Marty Marshall must be wondering what he’s got to do to get a little love from a U.S. senator.
This is a tale of two stories. Both are about race. It’s a tale of how we perceive and define hate crimes, and of how the media cover matters of race.
On June 27, only two days after U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told members of Congress how hate crimes “victimize entire communities,” Marshall and his family were victimized in a hate crime themselves. It might be at this point that you’re wondering why you’ve never heard of this story.
It’s because Marshall and his family are white, of course, and their victimizers are black. Marshall and his family live in Akron, Ohio. They were walking home from a fireworks display with a friend when they were attacked by a group of black teens. Marshall spent five days in the hospital recovering from his injuries – a concussion and bruises to his head and eye, according to news reports – and his daughter suffered a cut on her lip.
Marshall, his wife, daughter and other victims told police that the attackers shouted things like “This is a black world” and “This is our world” during the attack. Akron police have not called the attack a hate crime, but Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic sent a letter to the FBI asking the agency to determine if any civil-rights violations or hate crimes were committed.
A few hundred miles to the east, in the Philadelphia suburb of Huntington Valley, over 60 children – most of them black – were asked to leave the Valley Swim Club. According to news reports, some of the children say white club members made racist remarks about them.
The children attend the Creative Steps Day Camp in Philadelphia. According to Aletha Wright, the camp’s director, testy white parents removed their children from the pool after the campers arrived. Wright said in news report that she heard one woman say she would see to it that the campers didn’t return.
Wright said Creative Steps paid over $1900 to the club for the campers to swim on Mondays. But all were asked to leave the pool and the money refunded.
Club representatives said there was more misunderstanding than racism going on. They said they had no idea the number of campers would be as high as 65 and that the children were asked to leave the pool for safety reasons, not racism. Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen “Turncoat” Specter felt the incident was serious enough to claim that the day camp’s accusations were “extremely disturbing,” according to news reports. He promised to “look into” the matter.
There is no word, as of yet, about whether any U.S. senator has weighed in on the plight of Marshall and his family.
A quick quiz, one you will easily pass: which of these two stories has been repeated all this week on one Baltimore television station? Yes, the day camp story has been covered multiple times, even with clips of pitiful, victimized black children bemoaning their racist treatment repeated several times.
No, I’m not trying to minimize the impact a racist act might have on a child. I’m not even sure I buy the defense that Valley Swim Club reps are presenting. Philadelphia and its surrounding suburbs have never impressed me as oases of racial tolerance.
It was in a Philadelphia suburb that, several years ago, one white hospital patient demanded that no black nurse attend her, and hospital administrators were stupid enough to comply with the demand.
But let’s have a little perspective here: the kids in the Creative Steps Day Camp may have been hurt emotionally, but Marshall and his family got BEAT DOWN. And it happened for no other reason than the color of their skin.
In the days before Americans let left-wing loonies hijacked the English language, that would have been called racism. But these days we have black leaders like the Rev. Jesse Jackson telling blacks that they can’t be racist. With leaders spouting such nonsense, is it any wonder a group of black teens would attack whites and shout things like “This is our world” and “This is a black world”?
Here is a question for the Jesse Jacksons of America: If the attack on Marty Marshall and his family wasn’t racism or a hate crime, then what, exactly, was it?
Examiner columnist Gregory Kane is a journalist who lives in Baltimore.
