On the other hand, if a minority commits a violent crime and the victim is white, that does not make it beyond the local media.

That is the inescapable conclusion of a NewsMax.com survey of events over a period of months.

The Wichita Rampage
The most egregious recent example concerns a crime rampage in Wichita, Kan.

Two young black brothers, Reginald and Jonathan Carr, have been charged with a quadruple homicide.

The Shreveport Times, one of the few out-of-state media outlets to give this story any publicity at all, described the chronology of the crime in which the two men abducted five white young adults and shot them execution-style, according to the allegations in police reports. 

According to police:
It began on a night in mid-December when the brothers kicked in the door of a home shared by three young professionals. Two women were there for an engagement party. While one held the five people at gunpoint, the other loaded up a van with two TVs, a computer, dishes, bedding, luggage, credit cards and wallets.

They also found a diamond ring.

"That was for you," Jason Befort told one of the young women. "I was going to ask you to marry me."

The Carr brothers then forced the young people to take them to automatic teller machines and withdraw money.

So that’s a sheer case of robbery, right? Where’s the "hate crime"?

There’s more. Apparently not at all satisfied with the heist, the Carrs then drove their victims to a soccer field and took turns raping the women while the three men were forced to watch. Then the men were forced to commit homosexual acts on each other. Then each was forced to have sex with the women while the Carr brothers drank beer and laughed.

Four of them did indeed die. But the fifth, Jason Befort’s fiancée, feigned death, then got up, bleeding from head to toe, and walked a mile in subzero weather to the nearest house, where an elderly couple called 911.

It was later learned that this was the last stop on a crime rampage wherein the two black men had robbed a convenience store, kidnapped a man the next day and pistol-whipped him after forcing him to withdraw money from an ATM before letting him go, and violently robbed a 55-year-old cellist with the Wichita Symphony Orchestra and shot her in the spine. She died about three weeks later.

The district attorney in Wichita has concluded none of these crimes was motivated by racial hatred.

That has drawn a howl of protest from many in the community. Aside from the fact that the victims were of a different racial group from the perpetrators, they note the following:

1. The extreme sadism and violence went way beyond what was necessary to successfully complete a robbery.

2. As far as anyone knows, there was no warrant issued to search the residences of the accused to determine if they may have been motivated by racial hate literature.

3. There is no record of questioning close friends, family, neighbors or associates to determine if the two brothers had at any time expressed anti-white bigotry.

NewMax.com asked the local newspaper, the Wichita Eagle, to send us the original story of the violence involving the Carr brothers, which was done. However, when we later asked for any information as to possible controversy on the "ethnic" or "cultural" angles to the crime, the newspaper did not respond. 

The question is relevant in light of the coast-to-coast, wall-to-wall, night-after-night coverage of the outrageous murders of Matthew Shepherd, a gay man in Wyoming, and James Byrd Jr., a black man in Texas. In both of these cases, law enforcement authorities went the extra mile to establish that a "hate crime" had been committed. Why, critics wonder, has there been no publicly acknowledged similar investigation in the Wichita case?

Other examples of a news blackout of reverse "hate crimes" include:

In Arkansas, two homosexuals were charged with sodomizing and killing 13-year-old Jesse Dirkhising. The boy died from suffocation after being bound, gagged with underwear in his mouth, blindfolded, taped to the bed, and sodomized by one gay man while the other gay man watched. 

This happened shortly after the Matthew Shepherd killing. The latter was big national news. For months, the former did not get beyond the borders of Arkansas. Even after the Washington Times ran the story, the rest of the national media did not give it significant coverage.

On Feb. 28, a story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported on Mardi Gras or "Fat Tuesday" celebrations in that city wherein 72 people were treated in hospitals, including two with "life-threatening" injuries. The PI story makes no mention of a racial angle. But one of its accompanying photos shows at least five black men surrounding a white woman in what appears to be a threatening manner. Has a "hate crime" investigation begun in this case?

A convicted child molester, Nathaniel Bar-Jonah, was released by Massachusetts authorities only to be nabbed a few years later in Montana, charged with butchering a 10-year-old boy in Great Falls and dining on his remains with unsuspecting friends. Was the nation informed by the national media of this possible "hate crime"?

Most of the world is well aware of the New York City police officers charged with shooting a black man whom they mistook for a wanted rapist. The officers were ultimately acquitted, but not before a long trial filled with political ramifications.

Question: Does the uneven "justice" meted out to the officers in these two cases in and of itself constitute a "hate crime" of sorts? 

In 1999, a gunman entered a Fort Worth Baptist Church and massacred seven people, shouting, "I can’t believe you believe this junk!"

ABC’s Dean Reynolds said the FBI found "writings that condemned religion and law enforcement." But did the media that had tried to connect Matthew Shepherd’s murder with religious conservatives now use that same standard to make a connection in this case with those who castigate religion? 

No national media outlet mentioned this as a "hate crime." Instead, this was an opportunity to beat the drum for the old left-wing chestnut, "gun control."

In June of last year, New York City’s annual Puerto Rican Day parade was the scene of violence against more than 50 women. 

The Electronic Telegraph reported: "Reeking of alcohol and marijuana, 15 to 25 men surged through the busy south-east corner of the [Central] park … spraying their victims with water and beer, tearing off their clothes and sexually abusing them."

Later, National Review would comment that "the New York Times and liberals in general are bending over backwards to avoid the simple observation that the young men who harassed and assaulted women in Central Park were all blacks and Hispanics."

No national TV outcry about "hate crimes" here.

The New York police, in this case, were accused of not moving aggressively enough to rescue the women and dealing with the perpetrators. Some believed that with the battering the police had taken from racial demagogues in the city, police officers did not relish another political assault accompanying TV videos of the uniformed police night-sticking minorities. It was as if they were saying, "Next time you need a cop, call Al Sharpton."

The Unabomber-Gore Connection

The Oklahoma City bombing, which was, in reality, mass murder, resulted in a Clintonian assault on conservative talk show hosts and the Republican House leadership, notwithstanding the lack of any connection whatsoever.

But when the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski was collared in Montana and found with Al Gore’s "Earth in the Balance" heavily underlined, no dots were connected there in any national news stories or, of course, at the Clinton White House.

Examples are endless. Many thoughtful Americans are wondering when and if we are going to get back to considering a violent crime an abominable act regardless of who is the perpetrator or the victim. 

Columnist Paul Craig Roberts says the assault on white males has been going on for three decades. He compares it to the assault on Jews by German intellectuals during the half century before the rise of Hitler.

There are those who note that George W. Bush drew 27 percent of the black vote when he sought re-election as governor of Texas in 1998. This is phenomenal for a Republican and perhaps a sign that the president who says he is "a uniter, not a divider" can finally bring the country together despite his failure to do as well with the black vote in his run for president.

His opposition to a Texas "hate crimes" bill indicates President Bush considers this kind of legislation to be divisive. Judges and juries have the responsibility of determining, case by case, when a violent crime merits extra punishment for an especially evil motive.

Many who have ventured to speculate on the outlook for the 21st century see a picture that is not pretty. They see terrorism on the rise on American soil, to say nothing of threats of nuclear and biological warfare.

It can be argued that at this juncture of our history, Americans need each other as never before, and that we can best help each other with a de-emphasis on "tribal prejudice" and an increasing emphasis on the commonality of our experience as Americans.

See more articles about "hate crimes."