Right now Ferguson is still in the news. We have an incident where a young black man (18; he was an adult, not a kid) robbed a store, and got violent when confronted by the police. He was shot and killed after trying to take the officer’s gun. This is an open and shut case, right? None of these facts are seriously in dispute. But people are marching in protest, going so far as to riot, loot, and burn, because the police officer was not indicted. Indicted for what? Indicted for being white. Let’s cut through the bullshit, and put the facts on the table. They want him indicted for being white. In the name of stamping out racism, no less. How insane is that?
There is absolutely no evidence that the cop did anything wrong. He acted appropriately. He defended himself against attack, and his attacker was killed in the process. One of the things I teach my students is that they should never allow themselves to be harmed by an assailant trying to spare that assailant the just consequences of his actions. Officer Wilson could have been killed by this young street cherub. Easily. And that is the outcome the loudmouths in the black community really are marching for. They want a police officer indicted (and one would assume convicted and imprisoned) for the “crime” of not allowing a thug to take his gun away from him and kill him with it. That is the real truth of what people from Al Sharpton to President Obama are really saying here. It speaks volumes that Al Sharpton is a “trusted adviser” at the White House.
I want to draw a contrast here.
Most people have never heard of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom. They were a young, white couple from Knoxville, Tennessee. This is what happened to them:
On the night of Saturday, January 6, 2007, Christopher Newsom and his girlfriend Channon Christian went out together for the last time. Newsom was a 23-year-old carpenter; Christian a 21-year-old senior majoring in sociology at the University of Tennessee. The couple had been dating for about two months and seemed very much smitten with each other. That Saturday night, the couple had eaten a romantic dinner at a Knoxville restaurant. Channon last spoke with her mother Denna at roughly 12:35 a.m. on Sunday when Channon said the couple was going to visit a friend to watch some movies. No one ever heard from them again.
At 12:24 pm Sunday, Christopher’s burned corpse was found by a Norfolk Southern railroad employee near the railroad tracks in a rough area on the north side of Knoxville, Tennessee. The next day Channon’s Toyota 4-Runner was located a few blocks away — it was actually found by Channon’s parents who were canvassing the area after the cell phone company gave police the last known location of their daughter’s cell phone. Channon was nowhere to be found, but crime scene technicians lifted a print from an envelope found in the SUV. Analysis matched the print to Lemaricus Davidson, a recently-released ex-con living in the area. Knoxville police and Knox County Sheriff’s Department investigators got a search warrant for Davidson’s home at 2316 Chipman Street — by Tuesday at 2 pm, they located Channon Christian’s body in a kitchen trash bin. The house was a rental property but the renters were gone.Police were left with two corpses of a photogenic young couple who had been tortured and killed in the most brutal fashion anyone in Knoxville could remember.
As information slowly emerged out of the investigation, it was clear this was on ordinary crime. “It apparently started with a carjacking,” said U.S. Marshal Rich Knighten, “They did some really nasty things to this lady. There is some evidence she was held and sexually abused for a couple of days.” In fact, as police gathered more facts it became clear that both Newsom and Christian were brutalized beyond imagination.
In the wee hours of that Sunday morning, Newsom and Christian were carjacked at gunpoint in her parents’ 2005 Toyota 4-Runner and brought back to the house on Chipman. Christopher Newsom was raped over and over again (semen was found in his anus) and sodomized with an unknown object. He was blindfolded, gagged, and bound at the hands and feet. After several nightmarish hours, Newsom was either walked barefoot or dragged out to the railroad tracks where he was shot in the back of the head execution-style. The assailants shot him two more times (in the back and in the neck). Then Newsom’s corpse was doused with gasoline and lit on fire.For Channon Christian, the torture was even worse. She suffered days of sexual abuse in the Chipman home. She was beaten mercilessly and raped numerous times, suffering excruciating injuries to her mouth, vagina, and anus. Forensic pathologists found that not only was Christian raped by her captors, but she had been penetrated with an object as well (possibly a chair leg, according to the Knox County Medical Examiner). In addition, examiners found that a chemical (likely bleach) had been poured down her throat and in her wounded genital areas — while she was still alive. The coroner reported that Christian was then tied up with torn strips of bedding, her head covered in a white garbage bag — and then the whole body stuffed in five larger trash bags before being thrown into a garbage can. Perhaps the most horrifying finding was that Christian was still alive at the time; her death came after the slow process of suffocation in that trash container.
The killers were black. There isn’t really a question that racial animus was part of the motivation for this terrible crime. You can read the whole story at the link provided. This was an awful thing. It may be the worst crime ever committed in the Knoxville area, and we had a serial killer prowling around here several years ago killing hookers. He didn’t do anything of this magnitude. My point here is where was the outrage over the deaths of Christian and Newsom? There were no marches in the streets. There were no riots in vengeance for their deaths. The Ku Klux Klan didn’t burn a cross in their honor (thank God), or anything else. These two people were tortured to death for the crime of being white, and it was only a local story. One of the killers has a parole hearing this week. I certainly don’t expect parole to be granted, but it is unreal that parole could even be a possibility after such a short time for such a terrible crime.
It is interesting to juxtapose the two cases. They give us a pretty clear picture of the state of race relations in this country today, and that picture is pretty grim. They are marching in the streets today carrying signs that ask “Do Black Lives Matter?” Of course they do, but consider the “victim” that they are supporting. He robbed a store, and then got violent when confronted by police. He was shot and killed as a result of his own actions. Is this really the hill the black community wants to pick to die on? Is this really representative of the general mood of the black community? Certainly, there have been a number of blacks who have said no to these questions, but the really high profile “black leaders” have all answered “Yes”. Let that sink in. That is a truly sad state of affairs. Martin Luther King said he had a dream that his children would be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I’d say that we pretty much have that society today. But if you look at the demands from the black community in regards to Ferguson, King’s dream is not theirs. They don’t want to be judged by the content of their character, but by the color of their skin. Michael Brown was black, Officer Wilson was white, therefore Officer Wilson has to have committed a crime because a black man is dead. If he is white, you must indict seems to be the message that they are wanting to send us. This is a sad thing to see in the early part of the 21st Century.