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CNN: "Accused shooter in Kansas City shooting of Black teen who went to the wrong house is White man in his 80s" Archive: https://archive.is/NcFb5
Edit: Andrew Lester is the 84 year old white man and is facing charges of assault in the first degree and armed criminal action. Clay County attorney Zachary Thompson states there was a racial element but hate crimes is a lower charge so will not be brought. "There is no evidence that the teen entered the home and preliminary evidence shows Lester opened fire on the teen through a glass door with a .32 caliber revolver"
Ralph Yarl is the black teen that was shot outside of Kansas City, Missouri. Early it was reported that he was shot twice in the head but now his family's attorneys are saying that Yarl "shot twice and struck in the head and arm" and Yarl has now been released from the hospital and is recovering at home.
The white man in his 80's "was taken into custody on April 13 just before midnight and was released less than two hours later at 1:24 a.m. on April 14."
By all accounts I am seeing Ralph Yarl is a band geek which places my heuristic chances of aggression on his part as low. If I found the correct streets the subdivision is one of the last developments before hitting mostly farms and the street names are really confusing with the developer using the same number twice and then alternating between "Street" and "Terrace."
Of course, still waiting on details but in my opinion this could likely be what some people consider to be the quintessential example of a "racist" shooting. If that's the case and the only quibble between Red Tribe and Blue Tribe is if it would have made a difference if the kid was white or black does this story gain a much traction with that little toxoplasma or does it more go the way of the Eric Garner and Philando Castile killings?
Approximately none. Black on white violence isn't uncommon and doesn't generate much in the way of outrage at all.
I will register a prediction that the full story will not be very similar to a kid rang a doorbell and was then racistly shot for no reason at all. I don't know what happened, I don't have a specific hypothesis, and I am not jumping to blame the injured teen, I just bet that this is not what happened.
Agreed, it harkens back to Martin and Arbery, which is exactly why my inclination is to not believe that he was just an innocent jogger, armed only with Skittles, ringing a doorbell and being shot by an evil old racist for no particular reason.
Wait, Ben Crump again?
I am constantly amazed that Ben Crump is instantly the attorney of record in every single one of these cases. Somewhere out there, there has to be a bar association curious about how an out of state attorney becomes the family attorney of so many high profile cases without violating that jurisdiction's version of ABA 7.3.
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Precisely: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/phenix-city-woman-shot-killed-12-year-old-boy-who-was-rummaging-in-her-yard-da-says/ar-AA175axD
The above is the complete reverse of the above, except the white kid is 12 here. Race is not mentioned at all, though it shows the picture of the perpetrator.
Or another more blatant case of racial hatred: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/nbc-abc-cbs-and-cnn-show-zero-results-for-reports-on-the-5-year-old-white-child-allegedly-executed-by-black-25-year-old-neighbor
Snopes shot back, saying that nbc, CNN and ABC did write articles about the murder, albeit after the above article was written. Even so, note the headlines they give:
I took a quick look through half the above articles, they do not mention race in the text though they might show images of the victim and the accused. Now compare to the headlines for this incident from OP's links:
(it's like one of those light novels that tells the whole story in the title!)
This article doesn't mention race but links to a fair few from the same newspaper that do. Anyway, there's breathless coverage and racial spin for this white-kills-black story in the majority press (Washington Examiner and similar excepted) while the earlier black-kills-white story gets slow-walked and purged of any racial element. This is not what you'd expect from a country where a minority, blacks, kills proportionately vastly more of the majority, whites, than whites kill of blacks. Naively, people would assume that bigger trends get bigger coverage. This is clearly not the case.
Where is your evidence that "racial hatred" was the motive in that case? There is none in the article you link to.
What other reason could there be to shoot someone else's 5-year-old child playing in the street?
A reasonable approach for suspecting that a child rode their bicycle through your yard is not executing them! And that's just someone else's theory. It doesn't even seem to be true.
https://www.oxygen.com/crime-news/darius-sessoms-may-get-death-penalty-cannon-hinnant-death
There's no evidence of any bad blood between the families or anything. So the default assumption should be racial hatred.
No, as I said before, the default assumption should be that the shooter had some sort of mental issues, especially given that he committed the murder in broad daylight in front of witnesses. Again, as I said, that would certainly be the default assumption if they had both been of the same race. The fact that they were of different races does very little to change that default, especially given that even actual, dyed-in-the-wool racists are not in the practice of executing children on the street. Hell, even the Zebra killers did not shoot little children.
Firstly, racial hatred and mental issues are not mutually exclusive. We can be sure he doesn't have much planning skills. But nobody seems to have announced a motive and the guy himself didn't plead mental illness. If he says that his motive was mental illness then that would ameliorate his position somewhat - but he'd have to produce some kind of evidence that he's mentally ill. Whereas if his motive was racial hatred then admitting it would worsen his position. So if he's silent, then it means that his motive was racial hatred.
I didn't say they were. The issue is not whether they are mutually exclusive, but rather what he default assumption should be.
Most mental issues, and most mental illnesses (note that I said the former) are not grounds for a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, which is an extremely narrow defense. In North Carolina, the defendant must show that he had some mental "disease or defect" which "so impaired the defendant’s mental capacity that the defendant either did not know the nature and quality of the act as the defendant was committing it, or, if the defendant did, that the defendant did not know that this act was wrong[.]" A guy can be a grade A sociopath, or schizophrenic, yet not be able to plead insanity.
Mental illness is not a motive. Regardless, this assumes it would ever come up. First of all, that would only come up at trial, but there was no trial; the defendant pleaded guilty (technically, he entered an Alford plea). And, even had there been a trial, the defendant would not have had cause to explain his motive. A defendant does not have to testify at trial, and rarely does so. Nor does the prosecution have to prove motive, because "'[m]otive is not an element of first-degree murder, nor is its absence a defense.'" State v. Carver, 725 SE 2d 902, 905 (NC: Court of Appeals 2012). Motive is admissible to show show that the defendant is likely the perpetrator, id, that was not an issue in this case, so evidence of motive might well have been irrelevant and inadmissible. it is certainly inadmissible if raised by the defendant, because it is not relevant to any claim that the defendant could make at trial. The only time it would be relevant would be at sentencing, But, again, the sentence here was imposed pursuant to a plea bargain.
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Setting everything else aside this is terrible logic. For a start it's not either/or. It could be something else other than race or mental illness. Or he could be mentally ill but not be aware of it. It could be religious hatred, or the kid was annoying him with a bike bell and he snapped.
It COULD be racial hatred, but your logic does not hold together saying it must be.
I'll concede that the logic is flawed. But who has a religious hatred for 5-year old children? Who acts like a pitbull and snaps in such a way that they grab their gun, run into someone else's yard and shoot a 5-year-old in their head because of a bike bell? He has some kind of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde syndrome that switches on and makes him murder children? Are these really likely scenarios compared to racial hatred and low intelligence?
Racial hatred surely plays a major role even if there is some mental illness. The mentally ill are more likely to act on pre-existing motives. Maybe someone's mentally ill and people have been bullying him at school (which are probably interconnected) - it's unwise to say that it's just mental illness when he goes and shoots up the school. Or maybe somebody's been always been resentful of their family, becomes mentally ill and decides to kill them.
And there's plenty of black anti-white racial hatred. Just yesterday in Chicago we had a mob of blacks beating up a white woman: https://www.bizpacreview.com/2023/04/18/horrifying-new-video-shows-chicago-woman-beaten-in-doorway-by-wild-teen-mob-1351090/
Mental illness is individual but hatred can be and often is collective.
I did some research for the last time something like this happened where the races were reversed and the most similar incident happened in 1986. I suspect there won't be a 'This Day in History for Sessoms though: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/man-chased-to-his-death-in-howard-beach-hate-crime
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This case looks like mindless, on the spot, rage fueled deed (just like most "gun violence"), not as act motivated by any reason.
Imagine you feel genocidal hatred against X people, and you are willing to sacrifice yourself for this cause.
Would you kill one, exactly one, small X child and then surrender to spend rest of your life in prison, of would you do or attempt to do something more... substantial?
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The most obvious, as you note later, is that he has some sort of mental health issues. That is certainly what you would have inferred, had the perpetrator and victim been of the same race.
I guess it depends on what you mean by "racially motivated." The shooter clearly was in fear of the victim. Now, of course, I don't know this guy. He might be fearful of all strangers, like the wife [note: the wife, not the husband] in this case. Or, there might have been something independent of the victim's race that caused him to be in fear. But, I as I am sure you know, many people -- especially older people in places like Missouri -- are more fearful of young black males than of other people, and hence might use force against a young black male in a situation where they would not have used force were the victim of a different race. In fact, there are people on here who have pretty explicitly argued that such use of force is justified. In that sense, the race of the victim is a cause of such shootings, and so can be described as "racially motivated." The hard part is that being more frightened of young black males than, say, young Asian males is rational. Indeed, depending on the level of fear, it can be simultaneously rational and racist. The question of how to judge such person, both morally and legally, is a difficult question, and one that might actually yield a fruitful discussion. What I do not believe is likely to yield a fruitful discussion is making unsupported claims about unrelated cases.
It’s funny how you go into depth on why it’s rational to believe that old white people may have racial motivations but black people apparently have none? Strange case you’re building here
I actually said that it is rational for anyone (including, for example Jesse Jackson) to actually be more afraid of young, black males than of persons of other demographics. And that, therefore, there is some reason to think that this person -- who apparently acted out of fear of a young, black male -- might have responded, in part, because of the race of the victim. Such a hypothesis is consistent with what we know about interracial dynamics.
Re the other incident, I did not say that it is not rational to believe that black people have no racial motivations -- see my reference in another comment to the Zebra killings -- but rather that there is no evidence of that in this particular case other than the race of the respective parties. Unlike the case of the old guy, this incident is so unique that there are no previous incidents to draw upon to make an inference. Again, as noted elsewhere, even the Zebra killers did not kill children. And note that OP claimed not that it was "rational to think that the shooter might have had racial motivations," but rather that it was a "blatant case of racial hatred." That is a much, much stronger claim than what I made about the old guy, which did not claim that he acted out of hatred or even animosity, but rather that he might have been influenced, in some part, by a rational fear of young black men.
And, again, I see that you have decided to wage the culture war by trying to play gotcha, rather than taking up my invitation to discuss "how to judge such person, both morally and legally[.]" Disappointing, but unfortunately not surprising on here.
How is there no evidence but there is for the old white guy? What is your evidence the old white guy is racially motivated?
So unique? Lol. Lmao
https://www.qcnews.com/news/u-s/north-carolina/gaston-county/police-search-for-suspect-after-gastonia-double-shooting/
This just happened yesterday. It’s a regular occurrence actually. But being the hyper rationalist you are, somehow this fact eludes you. Do I really need to start citing some stats from Sailer? You DO realize what the racial dynamics of violent crime are right? Oh but I forgot - only whites are racially motivated when they commit crime against others.
You make the invitation while cowardly evading the issue yourself.
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...
These two prongs of your argument seem to be in tension. When a white guy shoots a black youth, "interracial dynamics" can be appealed to. When a black guy shoots a white kid, why do similar "interracial dynamics" not apply? Just as there's a common perception among the white population that black youths are disproportionately criminal, there's a common perception among the black population that white people are disproportionately racist/evil/innately-hostile. Why should the former inform our understanding, but not the latter?
At the moment at least, there's no evidence in the current case either, that I can see. Isn't population-level inference the entire case you're arguing for?
It's not, though. Unprovoked, vicious attacks on other ethnicities by blacks are... I'm not sure we have a working definition of "common" good enough to apply here, but certainly common enough that they've resulted in multiple live national-scale political issues over the last several years: various examples of anti-white hate crimes, the recent spate of Anti-asian hate crimes, and whether or not "polar-bear hunting" exists being three examples. There's another example of a lady abruptly shooting a white kid in her yard in this very thread.
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How do you deal with that? The mainstream denies it's rational, the motte largely denies it's racist (in the 'bad' sense). You can't just wave away incoherence with 'it's complicated'. Even if we refused to judge its truth-value, the way others react to it, it appears to be an unstable belief, quickly collapsing into one horn or the other.
I am not "waving it away." I am pointing out that the complexity exists, and that a discussion thereof might actually be fruitful, or at least interesting.
It is not incoherent. A behavior can be both rational and racist, or rational and dangerous, or even rational and immoral. That is the point, and that is what makes the issue difficult.
It's not complex for the rest of the world, they know where they stand. Some would call this place a hive of rationality and racism. Outside they have the opposite problem. You are the rare person with that issue, that's why I was asking you. Is rational racism immoral?
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To be clear, I am not limiting it to actual insanity. It could be that he is a borderline sociopath. He might have severe anger issues. He might also have been intoxicated, in combination with the above. So I disagree that some other motivation is necessary.
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I mean, it's not for no reason. There have been repeated pogroms of older white people by influxes of younger black populations that have been totally ignored by institutions that have turned a blind eye towards the horrors this older generations must now suffer. At one point another poster shared many, many excerpts from one such study about it. I wish I had kept a bookmark for it. Maybe said poster will crop back up and repost it.ChatGPT: There is a reason for this. Institutions have ignored the repeated attacks on older white people by younger black populations. Another user previously shared excerpts from a study about this issue. I regret not saving it. Hopefully, that user will return and share it again.
I couldn't find where it was mentioned here, but could it have been excerpts from a book on Rosedale, Tx? https://twitter.com/godclosemyeyes/status/1414619671056297984?
The racial violence there and the excuses for it from white liberal academics qualified it as a state supported pogrom by any standard.
"by any standard"? It doesn't even qualify under a reasonable standard. The definition usually includes a riot, those are isolated incidents. And those crimes are prosecuted by the state, regardless of the excuses liberal academics offer.
It's just as obnoxious when the ultra-progressive left refers to incidents of white on black violence as 'genocide'. "But it's a little bit like a genocide/pogrom..." . That's not how words work, all animals are not dogs.
As the worst argument in the world goes: "X is in a category whose archetypal member gives us a certain emotional reaction. Therefore, we should apply that emotional reaction to X, even though it is not a central category member."
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That is exactly it, thank you.
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One of the most frequent sources for descriptions of what could reasonably be described as a an anti-white pogrom was the book Left Behind in Rosedale. A relatively tame example:
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Yes, that's what I said.
I don't know that the use of terms like "pogrom" to refer to the phenomenon to which you refer gives me much confidence that you are interested in engaging seriously with the very real issues raised by this incident, rather than being interested in engaging in the culture war.
I think that word is perfectly appropriate and accurate. Your aspersions, on the other hand, make me think you're the one not engaging seriously. You clearly understood what was meant, but are engaging with the diction instead.
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It's always words, words, words with you people. I need to start feeding my comments through chatgpt so it can properly neolib the vernacular to not trigger you.
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The mainstream media desperately want a race war but they need the minority to have the casus belli.
We want to see less of this kind of low-effort reddit-worthy potshot.
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