By Colin Flaherty
The New York Times no longer just ignores racial violence. Now the Gray Lady actively denies it.
Over the weekend, the New York Times questioned whether recent reports of black mob violence in the form of the “Knockout Game” are really just “urban legends.” Like Big Foot.
NBC, ABC and other networks were happy to follow the leader: They produced similar stories detailing the attacks — denying racial violence has anything to do with them.
As much as The Times wishes the Knockout Games were just another urban legend, here’s the difference: Big Foot is alive. And on videos, thousands of them, showing black mob violence that local press often dismisses as “random” attacks from “unruly teenagers.”
In St. Louis, where the Knockout Game first gained popularity, a judge two years ago said one man alone was responsible for 300 cases of the Knockout Game.
But The Times ignored that.
The newspaper editor says stories about black mob violence without statistics are anecdotal. Cherry picking. But people who present statistics are accused of stereotyping. Profiling.
Either way, following The Times formula, reporters produce stories like over the weekend in Philadelphia, where the local NBC affiliate reported on the latest example of the Knockout Game without citing its central organizing feature: The race of the attacker. And the race of the victim.
The NBC affiliate picks up the story:
The male victim was riding his bike along the 900 block of Catherine Street in the Bella Vista section of the city just before 8 p.m. on Friday when he was randomly punched by a group of teens, police said.
After being hit, police say the cyclist asked the group — made up of five teen boys and three teen girls — why they hit him. Without answering, the group then continued beating the man.
First things first: The attack was not random. The attackers were black. The victim was white. Fitting a pattern of dozens of cases of black mob violence in Philadelphia over the last two years. Many documented in White Girl Bleed a Lot: The Return of Racial Violence and How the Media Ignore it.
In one of the Philadelphia attacks, the victim asked the same question. But got a different answer:
“Why are you doing this?” the victim asked his attackers.
“Its not our fault you can’t fight,” they said, laughing. As they continued to beat him.
Trevor Godfrey knows the Knockout Game is real. He lived it, too. Last year in Springfield, Missouri, the president of a black fraternity was having a party when Trevor, who lived next door, went to open his car door.
Twenty black people from the party stood 20 feet away.
“Do you play football?” one asked him.
Trevor does not remember answering. He does not remember the punches breaking bones in his face. Or the teeth getting knocked out. Or the seizures he was having when his roommates found him soon after.
“The same people attacked one of the roommates earlier,” said Sherry Godfrey, Trevor’s mom, who recently appeared on the Sean Hannity to talk about her Knockout Game experience. “And another college student a few weeks later. But they were never arrested. Nor did the story make local papers until one year later.”
Mayor Francis Slay of St. Louis knows the Knockout Game is real. Slay and his bodyguard had just left a Pink Floyd tribute show and were riding by a city library in October 2011 when they saw a man in the gutter, unconscious.
That man was 51-year old Matt Quain, who had been on his way home from a local grocery story, ready to celebrate a Cardinals’ victory in the World Series. The Post-Dispatch reports some of the details:
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