Read White Girl Bleed a Lot Online

Authors: Colin Flaherty

Tags: #Political Science, #Civil Rights, #Social Science, #Ethnic Studies, #African American Studies, #Media Studies

White Girl Bleed a Lot (2 page)

BOOK: White Girl Bleed a Lot
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The denial is deep, so is the intimidation from those who do not wish anyone to talk about this topic. Gawker.com blamed the Drudge Report for bringing the epidemic of racial violence to our attention, saying the stories were “run-of-the-mill summer crime stories that happen to involve black people.”
9

Deniers always say the same thing: One, it does not exist. Two, here is why it does exist. Psychiatrists tell us we are only as sick as our secrets. Race is our biggest secret. It is a sickness we can end.

Police, media, and even victims may be unwilling to talk about racial violence, but the Internet—YouTube and Twitter specifically—tell the truth.

I first started reading about the racial crime and violence epidemic on Drudge while researching the topic for a talk radio show my brother and I host on WDEL in Wilmington, Delaware.

One story led to five, which led to twenty-five, which led to 125, and on and on. My writing has won more than fifty awards and has appeared in more than one thousand media outlets around the globe, including
The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe
, and
Miami Herald
.

Writing about race and crime is not new territory for me.
I used to be a ghostwriter for the first black chair of the US Commission on Civil Rights. I wrote a story that got a black person out of prison after he was unjustly convicted of trying to kill his white girlfriend. That was a big deal for NPR, the
Los Angeles Times
and others. I wrote several stories about fake hate crimes, and how the perpetrators suckered the daily papers into writing them. Today I write about racial violence and its denial for World Net Daily. Over the years I have found that writing about race can be treacherous, so here are my rules: no stereotypes, no generalizations, no explanations, and no apologies. Also, no causes or solutions. Just the facts.

As I started to unravel the threads of the attacks I read about on Drudge, it became clear right away that this was happening all over the country and had been for at least a year or two. It was also clear that newspapers were underreporting it—when they reported it at all.

But whenever I showed the YouTube videos or news accounts to a reporter, they would always say race had nothing to do with it. This denial was so widespread that I knew there was enough information for more than just a magazine article, so I published the first edition of this book in 2011. That opened the flood gates. Since then I have been gathering more examples of black mob violence from all over the country. Cities big and small. Places where you might expect it, and places where it came as a total surprise. Places like Peoria, Indianapolis, Charlotte, Gainseville, Springfield, and dozens of other unlikely cities both big and small.

Since then, I have compiled notes, gathered more accounts, and included QR codes to make the links easier to find. There are a lot of source URLs to pictures and videos that don’t just tell you about the events, they show you the actual events. If you are reading the e-book, just click on the video links throughout or the links to the articles in the endnotes. If you are reading the
print book and don’t have a smart phone, you can see all the links at WND.com. I’ll also keep current links posted at WhiteGirl-BleedaLot.com, because these links have a way of disappearing.

A lot of people buy this book for themselves and for their recalcitrant brother-in-law or co-worker who simply deny this is happening. I am grateful for all the support and Facebook friends, and for all the news tips, tweets and retweets, letters to reporters, and calls to talk radio. They made a big difference. I hope new readers will join the fight.

Most newspapers do not report on black mob violence. But the pictures tell the real story. So do the eyewitness accounts on the Internet. A reporter for a major daily paper in St. Louis defended his paper’s refusal to make any connection between race and violent crime by saying “everyone already knows who did it, anyway.”

Here we verify, not guess. While I rely on local news for facts about the attacks, for the racial identity of the attackers, most of the time I look at the pictures from the paper, YouTube, the Internet, and good old fashioned reporting.

In talking about racial crime and violence on our talk radio show, my brother and I have learned many people want to deny it, then explain it away. Underneath the denials and explanations are the crimes. That is what this book is about.

We are going to look at many stories of racial violence across this country from roughly 2009 to the present to show how widespread, violent, and detached these rioters are. We’ll look at the facts of the riots, the lawlessness, and the deniers. Then you can come to your own conclusions. Or even ideas about causes and solutions. But the facts of the violence must come first.

Let’s start in Philly.

1
THE PHILADELPHIA SYNDROME

If a liberal reporter gets beat up in a race riot, did it really happen?
“It’s not our fault you can’t fight.”

E
mily Guendelsberger had nothing to fear from black mob violence in Philadelphia. Despite the news reports of dozens of violent events in her neighborhood during 2009 and 2010, she dismissed it. It’s just not cool to notice the race of the attackers, so like the media and public officials, she pretended she didn’t.

Guendelsberger was an editor at
Onion Magazine
, a lifestyle guide for the hopelessly hip complete with gratuitous shots at Sarah Palin. Guendelsberger and her reporter buddies were the good guys, just out for an evening of fun in the urban core of South Philadelphia. And if the chance for racial violence was present, the adrenaline added a bit of spice.

In 2010 Guendelsberger wrote a column for the
Philadelphia Daily News
about why using the term “flash mob” to describe the large groups of black people organizing on Twitter belied a fundamental misunderstanding of what was happening.

Unprecedented racial violence? Nothing to worry about. Losing the term “flash mob” to another meaning? Now “them’s
some fightin’ words.”

In the two years prior to the night Guendelsberger and her band of urban pioneers were attacked, Philadelphia had seen dozens of episodes of racial mob violence. As I write this, the local news just finished a story on three black people who had been convicted of racial violence. The reporter said Philly had seen five cases of mob violence in the last year.

SCAN ME!

VIDEO: Minimalizing the Violence

I’m not sure how he’s defining “mob violence” because by my count there are many more than five episodes in Philadelphia. Many share the same characteristics: punching, stealing cell phones, laughing at the victims, sending text messages on stolen phones, fighting, and assaulting police officers. And what do the public officials and press do? Minimize, marginalize, deny, and even condone the behavior.
1

Even so, in June of 2011, Guendelsberger and her friends were quite surprised when their nonviolent liberal intentions did nothing but encourage a crowd of more than a thousand black people to assault her. One of the rioters told another victim that night, “it’s not our fault you can’t fight.”
2

The initial newspaper accounts say it was only forty people. That’s a mob in itself, but the reporters never mentioned that these were just an offshoot of the thousands of black people who had swarmed the upscale bars, restaurants, and shops in South Philadelphia with mayhem on their minds. They were running through the streets, assaulting people in restaurants, stealing phones and purses, and pulling people off bicycles. It was violent-very violent. And race was never mentioned.

Not one of the thousands cared enough to call the police or to help Guendelsberger and her friends when they were herded into an alley and beaten and robbed. The thugs were laughing the entire time. And no one came forward to identify the assailants.

“Stitches for snitches” is the urban omertà--the code of silence.

Guendelsberger was beaten up pretty badly. She suffered from a severely broken leg among other injuries. But she wasn’t hurt badly enough to get the picture. She told anyone who would listen that the attack was not racially motivated because, although all the assailants were black, her boyfriend was brown. Since he was beaten up too, but not as badly as she was, that supposedly proved her point that race had nothing to do with the attack. Anyone who thought differently was “racist” and “creepy,” she said.

In city after city the media and officials—and sometimes victims too—ignore, minimize, and even condone the racial element of the violence. Several commentors to an online article about the incident at the defunct AV Club website wondered why Guendelsberger could not acknowledge the racial component of the mob. They were met with scorn: “Unless you’re pointing that out to show how the whites have oppressed blacks, acknowledging that fact is racist.”

Philadelphia liberals, meet the Stockholm Syndrome.

Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter called Guendelsberger to thank her for calming any potential racial animosity that could have resulted from her attack. This was the same Mayor who had recently declared that an outbreak of racial violence was nothing to worry about and was really the fault of bad reporting. The police chief had backed up the mayor, and the district attorney said a high school diploma is the best anti-crime tool. Just one year and a few dozen attacks earlier, the mayor and his crew had assured the people of Philadelphia that the flash mob crimes would stop because, uh … they said they were going to stop them.
3

In 2010 Nutter told
The New York Times
the violence had “no racial component.” The official party line was that, yes, young people were committing these random acts of violence. But as for race? Nobody knew nuttin’ ’bout nuttin’, see?
4

YouTube videos showed thousands of black people roaming the streets of Philadelphia committing acts of vandalism, looting, and violence. But not a word from the press about the racial component of these crimes. There were lots of video cameras. Local affiliates had plenty of video footage, but no one had the nerve to say what the video screamed: all the attackers and looters were black. Even Al Jazeera had a story: “Flash mobs can be quite effective when multiple people turn up in one place to attract attention to a just cause. … They can, however, be terrifying when they’re violent and unnecessary, as we have seen in “the City of Brotherly Love.”
5

SCAN ME!

VIDEO: Flash Mob in Philly

Then came the testimonials from other victims.

Police had claimed that none of the injuries imposed by the mob was serious. Turns out they had not even checked. Ronnie Polaneczky, columnist for the
Philadelphia Inquirer
, checked. She found John, a maintenance mechanic, had suffered severe brain injury and facial fractures after he was pulled from a bike and beaten.
6

SCAN ME!

VIDEO: Macy’s Flash Rob

BOOK: White Girl Bleed a Lot
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