Garance Franke-Ruta is at it again

Recently, Karl Zinsmeister, the very tall former editor of The American Enterprise, was appointed the President's domestic policy advisor, replacing that black guy, Claude Allen, whom nobody had ever heard of before he got caught in that really dopey big box retail outlet scam. (Has anybody heard whether Allen is using the my-evil-twin-did-it defense like I advised him to?)

Anyway, Garance Franke-Ruta, the lady with a name drawn from the random syllable generator and with equally random thought processes, is trying to smear Zinsmeister on the liberal American Prospect blog as a racist for having written an article that includes such unacceptable lines as:

"New York City statistics prepared for former mayor Ed Koch show that black offenders are five times likelier to kill whites than the reverse."

Of course, Franke-Ruta has herself written on The American Prospect much the same thing:

"...black Americans were six times more likely to be murdered than whites in 1999, and seven times more likely to commit homicides."

More interestingly, commenter Niels Jackson brings up some interesting quotes from
Zinsmeister's article that Franke-Ruta left out:

Nice use of ellipses.

What you left out included this:

My wife and I met in Africa, where we were both working in a group of Americans, mostly black, who were teaching and building a school. I was thoroughly colorblind when I entered that situation. Then my black American colleagues made it clear—sometimes in harsh terms—that they considered that a big problem. Most contemporary blacks, I learned, do not at all accept the idea that race is unimportant. I left a lot of my color-blindness in that group.

Or this:

During the near-decade that my family and I lived across the street from an all-black inner-city public housing project, I learned on many occasions that race is relevant. A few times, I or my family almost paid a serious price for imagining otherwise. Once, my wife was pushing my infant son down the sidewalk in a stroller when two teenagers smashed a stolen car into a light pole just yards from where she stood. I was close by in our front yard, and after making sure my wife was all right I ran over to some older black mothers standing in front of a nearby liquor store who had watched the boys walk away. I asked them, begged them, to give me a description of the people who had nearly run over my wife. They coldly turned away. At that point we had lived on their block for about three years.

Twice in a period of a few years I was cold-cocked (punched in the head without warning) to the accompaniment of racial insults on the streets near my house—once while painting a fence, once while riding a bike. In Southeast Washington, D.C. neighborhoods I was chased on my bicycle with cries of "get the white man" ringing around me. Another time, I was out with my family when I noticed a kid trying to break the exterior mirror off my pick-up truck that was parked on the street. I told him politely but firmly to stop it and within seconds my wife, two small children, and I were ringed by a group of teenagers shouting "whitey’s acting up." Bottles and rocks started to fly, and we were in big trouble. Fortunately a passing van screeched to a halt, and a couple of black men leapt out and convinced the kids to disperse.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer