Jackson Sparks. Virginia Sorenson. Tamara Durand. Jane Kulich. Wilhelm Hospel. LeAnna Owen. And sixty-two others, all attending a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin on November 21, 2021.
The first six were killed by Darrell Brooks Jr. when he drove his SUV through barricades and then deliberately through the Christmas crowd at over 40 miles per hour, zig-zagging to hit as many people as possible. The other sixty-two paradegoers he struck escaped with various injuries. Jackson Sparks, the youngest victim, was eight years old. All six killed were white.
Mr. Brooks has an extensive criminal record, including domestic abuse, felony battery and other violent offenses. Since being jailed, he has contacted and threatened witnesses in both the November 21 and earlier incidents for which he is now indicted. He may belong to a Black Nationalist offshoot of the Nation of Islam. Among his disturbing memes and messages on social media are numerous posts attacking police, comparing them to the Ku Klux Klan; vicious antisemitic screeds; and postings calling for violence toward white people. Apparently Mr. Brooks got his wish.
Most of his posts were taken down soon after the murders.
In the wake of the senseless slaughter in Waukesha, President Biden condemned it as “A horrific act of violence,” but cautioned that “we don’t have all the facts and details yet.” Apparently, the FBI hasn’t determined if the attack was a hate crime.
Shortly after the event, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Biden couldn’t visit Waukesha after the massacre because “it takes a lot of resources to make it happen.” But First Lady Jill Biden did visit three weeks and change later, on December 15.
Flash forward to May 14, when 18-year-old Payton Gendron drove 200 miles from his hometown to shoot 13 people in a Buffalo, New York supermarket. Eleven of those people were black. Ten died.
He livestreamed the event.
The butchery was instantly denounced as a hate crime – which it doubtless is, although why this racist bohunk drove 200 miles to this specific store has not yet been established. But never mind. The White House weighed in early and the Commander in Chief appeared on site less than 48 hours later with a speech denouncing “white supremacy,” “military-style weapons” and Tucker Carlson. There was a lot of bloviating about hate, but coming where and when it did, it seemed more like Progressive Democrats using the bodies of the dead to score political points than really thoughtful commentary on where we are as a country.
If racial hatred is really the problem here, and it certainly seems it is, what about racial hatred elsewhere? In his Buffalo speech Biden rightfully excoriated the shootings, saying “The evil did come to Buffalo and it’s come to all too many places, manifested in gunmen who massacred innocent people in the name of hateful and perverse ideology, rooted in fear and racism.” But in using the template of “White supremacy,” he whiffed the larger, more important message. What about Darrell Brooks’ hate, which seemed too hard for the President to address in person or in detail? What about the hatred toward white people manifested by black nationalist Frank Robert James, who at 8.24 am on April 12, put on a gas mask in car of the New York subway system’s “N” train, dropped two smoke bombs and opened fire with a 9-mm pistol, hitting ten as the train pulled into a station. Nineteen others were injured, mostly by smoke inhalation.
At least the FBI has charged Mr. James with terroristic acts. The White House issued short statement and promised New York “full support.” And the issue vanished into the New York justice system.
It’s not a hard thing for Joe to do: hate is hate and hating someone for the color of their skin is especially vile. It has no place in modern America; it is antithetical to our national ethos of equality and dangerous to our body politic. But that ground truth means that racial hatred is racial hatred regardless of who is expressing it, through word or act. Until people like the president and his sycophants and enablers in politics and the media stop pretending that racism is limited by the single superficial characteristic of skin color, they will simply be engaged in the stomach-churning use of the dead in service to a political agenda.
Jackson Sparks. Virginia Sorenson. Tamara Durand. Jane Kulich. Wilhelm Hospel. LeAnna Owen. Say their names, Joe. Say their names.
