There is plenty more—but just as interesting will be how
the Mainstream Media will treat these facts.
Back in 1999, we released
an earlier, less detailed version of this report. [PDF] Even before
publication, the Associated Press, Time, CBS Evening News,
National Public Radio, Knight-Ridder, and the Washington
Times wanted copies. A dozen other media organizations,
including the Washington Post, attended the press conference with
which we launched the report. At the same time, we arranged
to have copies delivered to more than 450 news organizations
with offices in the Washington, DC area.
The result: complete silence—with one exception. The Washington
Times ran a substantial story on the report, in which
it interviewed several prominent criminologists who confirmed
the accuracy of our numbers but said they were too inflammatory
to be discussed
publicly. [VDARE.COM note:
One other exception: Dr. Walter Williams, in his Creator's
Syndicate column.]
Maybe no other editors thought people are interested in race and crime.
Or maybe they were afraid people are too interested.
Some years back, a group called Violence Free Duluth in Duluth,
Minnesota, studied a year's worth of the city's gun crimes.
They looked into type of gun used, whether liquor
or drugs
were involved, the relationship between shooter and victim;
age, race, and sex of criminal, etc.
But when they released their report they left one
thing out: race of perp.
Frank
Jewell, head of the organization, explained that "we
didn't include it because it might be misinterpreted."
Duluth's deputy police chief Robert
Grytdahl added that race might distract whites from the
real problem: "It's a comfortable place for white people
to park the [gun crime] problem. It would be a huge
distraction, and we wanted to focus on firearms." [Duluth
Gun, Crime Study Withholds Race Data, [Pay Archive]
By Larry Oakes, Minneapolis Star Tribune, April 30,
1999.]
Mr. Jewell and Mr. Grytdahl are saying, almost in
so many words, that the people of Duluth can't be trusted
with the truth.
Duluth is about 90 percent white. What if it turned out most
of the gun crime was committed by the other 10 percent?
Someone might think Duluth has, not a gun problem, but a
minority problem.
When an organization deliberately suppresses its findings
like this, it is not doing research: it is putting out propaganda.
It is impossible to know whether the national media suppressed
the findings in our earlier report or just didn't think they
were newsworthy.
But if they thought no one was interested in race and crime
they were wrong. Radio talk show hosts
greeted the report with shouts of joy.
Over the years, I have spoken on hundreds of radio programs.
But no other subject has ever caught the attention of hosts
and listeners the way this one did.
Over and over, I was asked to stay on the program longer
than scheduled because listeners could not get enough. Producers
called up a week later and had me back again because listeners
demanded it. Some producers even called because they had heard
me on a rival station and wanted a piece of the ratings bonanza.
Most whites lose the power of speech when the subject is
race, but they can tuck right into a purely factual discussion
of crime rates. Everybody—and I mean everybody—knows
blacks commit crime way
out of proportion to their numbers. People want to know
just how way out the proportions are.
Needless to say, some listeners didn't want to hear that
blacks are in
jail for robbery at 15 times the white rate. A surprising
number of black callers claimed our "racist" white
government cooks the statistics. Most white callers said one
of two things: either that I was "racist" or that I
was brave. (Somehow, no one ever thought I was a brave racist.)
It is a sorry day in America when you are either brave or
racist if you dig up and publicize crime data the Department
of Justice has been collecting for decades.
The main point of the "racism" accusation was that,
even if the numbers were true, publicizing them only encourages
other "racists" and feeds stereotypes. This is the
Frank Jewell argument: White people can't be trusted with
the facts.
Of course, the Internet makes
it hard to keep facts under
the rug. People know the big media are
full
of pablum; that's why they come to sites like VDARE.COM
and my own American Renaissance.
In fact, more and more people are laughing outright at mainstream
prudery. When I talked about crime on the radio, talk-show
hosts were exultant: "You didn't read about this in the
Baltimore
Sun did you? That's right, folks, this is where you
get the real news."
This time around, it would be pleasant if AP or the LA Times wrote
about The Color of Crime.
But we're not counting on it.
The internet and talk radio will get the word out—and big
media will sink just a little further in the minds of people
who are tired of being told they can't be trusted with the
truth.
Jared Taylor (email him) is editor of American Renaissance and the author of Paved
With Good Intentions: The Failure of Race Relations in Contemporary
America. (For Peter Brimelow’s review,
click here.) He is sorry his organization is too poor to give
away free copies of The Color
of Crime, and urges you to buy
it here—$8.95 each, ten copies for $60.
