Lessons Learned

Not so long ago, "civil rights" activists and the left-wing news media put Jena, Louisiana in the national spotlight because, as Thomas Sowell put it:

The issue is the prosecution of a black high school student accused of stomping on an unconscious white student -- and the lack of criminal prosecution of white students who hung a noose on a tree, who were disciplined by the school.

Liberals' skills at moral equivalence have been so finely honed during the long years of the Cold War that they have turned this into a case of "unequal treatment," based on race -- as if putting a noose on a tree is equivalent to stomping somebody who is unconscious. [bold added]

Sowell's piece explores the morally outrageous behavior of the corrupt civil rights establishment as well as some some retaliatory thuggishness by some white supremacists, and correctly concludes, "The last thing the South needs is a return to lynch-mob justice, whatever the color of whoever is promoting it."

At the risk of gilding the lily, let me add that "mob justice" is a contradiction in terms.

As if that festival of moral equivalence and contempt for rule of law weren't enough, it would appear that its sub-themes of censorship and tolerance for violent behavior by black youths have been absorbed by the culture and applied. Not to condone race-baiting, but every noose -- and every off-hand remark about a noose -- it seems, gets a government inquiry and national headlines whether warranted or not.

In the meantime, it seems that children of about the same age as those in Jena, Louisiana, have picked up on the implicit message that beating white people up is not really such a big deal. Combine this message with the fashionable notion that whites have it coming to them for past injustices by (other) whites against (other) blacks and almost anyone can see where this was heading.

Twice it appears, black youths in Baltimore have attacked white bus riders recently.

There has apparently been another bus beating on an MTA bus in Baltimore.

WBAL-TV reports that two men aboard the #64 bus in Brooklyn claim they were attacked by a group of 7 black teens. The two men say they were attacked because they were white. They also claim the bus driver refused to call police for them.

The two men suffered cuts and bruises.

The MTA says it is investigating the claim.

This comes less than a week after a white woman was beaten on a bus. 9 black middle school students have been arrested in that case.

In the first instance, the victim was a woman. As quoted from news reports by Michelle Malkin:

As Sarah Kreager, 26, tried to sit down on a Baltimore City bus Tuesday, police say, a middle-schooler told her she couldn't. When she attempted to take another seat, a middle-schooler wouldn't let her. Finally, according to police, Kreager just sat down.

She was "immediately attacked" by nine students -- three females and six males -- from Robert Poole Middle School. They punched and kicked her at 2:59 p.m. at the intersection of 33rd Street and Chestnut Avenue, according to Maryland Transit Administration police.

Kreager was dragged off the bus and her boyfriend, Troy Ennis, attempted to get her back on, police said.

She sustained "serious injuries" and had to be transported to the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center, according to a police report.

Except for the races of the victim and her attackers, this story sounds like it comes straight from the annals of the Jim Crow era.

That there has been a massive outrage and a vocal defense of the six hooligans from Jena -- but a deafening silence over this -- speaks volumes about the depths to which the "civil rights" establishment has sunk.

Unfortunately, children from around the country appear to be hearing and applying the message from today's "civil rights" leadership, which I summarize as this: "It's okay to attack white people if you're black."

I somehow doubt that this is the glorious ideal of Martin Luther King's dreams.

As Ayn Rand once put it so eloquently, "The smallest minority is the individual." It is precisely this minority that race-baiting leftist and white supremacist alike seek to oppress. The fight for the only real minority rights -- individual rights -- will not be anywhere close to over until all instances of racially-motivated thuggery are greeted with the same degree of moral outrage by everyone.

-- CAV