simpson defense attorney Johnnie Cochran tells us that police officers victimized Simpson because of their hostility toward a black man who married a white woman. No swastikas necessary.

And of 1992's nearly 30 million non-violent criminal acts -- things like burglary and auto theft -- nearly 30 percent involve a black offender and a white victim. The reverse? Approximately 2 percent.

Thus, blacks, while one-seventh of the population of whites, commit many more acts of violence against them than the other way around. One newspaper editorial called the Jasper murder "America's shame." Really. Does that make Colin Ferguson's Long Island subway massacre of whites "black America's shame," or does it serve as an example of "deep and vicious racism" toward whites?

Chicago columnist Mike Royko once wrote about two black police officers who stopped two whites in a predominately black area. The cops arrested the white driver and towed his car, leaving the white passenger in this black neighborhood. The white guy allegedly begged the cops not to leave him, but they did. Soon, police found the man smoldering, having been doused with a flammable liquid and set on fire. He died. Royko asked why there was no national outcry.

And, last year in Michigan, three train-hopping white teenagers -- two boys and a girl -- found themselves in a predominately black area of Flint, Mich. The police later arrested six black youths for shooting the two boys, execution style, in the head and forcing the girl to perform oral sex while they sodomized her from the rear. She, too, was shot in the head. While the story made national news, few speculated -- at least out loud -- whether race played a role.

Jasper became major news precisely because America shows collective disgust toward the murderous, cowardly punks accused. But, for many black leaders, Jasper is America. Rep. Albert Russell Wynn, D-Md., said, "It manifests itself at the street level in murder, but it also manifests itself at the boardroom in discrimination."

Forget the thriving black middle class; the fact that blacks have a collective gross domestic product that places it among the world's 15 wealthiest nations; that polls show a majority of whites willing to vote for a black for president; that data comparing apples to apples finds no "wage gap" between blacks and whites; that following the Supreme Court rejection of race-based districts, the black Southern incumbents who ran in newly formed majority white districts all got re-elected; and that a recent Times-CNN poll shows nearly 90 percent of black teens find racism plays either little or no role in their own lives.

No, for the black "victicrat" leadership, Jasper, Texas, becomes Exhibit A in the self-demoralizing quest to exaggerate America's problems and minimize her successes.