Last week in Fresno California, a black man randomly targeted white men on the streets  to fulfill his hateful homicidal intent. After the shootings and the death of three innocent people, the media gave the story slight coverage, then quickly moved on to other things happening in the news. This was after all a black man targeting white people. Nothing to see here folks. Go on about your business. They did not think that the racial dimension of the story was worth exploring in the same way that they did when the white supremacist Dylan Roof targeted nine black people in a South Carolina church. There were no symbols of so called “black  culture” on which to blame the shooting, the same way that everyone rushed to blame the confederate flag as a symbol of white hate, and part of the reason that Roof committed his crime. Now it is very important to stress that when someone is murdered; it does not matter what the ethnic or racial makeup of the killer is. It is no comfort that someone was killed in a mugging as opposed to a racially motivated killing. There is no redeeming factor in either unfortunate circumstance. In both circumstances a heinous crime was committed! The long arm of the law should reach out to grab a hold of the perpetrators and bring them to justice in either scenario.

In a world where politics plays into every aspect of our daily lives, it becomes very important to highlight the way that the racial component of events almost always causes a different response to events. We live in a country where one political party has for decades appealed to race as a means to attain and hold on to political power. It is a simple yet brilliant strategy that has worked quite swimmingly for this political party, but with a new media landscape where people have access to more information; the nefarious workings of this political party must be exposed, and their tactics laid bare. This political party has done tremendous harm by playing the race card over and over again, to the point where a large community of citizens actually believe that there is a plot, and an effort to subjugate them. This is the reason why the race patrol was so excited beyond measure after the South Carolina shooting a few years ago by the evil Dylan Roof. In their minds, this was another piece of proof positive that white America hates the black man. The event in their mind showed once and for all, that America is a cesspool of hatred with white people steeped in it. Except ladies and gentlemen, it is not true. Despite the grand standing by politicians and the media, despite the opportunistic efforts to display Dylan Roof as a portrait of America, he quite simply is not. Dylan Roof is no more indicative of any segment of America than the Fresno shooter who targeted white people when he ran amok targeting white people is indicative of America.

To ignore the racial aspect of the crime in each case would be irresponsible, because as a society we have to be honest and confront the issues that face us, but the hysteria that followed one incident and the failure to highlight the glaring truth in the other is irresponsible, inexcusable  and just plain wrong. Why the double standard in the coverage of these two racially motivated crimes? Once again, the answer is simple. One of the incidents plays into the narrative of the race industrial complex, the other does not. The situation involving the black killer does not benefit the political party that always positions itself to gain from the exploitation of these unfortunate events. It is the exact reason also why one of the most damaging acts of arson was committed by a black man as an act of revenge against “the system” and got largely ignored by the media, and went unnoticed by most of the country. The untold damage caused by this crime turned out to be one of the biggest structural fires ever in the history of Los Angeles county, and the disruption to people’s lives would have mattered more if the perpetrator was a white man, and his hateful act was directed instead at black people. Instead it was a black man affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement directing his hate at white people in general, and the police in particular, so it mattered little. We also did not see the type of outrage that is usually reserved for white on black hate crimes when four black teenagers tortured a young white disabled teenager in Chicago a few months ago. In that episode, one of the main concerns of the police was to stress that it was not a hate crime. The downplaying of the racial aspect of the so called knockout game is another area where we saw the double standard applied a few years ago.

In all of this, the desire here is not to portray white people as victims or black people as savages, but to show the dishonesty in the media, and to highlight how the politics of race is used as a powerful weapon in the arsenal of unscrupulous politicians and a propaganda tool by the media.  While constantly holding one group to an impossibly high standard, calling them racist for every unseemly act that they commit, they excuse and or deny all the misbehavior of people within the other group. This is how identity politics works. It is insidious, it is unjust, and it is wicked. People would do well to be aware of it, how it works, and who it is that continues to push it as part of a well thought out strategy.