weren’t the ones writing editorials on how to “heal” after this or that black criminal was shot by the police. White liberals were.
CHAPTER 4
HEY, WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THAT STORY…
Whenever a much-celebrated claim of racism turned out to be a hoax—which was almost always—you’d just stop hearing about it. There would never be a clippable story admitting that the media’s harrumphing had been in error:
Attention readers! That story we’ve been howling about for several months turned out to be a complete fraud.
The hoax aspect was never what was heavily reported. Part one would be widely broadcast—the lie part. But only obscure right-wingers ever bothered with the follow-up when it turned out to be false. Liberals forgave the act of falsely reporting a crime on the grounds that that even though there wasn’t a wolf, it raised our consciousness of wolves. Ordinary people just wanted to know: But was it true?
A little time would pass and then we’d get an all-new “Got racism?” media campaign. No matter how many times “hate crime” stories were disproved, reporters never tired of credulously reporting every allegation of racism to come down the pike. The media were incapable of remembering to get
all
the facts before launching moral crusades.
A normal person would hear some of the more outlandish allegations and think, “I can’t believe it!”—not meaning, “Wow! What a blockbuster story!” but rather, “I would like to hear the facts because I literally don’t believe it.”
As soon as the truth emerged on each racial incident and the America-is-still-racist thesis collapsed, the story would just quietly disappear from the news pages, like Kennedy’s trouble at the Chappaquiddick bridge. As a result, the official record shows some hate crimes and some unverified hate crimes with no clear resolution one way or another. As long as the fraudulent “hate crimes” didn’t get counted as strike-outs, liberals always looked like Ted Williams. Since they didn’t keep an accurate batting average, I’ll do it for them.
WHITE GANGS AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY—1987
In March 1987, eight months before Tawana Brawley became a household name, black students at Columbia University made the rather incredible charge that mobs of white students were beating up black students on campus. About a dozen blacks claimed to have seen or been victims of these racist attacks.
In the 1980s, American colleges were sturdy sentinels against the merest hint of a racist thought. There were seminars on racism, posters against racism, bake sales against racism, racism “awareness” days, articles denouncing racism, consciousness-raising sessions about racism. More resources were devoted to studying racism than studying history, chemistry or math. It would be hard to find a single person on an American college campus, at least post-1980, who would have one good thing to say about racism.
Moreover, the alleged perpetrators of these racist beatings at Columbia weren’t teenaged toughs with criminal records in a working-class neighborhood: They were college students at an Ivy League school.
But blacks claimed that whites were so terrorizing them that they were afraid to walk alone on campus. According to their spokeswoman, Barnard student Cheryl Derricotte, it was “open season on black people.” 1
The usual nonsense ensued. There were sit-ins, administration building take-overs, and noisy rallies outside the fraternity house said to harbor the white racist thugs. Fifty people were arrested as a result of the anti-racism protests. Most of them were white. 2 Twenty-three Columbia students staged a sit-in at 1 Police Plaza in lower Manhattan to demand the arrest of the white students they claimed were beating up blacks on campus. 3
Black students formed a group to protect themselves from the marauding white mobs and—in what was always a good sign—hired C. Vernon Mason as their lawyer. “The message has gotten
CHAPTER 4
HEY, WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THAT STORY…
Whenever a much-celebrated claim of racism turned out to be a hoax—which was almost always—you’d just stop hearing about it. There would never be a clippable story admitting that the media’s harrumphing had been in error:
Attention readers! That story we’ve been howling about for several months turned out to be a complete fraud.
The hoax aspect was never what was heavily reported. Part one would be widely broadcast—the lie part. But only obscure right-wingers ever bothered with the follow-up when it turned out to be false. Liberals forgave the act of falsely reporting a crime on the grounds that that even though there wasn’t a wolf, it raised our consciousness of wolves. Ordinary people just wanted to know: But was it true?
A little time would pass and then we’d get an all-new “Got racism?” media campaign. No matter how many times “hate crime” stories were disproved, reporters never tired of credulously reporting every allegation of racism to come down the pike. The media were incapable of remembering to get
all
the facts before launching moral crusades.
A normal person would hear some of the more outlandish allegations and think, “I can’t believe it!”—not meaning, “Wow! What a blockbuster story!” but rather, “I would like to hear the facts because I literally don’t believe it.”
As soon as the truth emerged on each racial incident and the America-is-still-racist thesis collapsed, the story would just quietly disappear from the news pages, like Kennedy’s trouble at the Chappaquiddick bridge. As a result, the official record shows some hate crimes and some unverified hate crimes with no clear resolution one way or another. As long as the fraudulent “hate crimes” didn’t get counted as strike-outs, liberals always looked like Ted Williams. Since they didn’t keep an accurate batting average, I’ll do it for them.
WHITE GANGS AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY—1987
In March 1987, eight months before Tawana Brawley became a household name, black students at Columbia University made the rather incredible charge that mobs of white students were beating up black students on campus. About a dozen blacks claimed to have seen or been victims of these racist attacks.
In the 1980s, American colleges were sturdy sentinels against the merest hint of a racist thought. There were seminars on racism, posters against racism, bake sales against racism, racism “awareness” days, articles denouncing racism, consciousness-raising sessions about racism. More resources were devoted to studying racism than studying history, chemistry or math. It would be hard to find a single person on an American college campus, at least post-1980, who would have one good thing to say about racism.
Moreover, the alleged perpetrators of these racist beatings at Columbia weren’t teenaged toughs with criminal records in a working-class neighborhood: They were college students at an Ivy League school.
But blacks claimed that whites were so terrorizing them that they were afraid to walk alone on campus. According to their spokeswoman, Barnard student Cheryl Derricotte, it was “open season on black people.” 1
The usual nonsense ensued. There were sit-ins, administration building take-overs, and noisy rallies outside the fraternity house said to harbor the white racist thugs. Fifty people were arrested as a result of the anti-racism protests. Most of them were white. 2 Twenty-three Columbia students staged a sit-in at 1 Police Plaza in lower Manhattan to demand the arrest of the white students they claimed were beating up blacks on campus. 3
Black students formed a group to protect themselves from the marauding white mobs and—in what was always a good sign—hired C. Vernon Mason as their lawyer. “The message has gotten
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