I know I’m a little late catching on to this article, but I just found out about it this morning. If you have not read Pitt’s latest article “Enough With Phony White Victimhood”, here is an excerpt below.
It always amazes me when white people put on the victim hat. As in victim of racial oppression. By any measure — health, education, economics, employment — white Americans enjoy a superior standard of living. If that’s racial oppression, sign me up.
But still, one occasionally hears mewling noises from that subset of my white countrymen who feel put-upon by big, bad racial minorities. This is one of those times. And Knoxville, Tenn., has become the capital city of that lunatic fringe.
It seems that in January, a young white couple, Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, were victims of a brutal crime. They were carjacked, kidnapped and raped. Cleaning fluid was sprayed into Christian’s mouth. She was stuffed in a trash can and apparently suffocated. Newsom was shot and set afire. His body was dumped. Five blacks, one a woman, have been arrested.
The story made headlines around Knoxville. It was unnoticed nationally.
That has changed. A constellation of white supremacists and conservative bloggers has pushed the story into the national limelight as illustration of their argument that news media, constrained by political correctness, refuse to report black-on-white crime while pulling out all the stops when crime is white on black, as in the Duke University lacrosse debacle.
I would see their Duke case and raise them a Central Park jogger, but what do I know?
Anyway, bloggers such as Michael Oliver have chastised the “liberal, biased, mainstream media” for missing the Knoxville story. He asked, “Had the roles been reversed, would the media ignore such a horrific crime?”
Truth is, media ignore horrific crimes all the time. Space is limited and growing more so. Which means the story that catches fire usually has some element beyond gruesomeness to sell it. In the Duke case, it was class, privilege, sex and race that did it. (more…)
According to one website, it seems that there are some White supremacists who are threatening Pitts with his life. I saw one site that actually placed the directions to his home via Google Earth. Just insane!
The only part of his commentary that I find to be debatable is the first paragraph. When it comes to Black/White relations in this country, “victimhood” is a credit card both sides are guilty of maxing out. Just as we as Black folks feel that Whites are very dismissive of crime committed against us by other Whites, we oftentimes are just as dismissive when one of our own commits crime against them. The feeling that I get after reading his piece that that somehow one side is totally within reason to overplay the victim card than the other.
As far as “oppression” goes, while it is true that “…white Americans enjoy a superior standard of living…” in this country, it is also true that many Black Americans have also been able to enjoy many of those same standards in recent years (re: Blacks moving into entrepreneurship, new home ownership, the increase of Black buying power, etc.). The fact that we have been showing strong signs of progress in the last few decades is proof that “oppression” is a tag we can no longer claim as our own.
Other than that, having read Pitt’s other commentaries in the past, I think he is on point here.
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