Sunday, May 27, 2007

Reverse racism?

Front page news articles are usually reserved for such things as murder, terrorism, hate crimes and infringements on human rights. So could someone please explain to me WHY a torturous rape and murder of a young couple from Tennessee has not been thrust into the spotlight?

Is it possible that it’s because the victims were white? Yes, that’s right. White. We typically think of racism being devoted to minorities. However, although rare, there is such a thing as reverse racism.

Take the case at hand. Twenty one year old Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, 23. Two white Americans that suffered a horribly violent, sadistic death. This couple was carjacked and kidnapped. Raped and murdered. They were forced to watch each other’s torture. Christopher had his penis cut off while he was still alive. Channon was still alive when her breast was removed. In the end they were strangled and shot. They were both set on fire. Hard to imagine a worse death.

So why haven’t we heard more about it? The police have made their arrests. Five men and a woman. They were all African American. The crime has not yet been labeled a hate crime, to my knowledge.

It saddens me that something so heinous could be being swept under the rug because of color. When James Byrd, was drug behind a truck in 1998 by animals that call themselves men, it was all over the news. And rightfully so. His murder was an atrocity. Imagine the fear and pain that man felt. He, like Channon and Christoper, met a horrible end for something as shallow as hate.

In the end, if you were the one being tortured, would it matter what color of skin the person torturing you had? Wouldn’t you want justice to be colorblind?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

What the hell? I had not heard about this but I researched it online and read about it. If that's not a hate crime, I don't know what is! Maybe it is racism.

Anonymous said...

That's stupid. How come I haven't heard of this? I guess that's your point, right?

apanickingharlequingirl said...

that's so horrible. we have actually tried to cover reverse racism in our school newspaper because it is so repulsive (i don't think it ever got in, tho, as it was too "dangerous"). it just makes me want to scream.

honestly, why is it that if i, a white person, say something about someone's skin color that i am automatically a racist, but other ethnicities can tease me all day long and no one would think a thing of it (maybe not "no one," but far fewer than if i were to say something to someone black than vice versa)?

back to your main point:

it's not racism that causes more blacks to be arrested than whites, it's that they commit more crimes. it's not to say that their commiting more crimes is not due to opression by whites, as i believe whites have slowed blacks' progress and caused them to turn to illegal activities to get the money necessary for improved living conditions. so i think opressors of the past are to blame for blacks commiting more crimes than others, i do not believe that more blacks are arrested by police "because they're black." that's stupid.

Anonymous said...

I actually live near the town where that occured and I didnt hear all of the details about it. I just knew that they had been kidnapped I didnt even know that they had been tortured. Its kind of bad that I didnt know all the details of an event like this since I live only an hour away from the city where this occured.