Furious about BP Hate Crime (St. Paul, Brooklyn Park: 2009, renting, attorneys)

[michael31681]

i would rather deal with the 1 ass whipping he got then get jump by all the black kid in anderson d everyday. and i mean everyday and the black teachers didnt give a damn. 1992 anderson d only 3 white kids. all im trying to say is all racism should be addressed not just white on black. and its not!

[uptown_urbanist]

When it comes to middle school kids beating up other middle school kids it isn't really front page news, unfortunately; maybe in situations like that students have to demand that action be taken, report things to police if it's bad enough, send out their own press releases, and force action to be taken. In this particular case the details were so obscene (the axes, the fact that the teen was autistic, etc.) coupled with the Obama threat (which tied it in nicely to larger news topics, like rises in hate crimes, etc.), and the fact that the people actually were arrested made it a story.

(and yeah, I know there's racism against white people, too; I attended Anwatin in the early '90s, and saw plenty of it first-hand.)

Actually, while the hate aspect of this (and other) crimes horrifies me, it's not the most important thing. It doesn't sound like these guys were trying to send a systematic message to all black people, they were just attacking these individual people for the "fun" of it. Who's to say that it wasn't a crime of opportunity, and that if the first person they happened to see was a different race (or gender, or age, or whatever) that they wouldn't have done the same thing? This sort of thing is wrong no matter what the race or the ethnicity of both the victims and the thugs.

Crime does, of course, get covered unevenly. A much milder incident somewhere like Edina is going to get a lot more coverage than the same thing in a neighborhood with a higher crime rate.

[Alodom7]

Originally Posted by michael31681

incidents like these happen often. i dont think goldburg was trying to say what happend in bp is not important. but im a white person and went to school at anderson d, wilder, roosevelt and i have spent alot of time in black neighborhoods and i got my ass kicked for being white on many occasions growing up and i told people what happend and it did not make it on the 5 oclock news. white kids get beet up and jumped by black kids all the time just for being white. when is the last time anybody saw a black on white racist crime on the news? does that mean that it dosent happen or its just tolerated? have you ever heard a black person stand up for a white person who was miss treated for the color of there skin? ever? even one time? its almost as if the word racism to black people means white people miss treat black people for the color of there skin and that only.

I've grown up around white kids and black kids. It may not be the most politically correct thing to say, but kids fight, not all kids fight, but many of them do. If you were beat up by black kids and you grew up in the black neighborhood, it was more in direct correlation for their disdain of your personality. There is a chance that they did not like you, not because you were white, but because of your personality. Furthermore about a year ago there were a group of black kids starting a fight with these two white guys, one even punched him twice, I got out of my car and they ran away, I went ahead and asked him where he lived he said he wanted to go to Plymouth or to his dad's house in Minneapolis. My direct response was no problem and I went ahead and dropped him home. I am 300% sure that I was not the only one that saw what happened, but I was the only one that helped him out. I agree about your comments about reverse racism to a certain degree, however when you turn on the television and see Al Sharpton making an issue out of the most popular race related story, please understand that those people do not represent the black community, Al Sharpton represents Al Sharpton. If I ever see someone that is black doing anything negative towards another race, that is not justified, I always say something. I will never make the news for it, and I do not want that kind of attention, because it blows the situation up instead of stopping it when it started. Anyone can easily assess that those two guys are men; not school aged kids, therefore it is unacceptable action for any race, anyone that justifies their actions really needs to consider a thorough self evaluation as to who they are and want they want out of life.

[whoopsie goldburg]

i can't even count the number of times i've had a black guy randomly say something racist to me walking down the street, because i wouldn't bum a smoke or give up any change, or simply because i made the mistake of looking them in the eye. but what do you think would happen if i decided to give them a taste of their own medicine and drop an n-bomb or two? i'd end up on a morgue slab. it is a ridiculous double standard, and i'm impressed that minneapolitans are actually acknowledging it on this thread.

[nick is rulz]

blah blah blah its so unfair blah blah double standard blah blah how come we cant have White Entertainment Television etc etc vomit

[uptown_urbanist]

What does that have to do with the crime in BP? Racist or rude comments from guys on the street are a completely different issue than an assault.

Most people, regardless of race, don't think it's acceptable to go around on the street assaulting (or even just verbally abusing) people based on their race. Yes, it happens, but to turn this incident into a venue to complain about double standards is to miss the big picture that crimes like this don't belong in our communities, period.

[michael31681]

whatever i dont care about the crime. who cares maybe they just beet the kid up because they didnt like his personality. maybe no racist comments were made at all. nobody really knows. maybe the kid said something to the white kids.

[uptown_urbanist]

Wait a minute here. You expect people to care when you're beat up by people you're own age (which I agree is unacceptable) yet you "don't care" when two people (one autistic teen, one adult) get threatened with axes, robbed, forced to strip, and beaten (and not my kids, either; these were not 8th graders punching a fellow 8th grader, they were adults)? From all reports so far the people in question were doing nothing; the teenage victim was just riding his bike home at night.

Even if he had said something (which sounds like it was not the case), most people would agree that going around and assaulting people just because they're rude or you don't like their personality is not acceptable to society. Normal people, non-criminal people, do not consider this sort of thing okay.

And again, to point out the obvious, this was NOT a junior high brawl.

[Slig]

People's reactions to this story are almost as disturbing as the story itself. For some reason it kind of reminds me of when people had a fit when the story was released about the assault at Valley Fair of a 14 year old girl and then her father got beat up when he tried to defender her. The story wasn't specific about the victim and it is likely that many people thought that the girl and her father were white while the perpetraitors were all pictured as young black men. Then everyone suddenly shut up about it when more details were released and people found out it was a black on black crime. Anybody remember this?

Anybody else think there would've been far less controversey and rage about the van/bus accident that killed those elementary school kids in Cottonwood a while back if it had involved a young white girl as opposed to an undocumented Hispanic woman? Agreed it was a horrible tragedy but it would be a lie to say that the explosion of media coverage and angered reactions didn't have as much to do with the driver's immigration status than the circumstance of the accident itself.

The contrary reactions to this story seem to fit in the same category as those other two stories. It disappoints me that people can't look beyond race/immigration status and look at everyone as human beings. What happened in Brooklyn Park was a horrible crime and given the information that was released it sounds like beyond targeting a certain race that the victims did not know the aggressors meaning it was a random crime and that's what makes it even more scary in my opinion. Add this to the same bucket as the random assaults at Lake Phalen and the random beatings in Coon Rapids off of Coon Rapids blvd, except with alleged racial intentions.

[steveorbs]

life isn't fair, this sucks