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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1794 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for June 13, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I am saying the newspaper in the 60's was very different than today and given other headline and stories they wrote it's unlikely they decided to hide a black mans involvement

I disagree that they were not PC at the time. Look at what the SF mayor said about the zebra murders:

"DEATH ANGELS", a kind of reverse Ku Klux Klan, is based on the muddled aberrations clearly outside the mainstream of Islamic religions. In my opinion, it represents as much a potential threat to Blacks as to Whites. (Obvious Lie, that he tries to soften with “in my opinion”. As opposed to "in reality". And I suppose the KKK represents as much a potential threat to whites as to blacks) [...]

Special care must be taken by public officials and the police to prevent hate groups from converting a criminal investigation into a racial struggle. The inescapable fact of the matter is that most mass murderers of recent years - Manson, the Santa Cruz murderers, Corona, and Zodiac have been White (but they did not target black people). Murder knows no color (these murderers very much did know color) and must be fought without aggravating sensitive racial tensions.

Look at what the SF mayor said about the zebra murders:

What has that got to do with the New York Times? I think I showed that the specific paper at the time is unlikely to have been trying to cover up a black man committing murder by making the story a sensation all over again 2 weeks after it happened by writing a story about bystanders not acting, which is what this whole discussion is about. Not only would it have been counter-productive (they could just not have talked about it any more!), it doesn't fit with the other types of stories they were running. This appears to be more likely to be yellow journalism than trying to distract from a black man murdering Genovese.

You can do sensationalism and flatten NYT reader’s PC sensibilities at the same time.

'Woman raped! How horrible! And all those people did nothing while she screamed for help! We really live in a society! Imagine being there while he ripped her clothes off! We have failed collectively! Here's a movie of the event so you can vicariously live it, just as it was! But of course we need to interrogate what we as a people have done that it came to this horrible, yet fascinating experience, that requires solutions only the left can provide !'

While your racist uncle’s yellow journalism would go for the trope of the beastly black man towering over the virginal white woman etc.

I think I showed that the specific paper at the time is unlikely to have been trying to cover up a black man committing murder

It seems to me you tried to use that article as evidence of racist reporting from a racist time, but it backfired.

You said:

An investigative article by The New York Times claimed a connection between the Fruit Stand Riot and militant bands of anti-white youth gangs "trained to maim and kill" and "roam the streets of Harlem attacking white people"

as if this was an obviously ridiculous theory, that could only be a racist figment of NYT journos imagination. But something similar to this actually happened.

To go on another tangent, you lifted this whole sentence from this wiki article. This sentence is sourced by wiki by the NYT article I provided – in the article however, those quotes ("trained to maim and kill" and "roam the streets of Harlem attacking white people" ) do not appear. They were possibly paraphrased from “trained in karate and judo fighting techniques” and “connection with two other murders of whites in the Harlem area” by a wiki editor to make the NYT article’s reporting about anti-white groups seem more ridiculous and racist.

It seems to me you tried to use that article as evidence of racist reporting from a racist time, but it backfired.

What? No. My referencing that article was meant to illustrate that the newspaper would report on other actual black on white crimes. It may well have been sensationalized I am sure. But that's the whole point. That it is unlikely they sensationalized Genovese in order to cover up the involvement of a black man, because they were willing to report on (in possibly sensationalist ways) other black crimes.

To be clear I used that example to demonstrate not racism but that they did in fact report on such crimes while mentioning black criminals. I think you have entirely misunderstood my position. I don't think that story was ridiculous and racist particularly. You seem to have imputed that yourself. I didn't say anything like that at all. My post should be read at face value.

Maybe. It’s fair to say there is some inferential distance between us. Anyway, my contention was not that the NYT will outright refuse to report on every black crime or report a black perp as a white perp, but that they are desperate for any mitigating circumstances and alternative narratives they can spin concerning black crime. To the point of concocting a story about 38 people doing nothing when a rape-murder was in progress.

Inferential distance is nothing to do with this. We're supposed to both say what we mean and assume that people are saying what they mean here. You inferred something from what I wrote, that I did not say, which says more about you than me I think. I take very seriously that we are supposed to try and communicate openly and charitably here. So perhaps reflect on that. Especially as you also did the same for the OP.

In any case (and again without assuming motivations of the OP being coy, just taking what he said at face value), it is unlikely that people did not intervene because the attacker was black. Because some people did intervene and because many of the witnesses only heard things, and therefore weren't aware in there was an attack at all let alone that the attacker was black.

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