Trigger warning: article contains quotations of racial slurs
http://takimag.com/article/the_probl...ities_jim_goad
Early Saturday evening on January 31 at a shopping center in the majority-Hispanic LA suburb of Covina, CA, a Hispanic-looking young man who was wielding a huge kitchen knife was reportedly heard uttering anti-black racial slurs as he stabbed two black men and then fled the scene. Video surveillance footage briefly shows the assailant chasing his prey, who later stumbles back into camera view to reveal fresh wet blood splattered all over his shirt and pants.
Covina police arrested 19-year-old alleged Mexican gang member Louis Vasquez in connection with the stabbings. Vasquez had previously served time for auto theft and was arrested for the pair of stabbings a mere 17 hours after being released from jail on unrelated charges.
“I can only guess that the reason you don’t hear much about black-versus-Hispanic violence in America is that you’re not supposed to hear much about it.”
Citing the alleged racial slurs, police said they planned to investigate the stabbings as a hate crime. But when Vasquez was arraigned last Tuesday on attempted murder charges, there was no hate-crime enhancement. A prosecutor said she found insufficient evidence that the apparently unprovoked stabbings of two black men by a Mexican teenager whom witnesses said shouted racial slurs were racially motivated in the least.
Covina police arrested 19-year-old alleged Mexican gang member Louis Vasquez in connection with the stabbings. Vasquez had previously served time for auto theft and was arrested for the pair of stabbings a mere 17 hours after being released from jail on unrelated charges.
“I can only guess that the reason you don’t hear much about black-versus-Hispanic violence in America is that you’re not supposed to hear much about it.”
Citing the alleged racial slurs, police said they planned to investigate the stabbings as a hate crime. But when Vasquez was arraigned last Tuesday on attempted murder charges, there was no hate-crime enhancement. A prosecutor said she found insufficient evidence that the apparently unprovoked stabbings of two black men by a Mexican teenager whom witnesses said shouted racial slurs were racially motivated in the least.
The sinister-looking Lee Baca has been the LA County Sheriff since 1998. In 2008, he wrote an editorial for the LA Times called “In L.A., race kills”:
We have a serious interracial violence problem in this county involving blacks and Latinos. The truth is that, in many cases, race is at the heart of the problem. Latino gang members shoot blacks not because they’re members of a rival gang but because of their skin color. Likewise, black gang members shoot Latinos because they are brown….Gang affiliation does not matter. Only the color of the victim’s skin matters….I would even take this a step further and suggest that some of L.A.‘s so-called gangs are really no more than loose-knit bands of blacks or Latinos roaming the streets looking for people of the other color to shoot.
We have a serious interracial violence problem in this county involving blacks and Latinos. The truth is that, in many cases, race is at the heart of the problem. Latino gang members shoot blacks not because they’re members of a rival gang but because of their skin color. Likewise, black gang members shoot Latinos because they are brown….Gang affiliation does not matter. Only the color of the victim’s skin matters….I would even take this a step further and suggest that some of L.A.‘s so-called gangs are really no more than loose-knit bands of blacks or Latinos roaming the streets looking for people of the other color to shoot.
These topics rarely get much discussion. I suspect most people just stick their fingers in their ears and go "la la la" as they uncomfortably move on with their day, so I'm gonna ask a question of tweb's resident liberals: at which point along the line did you fail these people?
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