It's not over until the press says it's over. From the Associated Press on Friday afternoon:
HARTFORD, Conn. — The man who fatally shot eight co-workers at a Connecticut beer distributor told a 911 operator before he killed himself that he was avenging racism.
Omar Thornton's employer, his union and the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities all say there has never been a formal racism complaint against the Manchester company — from Thornton or anyone else.
State and Manchester police will not say whether Thornton's racism claims are figuring into their investigation of the shootings, which occurred early Tuesday when Thornton was confronted with video evidence he had stolen beer and was forced to resign.
Manchester police say they plan to have experts examine his cell phone, which was found in his car outside the Hartford Distributors warehouse.
His girlfriend, Kristi Hannah, said Thornton used his phone to photograph slurs and a noose scrawled in a company bathroom, though police will not say whether they are searching the phone specifically for those purported images. ...
The allegations have upset many friends and family members of the victims and the Hollander family, which owns Hartford Distributors and is well-regarded in greater Hartford.
... Some experts said Friday that, although nothing justifies Thornton's killing spree, the allegations of workplace racism should be investigated so they can either be dealt with or laid to rest.
"You have to investigate it," said employment lawyer Kelly Scott, adding that racial harassment in the workplace is often a crime.
"Any chance you have to make your workplace a better place, a safer place, you have to take it," Scott said. "If there are people who have these attitude problems or a problem dealing with other races, they should lose their jobs."
Dig 'em up and fire 'em is what I say. Shooting's not good enough for the likes of them.
Sharon Toomer, founder of the website blackandbrownnews.com, called it "an accountability issue."
"If he didn't (report harassment), that's great. He's just a nut case," she said. "If he did go and nobody did anything, then the company's hands are not clean."
Messages seeking comment about a potential investigation into Thornton's racism claims were left Friday for the Hartford State's Attorney's Office, the FBI's New Haven office, the chairman of the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities, and for the president of the Connecticut NAACP.
On the federal side, a spokesman for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said the agency is barred by law from confirming or denying the existence of any discrimination investigation.
And the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which investigates whenever workplace fatalities occur, reviews compliance with federal workplace law, a spokesman said. Though it is investigating the shootings, OHSA'S jurisdiction is safety and health issues, not personnel issues, spokesman Edmund Fitzgerald said Friday.
Associated Press National Writer Jesse Washington in Philadelphia contributed to this report.
It sounds like there is zero news here, but the reporters are furiously dialing numbers of random agencies ("Hello Occupational Health and Safety Administration, wouldn't you say that white racism is bad for occupational health and safety?"), trying to keep the white racism story alive. Because that's what they are built to do. They are unstoppable white racism-sniffing out cyborgs from the future.
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52 comments:
Alas, we whites pay the price now for what our ancestors did in the past. Yes, once a long time ago, there was rampant white racism in American society. However, today most whites suffer unfairly from the legacy of their racist forebears. As I once heard someone say, when you've repeatedly engaged in bad behavior in the past, it takes a long time for people to really believe that you've now changed.
Remarkable.
Let's probe deeper, though.
Dude shoots some people, then himself. Instead of worrying about his moral culpability, we're concentrating on how he was pushed into it. Like, if a dog goes crazy, and kills some kids, you'd wonder - did the owner abuse it? Did the kids tease it?
That's because it's a dog. Dogs aren't bad. They just do what comes naturally.
So, in the eyes of the news media, a black guy has all the capacity for moral decisionmaking as a dog.
Who's racist now? I can't keep track.
"Instead of worrying about his moral culpability, we're concentrating on how he was pushed into it."
Shades of the Fort Hood shooting.
On the other side, I watched O'Reilly last night, and he refused to give any play to the racism angle and condemned the shooter unequivocally.
Surprisingly, so did Geraldo Rivera, who is normally a race hustler.
Even I'm having a hard time imagining this white racism angle has legs beyond, say, Saturday. It's just too blatant.
Troll said: "Alas, we whites pay the price now for what our ancestors did in the past. Yes, once a long time ago, there was rampant white racism in American society. However, today most whites suffer"
What was so bad about what Europeans did? Compared to what contemporaneous people? I'll play this game, name a crime and we can figure out the global standards of the day.
What Troll means is Europeans have to pay the price of the bad reputation that the leftomarxist media has given them and keeps giving them, particularly in regards to that perspective Black and now Hispanics "discrimination."
No Steve.
The basic trope in America is that the black mal is always the noble, heroic martyr, crucified like Christ or shot with arrows like St. Sebastian, and of course there are loads of lynching photos to support this view.From works ofiction like Mockingbird or countless Hollywood films or the brainwashing of Jane Elliott, the story is always the same - the romantic, passionate misunderstood martyr is tortured and tormented in life by nasty, stupid white trash bigots.
The question an honest and intelligent press would be asking now is: has endless pimping on racial grievances helped push yet another unstable black man over into mass murder and self-destruction? At what point do high-SAT pimps become responsible for consequences?
I hope the media keeps playing the Racism angle, because it hastens their demise.
Are any of you a Person of Color? If you answer no then what right have you to judge Thornton's actions through your privileged white eyes? What he did was wrong, sure, but blamed must also be placed on those that created the atmosphere that led to this tragedy. It is easy to criticize the black man in today's white supremacist society. Try to see the side of the oppressed.
Omar's GF from over 10 years ago has now come forward and said that Omar had issues of race at 2 prior jobs he had while she dated him. Sounds like Omar had mental issues as there is no way he was discriminated at all 3 of them.
Omar picked truck driving as his profession. It is one of the top rated dangerous jobs. It is also next to impossible to get a local, Union job with a pension and great benefits. This drivers work 25-30+ years and usually the only way to get a driving route is for one of them to Die or retire. Omar became a driver within 2 years !!! Unheard of in this day and age.He was very lucky to have this job and the whole case will boil down to just a mentally unstable person with paranoid delusions that everyone white was against him.
At his last company that he claimed race discrimination, public records show he lost that case in September and was ordered to pay 5k to the company. I think this is what pushed him over the edge, not race discrimination. It is public record in Connecticut, go look for yourselves and you will see the case.
I don't know why some white people say: "they are blaming us for what our ancestors did a long time ago when it comes to white racism in America." For some white people the Jim Crow laws were a long time ago. Yet, if the take a good look they will see that they are still around but in a more refined way.
Sorry for going OT, but here's a May 13, 1933, article from the New York Times, no less, about IQ broken down by state. It's behind a paywall, but from the headline and preview it appears to say Washington state came out on top, and it even brings up race!
Of course, Washington scored above average on the 1960 study that Steve found in March.
If you search "intelligence quotient" in Google News Archives, it is the first result.
http://news.google.com/archivesearch?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=%22intelligence+quotient%22&cf=all
Anonymous said..."As I once heard someone say, when you've repeatedly engaged in bad behavior in the past, it takes a long time for people to really believe that you've now changed."
Especially when it's so profitable for them not to believe you've changed at all. Gets them off the hook for everything up to and including murder and leaves you permanently guilty and paying penance.
If they really want to do an in depth investigation of all of this, why don't we know more about the killer? Were there any type of performance appraisals which might show if he was a crappy worker? What good things had he done for his local black community? Had he ever been arrested? How was his credit? What were his grades in high school? Who was he selling beer to? Had he been involved in other crime? Every dirty piece of laundry of this guy should be on full display. Let's not just investigate the victims here.
I don't know if the story will be completely gone, it may be referenced in a racial tensions narrative that will be driven by another, bigger story: Flint Michigan white serial killer stabbing blacks out of racial hate. They will point to both as a need to improve race relations by more establishing more programs in school, at work, etc. Probably another federal agency should be created to deal with racial violence and its causes (white racism)...
What an utterly sick, sick, sick country is America, a place where 'racism' (whatever that might mean), is given a higher moral repugnance than extiguishing life.
Are people just now waking up to this? There is nothing new about what's going on. If I had said in 1859 it's only going to get worse, I would have been correct.
My wife is very liberal and does consultation on workplace violence issues for the Teamsters, among other clients. And she's absolutely horrified by the media coverage of this case. Her whole point is a very simple one: the type of person who is liable to go off and kill multiple coworkers and himself (after being caught stealing!) is typically someone with major persecution issues and a hypertrophied sense of grievance who constructs elaborate scenarios in which everyone around him is out to get him and trying to keep him down. The fact that large sections of the media seem to be taking Thornton's claims at face value instead of pointing out that this is exactly the sort of thing a workplace shooter would say is just astonishing to her.
"Even I'm having a hard time imagining this white racism angle has legs beyond, say, Saturday. It's just too blatant."
Maybe, but you have another 8-10 articles on the subject, easy. I don't think you should stop until 'Thornton' passes at least 'California' (11 posts) on the Steve-O-Meter; what the hell is so important about the nation's largest, most powerful state, compared to a black dude who killed some white-folks, anyway!
When the dust settles, I'll bet the story - assuming we ever get to hear it - is something like this:
Thornton was an affirmative action hire in trucking, possibly at the instigation of the union. One story mentioned something about his being 'the only black guy' back there.
He may have been having problems with the job; but chances are that management, fearing a lawsuit, went a little lighter on him than the white truckers. Instead of making him grateful for the breaks and determined to do better, this made him think he could get away with more and more. The white guys weren't oblivious to this. Maybe they even complained a little.
The company finally caught him on video tape stealing and decided that this was their chance to correct their hiring mistake. The rest, as they say, is history.
I went through the same thing in another type of setting. We had no blacks in our particular section because there were few blacks in the field. One applied, looked good on paper, got hired. Then we discover that he only LOOKED good. He racked up failure after failure that we would never have been allowed because the head honcho was afraid of a lawsuit.
He finally screwed up in an area where it couldn't be ignored. He had to be fired and naturally we were asked to lay out line and verse of his failings. After all, we were the ones who had had to pick up the pieces and clean up the messes, often under harsh deadlines because he had not been forthcoming about his work.
He naturally charged us all with being racists. It was a bitter pill to defend yourself against these charges after months of being effectively understaffed because he couldn't do his work, during which time we had complained to the head honcho and been basically ignored.
He did get fired though and he didn't shoot us......
Some of these so-called journalists have nothing on Renfield, a character from "Dracula", who thought that by eating live insects he would gain strength and vitality to his lifeforce.
So, was HP worried that Mark Hurd was going to go postal when they forced him to resign?
Isn't it racism that Hurd gets a 50M severance package while Thornton got nothing?
your outrage needs to be tempered with the understanding that your ancestors were guilty of racism.
the past is not dead, it ain't even past homie!
u need to learn some humility
If the company had been free to hire whomever it pleased, instead of being legally forced to hire blacks, all 8 of these folks would probably still be walking around. Really, what other lesson is there to take from this?
This is so much like the JournOlist scandal. Remember Obama was associated with an extreme, race-baiting figure of Jeremiah Wright. So, he should have been on the defensive and against the ropes. He should have had to answer as to why he'd been so close to a hater, a bigot, and a madman. But the JournOlist cabal got together to spin the news so as to put McCain and white people against the ropes. If McCain and white people dared to push the issue, THEY were 'racist' and 'paranoid', etc. (The left did the same during the McCarthy period, painting the communists as apple-pie Americans and making the anti-communists to be deranged totalitarians.)
It seems as though something like JournOlist cabal is still alive and well in the media. They all must have sent emails to one another on this matter. With the Obama-Wright scandal, they came up with the brilliant idea that they should scream 'racism' and scare & cower the GOP(and white people in general) from raising too many questions about Wright. Since the GOP mostly complied with this, the few rightwing figures who hammered on that issue did indeed seem marginal and kooky--though they weren't. Reality is a matter of perceptions created by the media.
In the recent incident, the neo-JournOlist cabal probably communicated with each other as to how to spin this. Their main goal would have been to put white people and conservatives in particular on the defensive since this is clearly a case of black bigotry, hate, and violence against whites. Their solution? As with Obama-Wright, scream 'racism' as loud as possible. And as expected, white people are so busy answering the charge of 'racism' that what has been lost in the national debate is that this incident actually fits into the all-too-common category of black-on-white violence that is raging across this country.
Of course, since people did get killed, the media is trying to be 'balanced'--in a way it wasn't when covering the Tea Parties--, but 'balance' in this case seems to be disingenuous. Indeed, 'balance' is itself a form of editorialization given what happened.
Remember that concerning old South Africa, there was no balance in the news coverage between whites with power and blacks without. Whites were made to be all-bad and blacks all-good, and this was considered to be a moral imperative.
But when we see the coverage of Israel-Palestinian conflict, there is much 'balance'. Why isn't there pro-Palestinian balance as there had been pro-black balance in the coverage of Apartheid South Africa? Because many in the media, who happen to be Jewish, sympathize with the Israeli oppressors. Since it is bad form to side completely and shamelessly with the bullies with guns, the media try to obfuscate the real nature of the issue--Jewish oppression of Palestinians--by going for 'balance'. Bogus.
As far as the media is concerned, US is still an apartheid state, and Tea Party whites are just itching to turn their guns on minorities and lynch blacks.
So, this guy has been turned into Nat Turner of William Styron's imagination. He's a rebel slave.
Steve,
The racist white angle has been going on for far longer than the Omar Thornton story.
Did anyone question why the two white guys drove around with James Byrd on the back on their car? It might have had something to do with the fact that they were raped repeatedly in prison by Black people.
"On the other side, I watched O'Reilly last night, and he refused to give any play to the racism angle and condemned the shooter unequivocally."
But did he say anything about the sick media coverage, which, far as I'm concerned, has become the bigger news event than the incident itself.
See this article and comments for the black perspective.
One thing I've noticed stops my black friends in their tracks when they even venture upon such lunacy:
Remind them that humans enslaving other humans is a horrid habit of homo sapiens--remind them of black enslavement of others not only in the past but even now on the continent of Africa. They drop their victimization whining and never use it again with me.
Eight White guys are murdered. A black murderer claims "racism" because he was fired for being a thief. Hey we all know only the latter claim means anything in P.C. America.
if you'll permit me, a question for the HBD-sphere:
is it accurate to say that spatial ability makes one a better driver and parker?
if it is, then.. why are East Asians who are known for spatial-ability also stereoetyped as "poor drivers."
i would say it is accurate to say that spatial ability POSSIBLY makes one a better driver and parker
what makes women poor drivers then? is it just an inaccurate stereotype?
multi-tasking?
what about asians, what makes them poor-drivers?they seem to be godo at math
If Omar was avenging racial harassment, his murders meet the definition of a mass lynching: punishing a person or persons without legal process or authority for a perceived offense.
In this instance, Omar's liberal sympathizers are exhibiting an uncharacteristic fondness for lynch law.
I once worked for a lawyer at a big-time management defense firm. In one case, he represented an architectural firm which had fired its receptionist for charging up a company credit card that she'd intercepted from the inter-office pouch. She had given herself the moniker Queen Udofia. Naturally, she sued for racial discrimination. The case was all about IQ: those +2SD architects just couldn't grasp the black concept of property.
The other thing is the guy's history, especcially his employment history.
He bounced from job to job, leaving when he didn't get the kind of pay and prestige he expected. He was let go from what sounds like a lawn-care position because he couldn't learn the equipment. Yet he expected promotions, claimed racism when he didn't get them right away, and decided to supplement his income by stealing beer. Caught, he murdered the "racists" who he had never made any official complaints about.
This sounds like something straight out of leftist dogma. "All people are 100% equal in all ways" (liberal creationism), therefore any racial disparity in outcomes is due to discrimination (and the harder to detect, the more insidious and more culpable). Thornton probably heard and believed this, so he decided to get "revenge" for the "wrong" done to him.
The MSM is implicitly repeating this with every article it publishes on the racism angle. Of course, if the current ethos acknowledged HBD, there would have been no issue of racism. E.g., "Thornton wasn't sufficiently careful or observant to be a really good driver. He was slower than average unloading his deliveries. Regardless of the averages, this has nothing to do with race and everything to do with him. His compensation is purely due to his performance."
We need to get government acknowledgement of HBD as soon as possible. This will castrate the leftist blank-slate narrative and discredit everything from "diversity" programs to discrimination claims based on numerical disparity. It can't come fast enough.
Yes, once a long time ago, there was rampant white racism in American society.
So Fing what?
Henry Canaday: The whole story would be long since forgotten by an honest and rational press, which wouldn't be looking for some way to pump up the story into a racial controversy and milk it for another day of ratings/sales. As would most other stories of this kind.
"your outrage needs to be tempered with the understanding that your ancestors were guilty of racism.
the past is not dead, it ain't even past homie!"
I don't know where to even start with these 3 troll posts. About all I need to say, though, it that I can't be responsible for things (mostly minor) that my dead ancestors did until I get my hands on the mad professor's DeLorean again.
I know there are quite a few passages in the Old Testament, where the fathers' sins will be paid for by the next few generations. However, if we are gonna stick to the Old Testament, then we may as well just start up slavery again and I'll probably get a coupla more wives, too.
BTW, it takes a serious lack of humility for a black guy to write a comment and not even spell-check the word "homey".
It's spelled "homey", homes, not "homie".
"I wonder how much of this is generational. The people who control newsrooms are presumably in their late forties and older, and they decide what stories get run. I'm in my early thirties and have a lot of liberal friends and a lot of them have personally encountered the "you're racist!" accusation making from incompetent and/or criminal blacks. I just can't imagine they're accepting this line of argument from a thieving murdering black guy. That card has just been overplayed at this point."
Journalists are worse than your average white liberal. They tend to be ultra-conformist types and from privileged and sheltered backgrounds.
"what about asians, what makes them poor-drivers?they seem to be godo at math"
They seem to drive with tunnel vision, like they only see straight ahead. I've read claims from several people that Asian have tested as having poor peripheral vision, but haven't seen any real data about it.
your outrage needs to be tempered with the understanding that your ancestors were guilty of racism.
the past is not dead, it ain't even past homie!
Hey, Yan Chen, is "homie" a Chinese word?
Yeah, there's still a fair bit of day-to-day racism in the US. And it may be that the guys this monster killed were pretty rude and obnoxious to him. None of that could possibly have any relevance to his actions, which were unjustifiable.
The world is full of people who have a legitimate gripe against one another. Probably most murders involve a legitimate gripe somewhere in there--this guy really did say my momma was a whore, or that guy really did look at my girlfriend a little too long. But that doesn't really matter.
If this monster had lived, he would be spending the rest of his life in prison, and there's zero chance that he would have been let off because of the "they were racists" defense. (It's not like the courts are so reluctant to convict blacks that you never see a black face behind bars.)
The MSM ran with this because it made the story more interesting, and also I think because people (including Steve) often want to read some deep meaning into horrible random events like this. Like maybe this is all because of racism, or bullying, or affirmative action, or anti-Muslim prejudice, or whatever. And overwhelmingly, the reality is a lot less exciting. This guy was a monster, not in the sense of some great dragon to be slain by heroes, but in the everyday sense of people who realize that it's pretty easy to murder a few people if you don't mind dying or going to jail soon after, and decides that sounds like a good way to end things. Like the nut who shot up VA Tech, or the Army psychiatrist who shot up the army base, or any number of other similar crazies.
If the company had been free to hire whomever it pleased, instead of being legally forced to hire blacks, all 8 of these folks would probably still be walking around.
By all accounts the company management were good liberal Jews. They'd have hired him whatever the law.
The sales comment is spot on. Think about who buys newspapers and consumes local news (just watch ads) and you will get your answer.
I imagine if this guy had shot up a Women's Center or something, it would have been suppressed. But because the victims were no-Status White guys, its news and "their fault."
This is just par for the course in a female-dominated news media.
your outrage needs to be tempered with the understanding that your ancestors were guilty of racism.
It's not possible to be guilty of racism BECAUSE IT'S NOT WRONG.
Everybody does it.
Especially you.
"What was so bad about what Europeans did? Compared to what contemporaneous people?"
Conversely, what's so bad about what Thornton did, compared to Europeans?
"...is typically someone with major persecution issues and a hypertrophied sense of grievance who constructs elaborate scenarios in which everyone around him is out to get him and trying to keep him down."
Your wife must be a daily reader of this blog.
"Really, what other lesson is there to take from this?"
Well there are plenty...but only if one has a brain.
"Did anyone question why the two white guys drove around with James Byrd on the back on their car?"
Well first of all there were three of them, and secondly one of them had a tattoo of a black guy hanging from a noose; I don't think a phone call to Ellery Queen was necessary.
"It might have had something to do with the fact that they were raped repeatedly in prison by Black people."
Wrong again Sport. ONE of the three claimed prison rape WELL AFTER he was arrested, as in when he was told it could be the difference between life in prison and death.
"What was so bad about what Europeans did? Compared to what contemporaneous people?"
Conversely, what's so bad about what Thornton did, compared to Europeans?
Wow, T, you truly are a master of discourse.
"Wow, T, you truly are a master of discourse."
Well thanks Sviggey, it's nice to be appreciated.
Thanks again, Twoof, for reminding us all of what a complete and total tw@t you are.
Severn: "By all accounts the company management were good liberal Jews. They'd have hired him whatever the law."
Don't you believe it. Even good liberal Jews are not total idiots. They are constrained by the laws (and the threat of racially motivated lawsuits) just like everyone else. Without the legal and extra-legal constraints, they would have never hired or promoted this loser or waited so long to fire him. Liberals, left to their own devices, look after their own interests just as well as conservatives do. This is simply a case of liberals being hoisted by their own petard.
Anonymous: See this article and comments for the black perspective.
Wow - those comments are pretty terrifying.
Reading through them reminds me of watching the student lounge at Howard University Law School explode in jubilation when the "innocent" verdict was announced in the original O.J. Simpson trial.
"Thanks again, Twoof, for reminding us all of what a complete and total tw@t you are."
Don't mention it.
Severn: "By all accounts the company management were good liberal Jews. They'd have hired him whatever the law."
Don't you believe it. Even good liberal Jews are not total idiots.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Liberal Jewish friends of mine own a terrific restaurant in the DC area. All of the guys who clean up tables are Hispanics. One time I asked them why they didn't hire young local black guys, many of whom had dropped out of school and had few prospects. Geez, the city was about 20% black and with DC nearby, there couldn't be any lack of black folks! Gotta be a few, huh?
I was told, "Oh, we tried! We really did, but, uh, it, uh, just never, uh, worked out....".
FWIW if you are looking to get a check by your name for affirmative action hiring, Hispanic is just as good as African-American; a Hispanic guy who came here last month the same as the descendant of black slaves.
You'd think the liberals would give this a little thought, wouldn't you? Maybe they have.
I was really disillusioned, but not at all surprised when reading those black comments. Blacks see everything through the prism of race. Any slight or issue is "racism". Note how the writer of that article says as a black man he endures "racism" every single day - but he doesn't provide one single example.
I read a couple pages of those comments, and what sticks out for me is the stuff blacks will take as racist. The ordinary negativity one experiences in life are all interpreted as racism.
That's after you control for most of what they consider to be racism, which is purely imaginary. E.g., one gal asserts as gospel her fantasy that whenever she's pulled over she's getting a ticket, but all a white blond woman needs to do is squirt a few tears and she's off Scot free. How in the hell would she know what it's like to be pulled over as a blond woman? (Blacks do this a lot, imagining they have a clue WTF it's like to be white, while laying exclusive claim to their own racial experiences). She even tacitly admits she doesn't know WTF she's talking about, since she never mentions her failed efforts to squirt a few tears and get off Scot-free (which attempts I doubt her ethnocentric black sensibilities would even permit; too proud).
Basically, blacks just want an excuse for 1) not measuring up, and 2) their ethnocentrism and anti-white animus. I've been pulled over a few times for the most absurd reasons you can imagine, but instead of attributing it all to "injustice," I just STFU and sat on the curb. I've been treated rudely by service peons. I've been treated rudely by strangers. I just don't weave it all into some psycho anti-me narrative the way blacks do.
There was another good one, about an English-speaking German family on a train; they were instantly branded racists by some black because they didn't warmly greet her like family. Strangers on a train! I guess the Germans haven't gotten the MSM memo about how we must all pretend all black strangers are our long-lost, long pined-for friends. We're racists if we're not as gregarious as blacks.
But all this is quite instructive. You can't have a population like blacks with a positive identity and have smooth race-relations. Blacks are going to hate us no matter how hard we try to accomodate them. Multi-whatever-ism inevitably gives birth to nationalism. If you want two such dissimilar populations to get along, to think well of one another, you have to separate them.
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