It’s time to face the facts about race says Victor Davis Hanson at The National Review, and the fact is white people are right to fear black males because they tried to steal his bike once.
I’ve heard “black guy stole my bike” jokes since before I was old enough to even understand what it meant or what the implications of them were. Here Victor Hanson offers one up as a justification for teaching your children that it’s right to be afraid of black males. And he is very specific. He doesn’t believe you have any reason to be afraid of black women or the elderly, but young black males in particular. Because they tried to steal his bicycle.
Of course he doesn’t stop there. A significant portion of the column is dedicated to presenting anecdotes of violence committed by black males.
In one, there was a gruesome story of a young African-American male charged with ransacking a San Francisco jewelry store and murdering two employees, Khin Min, 35, of San Francisco, and Lina Lim, 51, of Daly City. The owner of the shop, Vic Hung, fought back and survived, despite receiving gunshot and stab wounds in the attack. [...]
In the other paper, there was a strangely similar tale. Not far away, in Santa Rosa, at about the same time, two African-American youths in hoodies attacked another jewelry store, also had a shoot-out with the owner, and also failed to evade the police — though in this case none of the employees or customers was injured. [...]
And on and on and on across America each day, this same tragedy is played out of a small percentage of Americans committing violent crimes at rates far exceeding their proportion of the general population.
The obvious problem is that Victor Hanson would never suggest that we profile white guys because he just read a story about a school shooting perpetrated by a young white kid in Connecticut, a disgruntled employee going on a shooting rampage in rural Kentucky, or a man firing his gun into the air and hitting a child on the fourth of July.
Even if you give Hanson the benefit of the doubt and assume he’s simply naive rather than overtly racist, consider this:
I offer one final surreal footnote to this strange juxtaposition of reading the real news while listening to the mytho-history that a Eric Holder constructed from the death of Trayvon Martin to indict both the police and the public.
What were the names of two of the men suspected of being the ones who last week shot it out with the Santa Rosa jeweler as Eric Holder demagogued the Trayvon Martin shooting?
Traveon Banks-Austin and Alexander Tyvon Brandon.
Get it? Their names were Traveon Banks-Austin and Alexander Tyvon Brandon.
That sounds black, doesn’t it? They must be violent felons, right? Up to no good. I bet they’re plotting to steal your bicycle right now.
Victor Davis Hanson sounds like the name of a serial killer with a fetish for wearing women’s garments, but I certainly wouldn’t suggest that his name alone justifies exercising extreme caution around him.