XPost: alt.politics.republicans, talk.politics.guns, sac.politics   
   XPost: talk.politics.medicine   
   From: athletics@vanguard.edu   
      
   You will have heard by now of Ahmaud Arbery, the 25-year-old   
   black man shot dead on a street outside Brunswick, Ga., in   
   February. Prosecutors initially declined to press charges in the   
   case, saying that the alleged perpetrators, a white father and   
   son, Gregory and Travis McMichael, had used legitimate force.   
   Then video surfaced of the incident in which the unarmed black   
   man is seen running down the street, seems to be confronted by   
   the McMichaels, and is shot at point-blank range by the men,   
   both of whom have now been charged with murder.   
      
   You probably haven’t heard of Paul and Lidia Marino. The couple,   
   86 and 85 years old, were shot dead a week ago while visiting a   
   veterans’ cemetery in Bear, Del., where their son, who died in   
   2017, is buried. The authorities have so far been unable to   
   establish a motive for the killing, but they identified a   
   suspect, Sheldon Francis, a 29-year-old black man, later found   
   dead after an exchange of fire with the police.   
      
   As far as I can tell, from news databases and online searches,   
   other than local newspapers and TV, and a brief story by the New   
   York Post, the death of the Marinos, who were white, has gone as   
   unremarked as their lives. Mr. Arbery’s death, by contrast, has   
   become one of those crimes that some who control our public   
   discourse have decided is a “teachable moment.”   
      
   Millions of words have been devoted to exploring and explaining   
   the moral of the killing. It has been widely described as a   
   “lynching.” We have been reminded once again of the prevalence   
   of unequal and violent treatment of minorities. We’ve been told   
   once again that the killing reflects the daily reality of life   
   in America for young blacks. This teaching moment has turned   
   into a continuous, ubiquitous lecture series on the unalterably   
   racist nature of America.   
      
   We don’t yet know the full facts behind either of these   
   killings. Mr. Arbery’s certainly looked ugly, and whatever his   
   killers and some neighbors allege he may have been doing on that   
   street on a sunny afternoon, he clearly did not deserve to be   
   gunned down. We will learn no doubt soon whether his killers did   
   indeed have racist motives.   
      
   Perhaps, meanwhile, the murder of the Marinos was a random act   
   of violence, a deranged killer, a robbery that savagely   
   escalated. But whatever the motive, I’d be willing to wager a   
   small fortune that we won’t hear much more about it.   
      
   Some will say that’s as it should be. Mr. Arbery’s killing is   
   simply more representative of the nature of race relations in   
   America.   
      
   But from the simple perspective of hate crimes, this isn’t   
   right. According to the latest official data from the Justice   
   Department, there were indeed more than twice as many antiblack   
   hate crimes as there were antiwhite hate crimes in 2018. But if   
   you adjust the figures for the relative size of each group in   
   the total U.S. population, they show that blacks are 50%   
   overrepresented among perpetrators of hate crimes, while whites   
   are about 25% underrepresented.   
      
   In a larger sense, some will say, the much greater attention   
   given to white attacks on blacks is justified because of the   
   nature of socioeconomic relations between the races. Certainly,   
   given the nation’s history and continuing social inequalities, a   
   heightened sensitivity should be accorded evidence of racist   
   violence by white people.   
      
   But we have gone way beyond heightened sensitivity, to the point   
   of complete distortion of reality. Almost every instance of   
   white violence against minorities is held up now as a bleak   
   model of the state of the nation, while almost every instance of   
   black violence against whites is ignored.   
      
   This selective, exclusive narrative isn’t just confined to the   
   typical media channels. It’s embedded in the very way in which   
   most of us acquire knowledge of the world.   
      
   Here’s an experiment. If you Google “blacks shot by whites” you   
   get a predictable list of results heavily populated with   
   articles about police violence. Google “whites shot by blacks”   
   and, curiously, you get essentially the same set of results. The   
   Google algorithm doesn’t even seem to acknowledge the   
   possibility of black-on-white violence.   
      
   No fair person disputes the proposition that racism remains a   
   continuing reality and blight on American life. But the   
   systematic misrepresentation of the facts, the highly selective   
   choice of stories, the one-sided nature of the reporting and the   
   routine exclusion of countervailing evidence only risk making it   
   worse.   
      
   Corrections & Amplifications   
   Ahmaud Arbery was killed outside the city of Brunswick, Ga., in   
      
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