The Museum We Really Need
By • 4/17/08Roger Cohen published a column called “Race and American Memory” today that tells us we need a national black history museum to memorialize America’s history of racial injustice towards blacks. I wrote the following letter to the New York Times arguing a museum that paid tribute to the white victims of black crime would be more appropriate. I also posted the letter as a comment on Cohen’s blog. It hasn’t appeared yet because it’s still under consideration. Hopefully, the blog’s readers will soon learn that the world is inverted.
Roger Cohen’s column “Race and American Memory” is based on an egregious misunderstanding of American culture.
Cohen proposes the construction of a national museum memorializing racial injustice towards black Americans on the grounds that whites need to confront the “monstrous” in themselves. America needs this reminder of its racist history because its “heroic narrative of itself is still in flight from race.”
However, it is ludicrous to say that America is in flight from its history of racial injustice towards blacks. The real problem with contemporary America isn’t that we don’t think about white racism enough, but that we can’t think about anything else.
A survey of American high-schoolers taken earlier this year found that their top three heroes were Martin Luther King, Harriet Tubman, and Rosa Parks. That these three would be chosen before Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford demonstrates that white racism has overshadowed all other aspects of our history. The existence of hundreds of slavery museums in America tells the same tale of obsession.
If we really want to expand Americans’ awareness of racial injustice, I recommend the construction of a museum memorializing the white victims of black crime. It would be the first museum of its kind.
Statistics compiled by the Justice Department show that blacks have murdered an average of about 900 whites a year over the past thirty years, versus about 400 annual white-on-black murders. The number of whites who have died at the hands of blacks dwarfs the 3,437 blacks who were lynched between 1880 and 1951. Atrocious as lynching was, black-on-white crime has been a much more serious problem than white-on-black crime over the past century.
Yesterday, Eric Dewayne Boyd was found guilty of last year’s horrific black-on-white rape and murder of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom. Boyd’s four suspected accomplices are still on trial. Don’t these victims deserve some memorial? If whites must confront what is monstrous in themselves, why shouldn’t we expect blacks to do so too?
You can write to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com. If you, unlike me, keep your letter down to 150 words or less, it stands some chance of being published.
If you want this article to be exposed to a wide audience, take the time to recommend it at digg. Millions of readers traffic the site, and the more recommendations an article gets, the better its chance of being read. If you don't have digg account yet, registration is easy. Just click submit to get started. |
Click here to join the White America mailing list. You'll get an e-mail notice whenever White America publishes new entries.
On the mark, damn shame MOST Americans can’t see this happening to them. But it is never reported, question one has to ask is why NOT!
Very good letter. Pretty much perfect. I thought that writing a letter like that would immediately make the MSM think of you as a racist not worth the bother. But the letter is really great. You can’t be dismissed as a racist, even after introducing the subject of black-on-white crime.
How many of these “400 annual white-on-black murders” are actually committed by nonwhite “Hispanics”: mestizos, pure Amerindians, zambos, even mulattos and blacks with Spanish names? Nonwhite “Hispanics” who commit murders and other felonies are classified as “white,” thus speciously inflating the white crime rate. So if a nonwhite “Hispanic,” even a black or mulatto, kills a black or “African-American,” his crime will be defined as a “white-on-black” murder.
Given the hysteria whenever whites commit or allegedly commit “heinous” crimes against blacks -or even hang nooses or make “racist” comments- perhaps this is why we hear about so few of these “white-on-black murders.”
For visual evidence of this statistical mendacity, visit the Wisconsin sex offender registry, or that of any other state, do a generic search for popular “Hispanic” surnames, and marvel at all the mestizos, Amerindians, and even blacks with Spanish names who are defined as “white.”
Regarding the black-on-white rape and murder of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom.
At the time of the crime, police officials and news reporters claimed, as usual, this was NOT a hate crime [race was not a factor]. They are lying, hypocrite, bastards.
Excerpt from article:
“Police and reporters have promoted the view that this crime was a simple carjacking that got out of hand…”
http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2007/05/theknoxvilleh.php
Here’s what your letter to the NYT overlooks: white oppression of blacks (slavery, etc.), unlike the disproportionate rate of black-on-white crime, was institutionalized. It was justified explicitly by intellectuals and political leaders appealing to a racial ideology. And even more relevant to the topic of a memorial museum, this oppression was carried out not by individuals acting opportunistically, but in the name of the white race as a whole; it was sanctioned by the US Constitution, despite the abolitionist dissent that eventually prevailed. That’s why comparisons between this history of oppression and the (very important) racial disparity in crime rates are usually specious.
Even assuming your suggestion was valid, though, I don’t see the point in writing such letters to the New York Times. Some editor will just dismiss it as “racism” or “hate speech” and throw it in the trash. What does such a letter accomplish?
Your efforts are well taken. The best kept secret is the racial unrest, the black on white crime, the toadying to the illegals, the affirmative action debacle, etc etc. I applaud you for finally voicing the other side of the story, cutting through the fog of prejudice against white folks.
Being German-American, it is not only being white that I find discrimination against me, but also because I love my German heritage! Since WW II, anything positive about Germany or the many achievements of the Germans in America is, at best, verboten!
Good for you. You have a place of honor in our home!
Thank you.