School bus violence racially motivated

Already a number of people are aware of this video that surfaced which shows a white student being beaten by several black students while others stood around and cheered on a schoolbus.

After I posted yesterday, my first immediate thought about this attack was whether this would be viewed as a hate crime. In fact Belleville Police Captain Don Sax said in an initial interview that there was a racial motivation for the attack. Now he is retracting his statement saying that he jumped to conclusions spurred on by the emotions which the video incited. You can read the initial story and follow-up here.

I'm glad that the police officer admitted he rushed to judgment, which is bad for any investigation. But had the siutation been the opposite, if white students had beaten up a black student, the NAACP would have already booked hotel rooms in Belleville for the next few weeks to decry this, go to the schoolboard and demand a racial tolerance curriculum for a day, etc..

As I wrote yesterday, the election of Barack Obama, historic as it was, was not going to quell the racism that does still exist in this country, but in many ways will exascerbate the issue. But still, the vast majority of people in this country are tolerant people. Yet, we are seeing race in everything that transpires on a daily basis in this country or at least we are if the victims are black.

I also wrote yesterday about a Newsweek article which reproduces a study which concludes that white babies are racist. However, there was no study done about babies who are black, Latino or Oriental and whether they grow up to be racist. If we want to have a racism discussion in this country, as Attorney General Holder thinks we are too cowardly to do, then it must engage in all aspects of racism, regardless of which racial group it is directed towards. But Attorney General Holder doesn't want an honest discussion. His dropping of the charges against a group of New Black Panthers in Philadelphia where they were clearly intimidating voters.
I don't think Holder wants a discussion on race relations, he wants to lecture.

And it's only going to continue...