Hate Crimes at the Air Force Academy?
The New York Times reported this weekend on another incident of racist graffiti at an unlikely venue, the United States Air Force Academy Prep School, which is located on the campus of the Academy itself, not exactly a hotbed of white supremacist activity.
Over at my favorite military blog, This Ain’t Hell (but you can see it from here), the discussion was decidedly skeptical, as the people commenting are those serving or who have served and who therefore have an informed appreciation of the dire consequences that could befall the writer of such racist messages on a military installation. Many of them noted the several recent situations like this where the perps have turned out to be one and the same as the complainants. A link was provided to a website that monitors such spurious claims of racist activity, Fakehatecrimes.org, where I discovered an interesting occurrence that might shed some light on such ersatz reports. If you click on the graphs page at the website, you will find a pair of simple bar graphs tracking the reported numbers of such faux incidents by month and year. One thing is immediately apparent: there was a tremendous spike in 2016 and that spike was attributable primarily to the very large number reported in November of that year. It would appear that 2017 is headed to an even higher finish.
That spike, coinciding with the presidential election, immediately set me to wondering if such reports were being used for political purposes, but the greater likelihood is that it was the heightened emotional turmoil following the Democrat’s hugely unexpected loss that triggered more such activity. That it has continued at an increased pace well into 2017 could indicate that it is a racial variant of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Whatever the driving mechanism, I’m with my comrades in arms at This Ain’t Hell in believing that this latest situation on the USAFA campus is highly suspect, perhaps just a social justice form of a Blue Falcon designed to bring the entire organization bad publicity.
But there is another aspect of this phenomenon of false racist activity reporting that I find even more significant: its necessity. Why, in a nation of privileged racist white supremacists who are determined to oppress blacks, as the Democrats and their media constantly remind us that we are, is there even a need for blacks to create phony incidents? If we are as hugely racist as Black Lives Matter and other social justice organizations say we are, we’re doing a piss-poor job of it if the downtrodden minority folks have to step up their game of false racism incidents just to keep the white racist meme moving along. Are you telling me, all you privileged white supremacists reading this, that we’re incapable of performing our own racist acts on a scale to justify the media harangues about white privilege and white racism? This can’t be good: I’m forming a mental image of some social justice mob leader, standing before a maze of media microphones and fulminating about how the damned white folks have done gone and gotten so lazy they won’t even do their own damned racism no more!
On the other hand, and this is where I’m inclined to go, this could be a very good indicator of the fact that this is not such a racist nation after all. We are, as so many of us have long believed, much better people than the Democrats and their controlled media claim we are. I have long chosen to disbelieve them and I’ll bet the rent money that this blossoming situation at the Air Force Academy will someday be included on the pages of Fakehatecrimes.org.
Crossposted at American Thinker
Category: Politics
Until I hear of a thorough investigation proving otherwise, I’m thoroughly convinced it’s likely a hoax perpetrated by some attention-craving snowflake.
My thoughts exactly.
Oh no. It could be whoever did it is just trying to start a conversation about racism and white privleg.
Sarc off
BINGO. I thought about it being self-inflicted for the same reason.
This is my skeptical face.
Much like when my grandkids try to sell me a pig in a poke.
Nothing will surprise me anymore…when you have a fucking commie at West Point a piece of shit racist in a different academy seems no surprise.
Having said that, I’ll wait for the investigation to close before jumping to conclusions.
I agree.
Out of curiosity, what percentage of ‘hate crimes’ that are reported do you think are actually fakes, Poe? I’m just genuinely curious. I can’t stand the constant accusations of ‘racist!’ from the Democrats for every conceivable reason, either, but I think it’s like ‘fake rape accusations’ – rare (though not as much as they should be), and wholly and indefensibly stupid,… but still a minority of the overall actual attacks.
I think the FBI only gets partial statistics because plenty of areas don’t report hate crimes, but even in 2015 there were thousands of so-called ‘single-bias’ hate crimes. The best estimate I’ve heard of ‘fake’ crimes is in the tens to hundreds.
Now, I don’t know enough about this case, and high-profile ones might be more likely to be faked,… but I might take you up on that bet. I need to do a bit more reading first.
I’ve had actual racists in my extended family, and I’ve had non-racists be called racist simply because they voted for an R. I don’t think everyone is racist, but it’s clear that some are, too. Me personally, just spit-balling, I’d put the real vs. fake in the 90/10 area, at least. What’s your take?
Probably pretty hard to nail that down LC, though FBI might have stats… It seems that a big majority of the high profile ones are hoaxes… but is that because the media only publicizes ones that will get a big reaction, and they’re the ones that tend to be false? On the flip side, if a white, or group of whites does most anything to a minority, it’s labeled a hate crime, while most if not all minority on white incidents are passed off as just criminal acts, with not “hate” mentioned, further skewing the numbers, so I’m honestly not sure you can get a true picture of the situation, other than to say that it seems like a majority of the high profile ones have turned out to be hoaxes..
Fair points, all. I still think, as I say below to Poe, that some data trumps no data, and the data we do have -and, I think, human nature- means the real numbers are going to greatly exceed the fakes. It takes a real asshole to fake something like this, and I just don’t think there are that many assholes out reporting something. Plus, I’ve seen things like this in my own life. I’ve yet to personally see fakes, though. If you saw plenty of first-hand evidence of something happening, and never a ‘fake’ incident of that happening, I’d think you’d be more inclined to believe the majority of cases are real too?
I need to think more about the high profile ones, though. I don’t know if that’s true, or just we remember them better. Something to debate over a beer. I’m almost caught up on life – an e-mail is coming soon, I swear!
That made up fraction is just what you and your fellow traveler progtards want it to be. Since you are making it up, why not 99/1?
I asked Poe a question and felt it wouldn’t be fair without offering my own, so yes, I made up a number based on a low-end estimate of what I think the case is.
Coincidentally, and bear with me because a tiny amount of math is involved, if we use the FBI’s numbers and those in a Fox News article about the above-mentioned database, we’re comparing thousands of valid crimes vs. tens to hundreds -and let’s err on the high side and say hundreds- of fake ones. Ready for the magic? That’s… about a 9:1 ratio. Or, you know, 90/10.
I’d like to think it probably is closer to 99/1, as the number of dumbasses who make shit like this up is thankfully far fewer than the number of people who just go about their business, but I figured 90/10 was a safe pick.
What’s your estimate?
10 real 90 fake. I can pull numbers out of a hat too.
In my experience, the US is one of the least racist countries in the world. Yeah, some people *might* have prejudices, but there is no institutional discrimination in this country.
And this is the key part, institutional discrimination. We don’t have it. Plenty of other countries do.
I’ll agree with that – while I think there are a few who are maybe better than us at racial issues (though not necessarily other things), we aren’t as bad as many places. I’ve lived in a number of places around the globe and see all sorts of crazy shit.
As for institutional discrimination, we don’t have it the same way they do in some places (China and Korea come to mind from personal experiences), but we clearly have biases that effect our institutions – sometimes they’re not explicitly tied to the government, like companies preferring ‘white’ names over ‘black’ ones, and other times they’re more murkily tied in to it, as in sentencing disparities for different drugs which are predominantly found in different racial demographics.
That is, in my opinion, something we can improve upon.
LC, I too am curious, as my piece should indicate, but as the Democrats control the media coverage of such events, there is no way we’ll ever have an honest accounting of the facts. Fyrfighter pretty well sums up the current situation and he’s dead-on with his assessment of how statistics are gathered regarding hate crimes. Since there is absolutely no honesty or objectivity, even within a Democrat-controlled FBI, there is simply no way to answer.
Based on simple imbalances in populations we SHOULD expect there to be more acts of white against black racism, but that expectation certainly does not prove out with actual crimes against persons, does it? So if there can be more actual black assaults and murders against whites than the reverse, it is not impossible to believe that the number of “black-staged” events represents a considerable percentage of the total, especially since those faux events draw precisely the kind and degree of media coverage favorable to blacks that black activists desire.
I’m also curious as to how many of those racists in your family have ever written racist graffiti or perpetrated any other sort of racist event. What is your basis for deeming your family racist? And lastly, if you are as tired of the Democrats’ endless branding of white Americans as racists, why would you estimate a figure of 90/10?
I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on the notion that the Democrats control the media coverage of such things – not because I don’t think they’d try, but rather because the networks are beholden to ratings and sensationalism, not the Democrats. And yes, Fyr makes some good points – but overall while the data is definitely ‘fuzzy’, some data is better than none. Besides, as I alluded to above, I think the number of assholes who’d make shit up just for sympathy or credit are far, far fewer than the number of legitimate ‘hate crimes’ that happen. But since that paints me as a liberal pinko, let me apply that same theory towards the cries of ‘racists!’ directed by liberals to conservatives. If you ask a die-hard liberal, they’d probably say most conservatives are racist. Me? I’m gonna go with, say, something close to 90/10 – the 90% being people who are good, decent, non-racist people, and 10% being some variant of racist. With only a few being really radical. (Yes, I also think the same of liberals and their views towards communism and Che and all that shit – most people aren’t stupid agent provocateurs, they’re just normal every day sorts.) And I mentioned rapes as another example – some people (the so-called “Men’s Rights Activists”) insist a lot of rape accusations are fake. Me? I know people who’ve been raped, but I don’t know anyone who is enough of an asshole to make-up charges. So I’m leaning towards the real crimes being much more numerous than the fakes. The same principle applies here. As for the racism in my extended family, I’ll tell you two different anecdotes – one, when a family member would always go to a relative’s house and bring presents for all their white kids, but never their adopted non-white kids, that was a bad sign. When they ‘pretended’ they didn’t see one of the non-white kids and kicked them -a little kid!- well, that was pretty fuckin’ racially motivated. Especially when they coupled it with some choice words. The second anecdote is… Read more »
LC, you’re simply not paying attention:
“I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on the notion that the Democrats control the media coverage of such things – not because I don’t think they’d try, but rather because the networks are beholden to ratings and sensationalism, not the Democrats.”
The fact that they continue their self-destructive broadcasting behavior in spite of the fact that it is detrimental to their own business success is a dead giveaway that their actions are ideologically motivated. Publications like TIME and Newsweek led the parade of self-destruction, ignoring their readers complaints about their leftist reporting until it was too late to save the product. The New York Times and WAPO continue to lose financial ground as they continue to ignore so many pissed off readers but the biggie right now is ESPN which is headed down the toilet for the way it has tried to inject leftist politics into sports.
I’m thinking about writing something about this phenomenon of how the media news outlets are always reading from the same page, right down to the same words and phrases as Rush Limbaugh frequently demonstrates on his show.
If you believe that’s coincidence, LC, you are going out of your way to avoid the ugly reality of what we face in America today. It’s wonderful to be fair, but don’t be so fair that it blinds you to the fact that sometimes one side really is morally superior to the other.
Poe, the failure of Time and Newsweek is part a trend going back more than 30 years. It probably has more to do with the failure of the general newsweekly magazine model, same-same Life and the Saturday Evening Post. Part of it has to do with the fact that newsweeklies didn’t get worse, but rather that TV news got better. Magazine publishing shifted more into topic niches. Although I usually find Limbaugh to be a windbag, he actually does have a point about the news media echo chamber, but is off on the actual reason. Consider current events in Las Vegas where you have dozens of New York City-based news outlets all chasing the same story, following the same twitter feeds, and attending the same press conferences. It’s not a mystery they would all start sounding the same. Is that a conspiracy, or is it the flock of sheep all moving in the same direction? You also can’t talk about failing journalism business models unless you talk about Google which collects a lion’s share of ad revenue without having to produce any content. Yet another factor, probably the one you find most offensive, is that a lot of journalism ethics now are driven by journalism academia which has decided it’s trendy to abandon the concept of fairness and objectivity in the interest of personal brand building. Here’s a link to the website of Jay Rosen, a professor at NYU who, along with Jeff Jarvis at CUNY, has done serious damage to the journalism profession: http://pressthink.org/ Finally, there’s strong evidence conservatives have less than a flawless record when it comes to claiming the moral high ground as it applies to the news business. Here’s a link to a story about hedge funder Randall D.Smith whose predatory tactics have had a big part in the closing or radical downsizing of 680 local newspapers since 2007. You might be strictly correct in jumping to the response that Smith, who would probably wipe his butt with the Constitution, has every right to play whatever hardball business games he wants. And that would still fail… Read more »
Perry, the biggest failing of news media and the nincompoops who inhabit it is that they react to an event, instead of being prepared for it. They rely too heavily on electronic technology to stay in touch and spend more time staring at tablets than they do observing their surroundings. Watch them sometime. What are they looking at?
They repeat the same things over and over because they don’t know what else to do.
They are a bunch of sheep running toward the same cliff. Haven’t had an original thought or idea since before they were conceived.
I’m still trying to get my head around “TV news has gotten better” – on which planet are you, anyway? The only changes now are that TV news is more quickly inaccurate and squirrel chasing than it used to be. And ‘print’ journalism is now just a print-out of whatever on-line drivel they are spewing. Liberal AND conservatives alike!
David, on my planet, TV was bad in the sense of being unable to compete well for advertising money up until around the mid ’70s. At that point, you started getting technical improvements such as remote cameras, sat dishes, etc. The cost of a television as a consumer good had also dropped so that more people had one.
The comment was in the context of trying to explain why newsweeklies such as Look and Life failed while Vogue and Playboy survived.
Perry, I dutifully read both pieces. Everything Rosen said about Trump applied equally to Obama so Rosen is just trying to justify biased reporting.
And what on earth leads you to believe hedge fund vultures are conservatives? Forbes reports that they are 75-80 percent Jewish, not exactly a hotbed of conservatism. Whatever, I deplore their vulture methods, my own career having been victimized by such tactics. However, in the case of local newspapers, many are in distress and looking for an angel when they make their fatal deals with the devil. I believe that many of the owners would rather sell out to the hedge managers and let them do the dirty work than have to do it themselves, one reason they can be induced to sell more cheaply.
As to Limbaugh, the only time I listen is when I’m on a road trip but I have listened enough to understand something you apparently don’t, Perry: the gasbag persona is an act, his schtick.
Poe, we can wander off into some deep philosophical weeds with a debate about whether hedge funders are conservative or not. All things considered, my view is that people like Randall Smith are more on the laissez faire side of things than on the SJW “sharing is caring” side. YMMV.
Well, I suppose we could do that if you consider Forbes to be “Deep philosophical weeds.”
I want to see what is on that dude’s computers, tablets and phones. That will likely tell us a lot.
LC,
Lying about rape is a -common- divorce tactic. Talk to the folks who practice divorce law.
Lying about rape is -common- on college campuses. You claim not to know assholes who would do so. I personally know folks victimized by such lies.
Women don’t lie to get even? Seriously? they don’t lie to cover regret or mistake?
Of course it happens. But by all data I’ve seen (and the data has imperfections, but it’s better than nothing), real rape cases dwarf fake rape cases.
If you’ve got evidence suggesting otherwise, I’m all ears. We each have our own biases because of personal circumstances, but if you have data showing that fakes are more common, I’d love to see that data. If you want the reverse (data on actual vs. fake cases), I’ll get you some tomorrow.
LC, have you stopped to consider that even if your 90-10 ratio is correct, the 10 are only there at all because they were the frauds that were caught and exposed. They were once a part of the total of white perpetrated racist incidents until they were exposed. So how many of the remaining 90 are also hoaxes that just were never caught?
Are you going to suggest that authorities catch all the frauds or is there also a percentage there you’d care to hazard a guess towards?
See what a swamp you’ve wandered into here?
The problem with this line of thinking is you can apply it to anything – let’s take the timely topic of gun control and all the talk the Left makes of the so-called ‘gun-show loophole’. Now, a quick search for statistics turned up this old report [1], and if you find a newer one I’d love to see it. It’s a survey of criminals and shows that only 0.7% of guns used in crimes were acquired at gun shows. It’s not a significant amount at all.
… But have you stopped to consider that that’s only the ones we’ve caught? Maybe the vast majority of criminals are buying guns are gun shows, but they’re good at being bad and haven’t been caught, so, hey, might as well believe the gun-show ‘loophole’ is how most criminals are getting guns.
See how that doesn’t make sense? In the absence of perfect data (which is the case for everything, really), you go with what you do have, given a sound methodology, and put some error bars on it.
So just as maybe the real number of gun-show buying criminals is 2%,.. it’s pretty damn unlikely to be 20%. And the larger the data set, the more likely we converge on an accurate number.
There’s lots of data about rape cases, and hate crimes, so it’s pretty unlikely the range is far outside the statistics we do have. Some variance? Absolutely. But absent any reliable, statistically valid dataset that paints a contrary view, realists have to go with what the numbers show.
Do you think the number of criminals buying guns at gun shows could be, maybe, 50%? Why not, if we’re only counting the guys we catch?
[1] BJS: https://bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/fuo.pdf
Those much lower figures are far more likely. Here’s the assessment from a Duke professor of public policy who’s a supposed authority on the topic if criminals and guns:
“Adults who are entitled to possess a gun are more likely than not to buy from an FFL (Federal Firearm Licensee). On the other hand, those who are disqualified by age or criminal history are most likely to obtain their guns in off-the-books transactions, often from social connections such as family and acquaintances, or from “street” sources such as illicit brokers or drug dealers.”
I’d say this is where most criminals get their guns:
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/guns-crime/reports/2017/07/25/436533/stolen-guns-america/
And if you’re troubled by the unreliability of statistical arguments, quit introducing them here.
I think you missed the point – I’m not the one who seems troubled by the statistical arguments, I like them.
I agree the lower numbers are correct – I was pointing out that saying there’s things we can’t know, like what percentage of criminals aren’t caught, is largely immaterial given a decent enough sample size, and that applies equally to statistics of gun sales from gun shows and, say, rapes vs. fake rapes.
Sheez! Are you next going to provide some statistical probabilities as to the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin?
Look, I’m tired, sick with a bad sinus infection and going to bed…
I’d add that lying about assault in order to obtain a restraining order is another common divorce tactic. “I want a divorce.” “Well, I want a restraining order!”
In the 15 years I was an analyst at a defense contractor, of the five divorces amongst my co-workers, there were three restraining orders granted against male co-workers. These would have resulted in the loss of employment due to the loss of security clearances from such incidents, but the Defense Security Service investigations considered all of them hoaxes (unlike the civil authorities, who have different goals with regard to restraining orders).
Important: even though my anecdotal evidence is 100% hoaxes for restraining orders, I am NOT saying all restraining orders are hoaxes.
Am I supposed to be triggered or completely overcome with white guilt? I’m so confused! What in the wide, wide world of sports is going on here?
Things like this COULD be the libtard MSM doing all it can trying to trigger white guilt!
How do you think I feel? I have non-white lineage, but I’m white on the outside AND I have both slaves and slave owners in my ancestry.
I guess I’m supposed to hate myself, give myself reparations, and tell myself I’m sorry everyday. Its a very confusing situation for me…..
Oh, shut up, MSG. You’re whining again.
Friend of mine is half Croatian and half Serbian. He doesn’t know which half to hate.
Have we sunk to such a level of utter wussiness that some cowardly scribbling is considered a “hate crime”?
So write back “I -am- home. Next time knock and say it to my face, you cowardly assbag.”
Seriously? All torqued up by something a 12 year old might do, slinking in the dark in fear of detection.
Sheeeshhh
Personally, I think most of this is generated and fabricated by people who want division, who see divisiveness as the most convenient way to split unity into scattershot.
We’re supposed to be Americans first and foremost. If you want to destroy us from within, create imaginary crimes and point fingers.
Actually, EX, it may be much simpler than that. Over at American Thinker another commenter has noted that this incident took place at the Air force Prep School, the path of entry into the academy itself for many high school football players who don’t meet the academic requirements for academy admission. They are enlisted members of the Air force who have one year of intense academic studies to prepare them to meet those entrance requirements.
USA Today reports that only a quarter of black admissions to the service academies are by the traditional congressional appointment route so the academies, in order to meet racial quotas must find alternate means to recruit them.
Apparently the prep school is a principal means of doing this. As another commenter at American Thinker noted, this would be an effective way for a young athlete who’s failing to make the grade to make himself so newsworthy that it would be impossible for the Air Force to drop him for poor grades without facing more charges of racism.
It’s all speculation of course but the comments over at AT are running better than 90% that it’s a hoax.
I’d put money on it being the same hoax as that girl in a trash bag tried to pull of about 15 years ago, maybe 20. Bill Cosby sent her money. Remember that one? Turned out to be a complete fabrication on her part.
Ex: Definitely remembered the Tawana Brawley incident which involved a certain indivdual name Al Sharpton. And let us not forget what happened with the Duke University students who were falsely acccused of rape by a Black Female. Another hoax. Disgusting to say the least. And old.
Much if not most of this affirmative action crap at the prep schools so the service academies can play Division 1 ball….
Bingo! Being coached up academically for a year is the only way many of these “athletes” are going to meet the minimum admission requirements.
It’s another one of those ugly facts of collegiate athletics, particularly football, that the American public never hears about.
There is a movement afoot to allow Service Academy Graduates to forgo the service obligation if they are drafted
I’m good with that if they repay 10X the cost of the service school.
I think several things point to this perhaps being fabricated.
First and foremost, who would benefit from this act being widely covered by the media and addressed by the chain of command?
Second, in a preparatory school that is supposedly some of the best and brightest, what is the chance of a racist who is stupid enough to leave so much evidence behind getting through all the screening to get to the school?
This just doesn’t pass the smell test.
Good point; thanks for bringing that up.
http://moonbattery.com/links/Hate-Hoax-List.html
Remember that part about crying “WOLF!!!”?
Well, unless it’s a wolf…. don’t. ‘Cause you’ll end up looking dumb… or something worse.
Kurt Schlichter has a good take on what is going on in our military these days.
It’s obvious that there are things wrong in the military these days and those things are a direct result of the previous CinC…
https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2017/10/02/draft-n2389301
A lot of things happened due to the previous CINC. A lot of good leaders were told to exit posthaste because of him. There are people in positions of leadership that shouldn’t be in them because of him. And the reduction of Force bullshit that happened because of him severely debilitated the mid-level ranks which are causing significant suffering now in units.
Even the Air Force is asking Retirees to come back to work right now because they’re sucking so bad. I’m surprised the Army hasn’t done it yet.
Dunno, did anyone see the article where a former advisor to Cheney (claimed to be a snake-eater LTC) was pontificating on how the Vegas shooter was at minimum highly trained, possibly special ops or a sniper? And it turns out the guy was not even an obvious gun guy, and had ZERO military background? If that is the quality of advice the higher-ups have been given for the last 25 years… it explains so much…
Yeah, I watched that clown. He went as far to say that he didn’t remember such accurate fire nor a high body count -even in Afghanistan. The part he left out was those concert goers didn’t have a means to shoot back, there was hardly any cover, and so on.
In short, fuck that guy. His assessment on Fox fuggin’ sucked.
Spot on!