Unsung Black People
By Ann Coulter
AnnCoulter.com
It must be hard for young black males to
always be viewed as criminals by people who
notice crime statistics. We've jawboned that sad
story for 40 years. Last week, President Obama
ran it around the block again in another speech
about himself in reaction to the George
Zimmerman verdict.
Let's give that beloved chestnut a rest for a
day and consider another way blacks have it
harder than whites. Only black people are
expected to never speak against their community.
Might we spend five minutes admiring the courage
of blacks who step forward and tell the truth to
cops, juries and reporters in the middle of our
periodic racial Armageddons? This one is never
discussed at all.
In December 1984, Bernie Goetz shot four black
men who were trying to mug him on the New York
City subway. (About a year later, one youth
admitted that, yes, in fact, they "were goin' to
rob him." They thought he looked like "easy
bait.")
A few days after the shooting, The New York
Times got the racism ball rolling with its
"beneath the surface" reporting technique: "Just
beneath the surface of last week's debate was
the question of whether the shooting may have
been racially motivated."
Hoping for support for its below-the-surface
thesis, the Times visited the mother of Darrell
Cabey, the young man paralyzed from the
shooting. As the Times summarized the feeling at
the Claremont housing project where Cabey lived,
"many people said the four teen-agers were
troublemakers and probably got what they
deserved."
Cabey's mother had received one letter that
said: "[Y]ou get no sympathy from us
peace-loving, law-abiding blacks. We will even
contribute to support the guy who taught you a
lesson, every way we can ... P.S. I hope your
wheelchair has a flat tire."
The Washington Post also interviewed Cabey's
neighbors. Eighteen-year-old Yvette Green said:
"If I'd had a gun, I would have shot him."
Darryl Singleton, 24 years old, called Cabey, "a
sweet person," but added, "if I had a gun, I
would have shot the guy."
As white liberals (and Al Sharpton) screamed
"racism!" how'd you like to be the black woman
called by the defense at Goetz's trial? Andrea
Reid, who was on the subway car during the
shooting, testified: Those "punks were bothering
the white man ... those punks got what they
deserved."
Reid had met the mother and brother of one of
Goetz's muggers at a party. But she took the
stand and told the truth.
Juror Robert Leach, a black bus driver from
Harlem, was one of Goetz's most vehement
defenders in the jury room, even persuading the
others not to convict Goetz for unlawful
possession of any guns, other than the one he
used in the shooting. In the end, three blacks
and one Hispanic on the jury voted to acquit
Goetz of all 13 charges except for the minor one
of carrying an illegal firearm.
More brave blacks stepped forward in the Edmund
Perry case a year later.
Perry, a black teenager from Phillips Exeter
Academy, along with his brother, mugged a cop
and ended up getting himself killed. When
Perry's brother Jonah was prosecuted for the
mugging, two of the witnesses against Jonah were
his black neighbors.
One neighbor testified that Jonah told him the
night of the incident that his brother was shot
when they were mugging someone. Another neighbor
said Jonah told her that night that he tried to
beat up a guy who turned out to be a cop. This
was in a courtroom full of rabble-rousers,
amen-ing everything defense lawyer Alton Maddox
said.
They told the truth knowing they'd have to go
back to the neighborhood. Whatever happened to
them? Why aren't they the heroes? Where's their
Hollywood movie? There was a movie about the
Perry case. It was titled: "Murder Without
Motive: The Edmund Perry Story." (The grand jury
had no difficulty finding the motive: The cop
was being mugged.)
In the middle of one of these racial passion
plays, it takes enormous courage for a black
person to step forward and say, "Yeah, I heard
him say he mugged the cop," "If I had been
Bernie Goetz, I would have shot them, too," or
"I know George, he's my friend."
That last one was Elouise Dilligard, George
Zimmerman's final defense witness. Clear as a
bell, this black woman spoke warmly about "my
neighbor George" and went on to describe his
nose being disfigured and bloody right after the
shooting.
You won't see her on CNN, though. In fact,
you'll never hear a peep about any of these
courageous black people, unless you obsessively
research every "race" case of the last 30 years,
as I did for my book
Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to
Obama
Whites never need to be brave this way. There's
absolutely no pressure on white people to root
for their race. In fact, there's often pressure
to root against their race. Instead of
being asked to weep over President Obama's ever
having been looked at suspiciously (probably by
Jesse Jackson), could we reflect on the
fortitude of ordinary black citizens who resist
"racial solidarity" and speak the truth?
COPYRIGHT 2013 ANN COULTER