 |
|
The Kosher Gourmet by Megan Gordon With its colorful cache of purples and oranges and reds, COLLARD GREEN SLAW is a marvelous mood booster --- not to mention just downright delish
April 18, 2014
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Clarifying one of the greatest philosophical conundrums in theology
John Ericson: Trying hard to be 'positive' but never succeeding? Blame Your Brain
The Kosher Gourmet by Julie Rothman Almondy, flourless torta del re (Italian king's cake), has royal roots, is simple to make, . . . but devour it because it's simply delicious
April 14, 2014
Rabbi Dr Naftali Brawer: Passover frees us from the tyranny of time
Eric Schulzke: First degree: How America really recovered from a murder epidemic
Georgia Lee: When love is not enough: Teaching your kids about the realities of adult relationships
Gordon Pape: How you can tell if your financial adviser is setting you up for potential ruin
Dana Dovey: Up to 500,000 people die each year from hepatitis C-related liver disease. New Treatment Has Over 90% Success Rate
Justin Caba: Eating Watermelon Can Help Control High Blood Pressure
April 11, 2014
Rabbi Hillel Goldberg: Silence is much more than golden
Susan Swann: How to value a child for who he is, not just what he does
Susan Scutti: A Simple Blood Test Might Soon Diagnose Cancer
Chris Weller: Have A Slow Metabolism? Let Science Speed It Up For You
April 9, 2014
Jonathan Tobin: Why Did Kerry Lie About Israeli Blame?
Samuel G. Freedman: A resolution 70 years later for a father's unsettling legacy of ashes from Dachau
Jessica Ivins: A resolution 70 years later for a father's unsettling legacy of ashes from Dachau
Matthew Mientka: How Beans, Peas, And Chickpeas Cleanse Bad Cholesterol and Lowers Risk of Heart Disease
April 8, 2014
Dana Dovey: Coffee Drinkers Rejoice! Your Cup Of Joe Can Prevent Death From Liver Disease
Chris Weller: Electric 'Thinking Cap' Puts Your Brain Power Into High Gear
April 4, 2014
Amy Peterson: A life of love: How to build lasting relationships with your children
John Ericson: Older Women: Save Your Heart, Prevent Stroke Don't Drink Diet
John Ericson: Why 50 million Americans will still have spring allergies after taking meds
Sarah Boesveld: Teacher keeps promise to mail thousands of former students letters written by their past selves
April 2, 2014
Dan Barry: Should South Carolina Jews be forced to maintain this chimney built by Germans serving the Nazis?
Frank Clayton: Get happy: 20 scientifically proven happiness activities
Susan Scutti: It's Genetic! Obesity and the 'Carb Breakdown' Gene
|
| |
Jewish World Review
Feb. 16, 2006
/ 18 Shevat, 5766
The flames of hate in Alabama
By
Jeff Jacoby
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Suppose that in 2005 unknown hoodlums had firebombed 10 gay bookstores and bars in San Francisco, reducing several
of them to smoking rubble. It is not hard to imagine the alarm that would have spread through the Bay Area's gay community
or the manhunt that would have been launched to find the attackers. The blasts would have been described everywhere as
"hate crimes," editorial pages would have thundered with condemnation, and public officials would have vowed to crack down
on crimes against gays with unprecedented severity.
Suppose that vandals last month had attacked 10 Detroit-area mosques and halal restaurants, leaving behind shattered
windows, wrecked furniture, and walls defaced with graffiti. The violence would be national front-page news. On blogs and
talk radio, the horrifying outbreak of anti-Muslim bigotry would be Topic No. 1. Bills would be introduced in Congress to
increase the penalties for violent "hate crimes" — no one would hesitate to call them by that term — and millions of Americans
would rally in solidarity with Detroit's Islamic community.
Fortunately, those sickening scenarios are only hypothetical. Here is one that is not:
In the past two weeks, 10 Baptist churches have been burned in rural Alabama. Five churches in Bibb County — Ashby
Baptist, Rehobeth Baptist, Antioch Baptist, Old Union Baptist, and Pleasant Sabine — were torched between midnight and 3
a.m. on Feb. 3. Four days later, arsonists destroyed or badly damaged Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church in Greene
County, Dancy First Baptist Church in Pickens County, and two churches in Sumter County, Galilee Baptist and Spring Valley
Baptist. On Saturday, Beaverton Freewill Baptist Church in northwest Alabama became the 10th house of worship to go up in
flames.
Ten arson attacks against 10 churches — all of them Baptist, all in small Alabama towns, all in the space of eight days: If
anything deserves the label of "hate crime," obviously this does.
Or does it?
"We're looking to make sure this is not a hate crime and that we do everything that we need to do," FBI Special Agent
Charles Regan told reporters in Birmingham. Make sure this is *not* a hate crime? If 10 Brooklyn synagogues went up in
flames in a little over a week, wouldn't investigators start from the assumption that the arson was motivated by hatred of Jews?
If 10 Cuban-American shops and restaurants in Miami were deliberately burned to the ground, wouldn't the obvious
presumption be that anti-Cuban animus was involved?
Apparently Baptist churches are different.
"I don't see any evidence that these fires are hate crimes," Mark Potok, a director of the left-wing Southern Poverty Law
Center, told the Los Angeles Times. "Anti-Christian crimes are exceedingly rare in the South."
But are anti-Christian crimes really that rare? Or are they simply less interesting to the left, which prefers to cast Christians
as victimizers, not victims?
A search of the Southern Poverty Law Center's website, for example, turns up no references to Jay Scott Ballinger, a
self-described Satan worshiper deeply hostile to Christianity, who was sentenced to life in prison for burning 26 churches
between 1994 and 1999. The SPLC has claimed that the number of hate crimes in American is sharply underreported. Yet if
Ballinger's arsons weren't "hate crimes," what were they?
Running through the coverage of the latest church burnings is an almost palpable yearning to cast the story in racial terms.
"Federal investigators are looking for two white men for questioning in connection with a string of church fires in central
Alabama," began a National Public Radio story on Friday. "Race may be a factor." In fact, race seems not to be a factor at all
— five of the churches had mostly white congregations, five were largely black. To a media ever ready to expose racism in
American culture, the arsonists' lack of regard for skin color must be maddening.
At times, the eagerness to make this a story about race is almost laughable. "The area is known as Alabama's Black Belt
because of its dark, rich soil and poor African American population," the L.A. Times made a point of noting last week. On
Monday, the Orlando Sentinel claimed that "some church members" think the fires are linked to the death and funeral of
"civil-rights icon Coretta Scott King, whose late husband, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., was a Baptist minister."
In 1996, a spate of fires in the South was widely and falsely trumpeted in the media as an eruption of racism. "We are facing
an epidemic of terror," declared Deval Patrick, the Clinton administration's assistant attorney general for civil rights. But as it
turned out, there was no racist conspiracy. More than a third of the arsonists arrested were black, and more than half the
churches burned were white. So perhaps it is progress of a sort that, this time around, the media are keeping in check the urge
to cry "Racism!"
But real progress will come only when we abandon the whole misguided notion of "hate crimes," which deems certain crimes
more deserving of outrage and punishment not because of what the criminal did, but because of the group to which the victim
belonged. The burning of a church is a hateful act regardless of the congregants' skin color. That some people bend over
backward not to say so is a disgrace.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Jeff Jacoby is a Boston Globe columnist. Comment by clicking here.
Jeff Jacoby Archives
© 2006, Boston Globe
|
|
Columnists
Toons
Lifestyles
|
