White Girl Bleed a Lot (34 page)

Don’t forget the Motor City. In October 2011 a group of about twenty black people stormed a gas station convenience store. Sam Matalka, the owner of the store, said he “lost hundreds of dollars in merchandise and had to spend hours cleaning up the damages caused by the teens.”

The mob had just come from crashing an eighth grade graduation party “where witnesses said a fight broke out and shots were fired in the parking lot after the teens crashed the party.” After the gas station melee the same group went on to terrorize a nearby White Castle. They tormented the customers and attacked one man after he fled the restaurant.
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Officials in Detroit have long since stopped pretending they do not have a big problem with racial violence. In the fall of 2012 the online hot topic forum Soda Head reported that “the night before Halloween, Brent Holloway was walking home at 10:30 p.m. A group of 5-10 black people stopped him, asked for a cigarette, then beat him with fists and a baseball bat—only stopping when one of the attackers yelled ‘Stop, you’re going to kill him,’ his stepmother told local news outlets. No one was arrested.
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It seems that even our neighbors to the north aren’t immune from racial mob violence. I guess some of our problems are seeping across the border. In July 2011 Canada had its first flash rob, or “flash theft,” as they call it up there. Around midnight a quickie mart on the west side of Ottawa was overrun by about forty black people. After a quick game of snatch and grab the group got away with about eight hundred dollars’ worth of merchandise. Constable Marc Soucy is “worried a little bit about the phenomenon” and thinks that it is “a youth thing … for a rush of adrenalin.”
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On August 13, 2011 nearly thirty black youth flash robbed two 7-Eleven stores in Montgomery County, Maryland. “Criminal activity by flash mobs has occurred far beyond Montgomery County,” said Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett, “and has, in fact, become a national and international issue of concern.”
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In 2009 a group of five people expertly smashed the window of an Apple Sore in Marlton, New Jersey. With precision and speed the criminals “scooped up merchandise like a holiday shopping spree.” The thieves pretended to have a gun to intimidate the security guard. “It all happened in 31 seconds flat.”
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Almost missed this one from Stockton, California: Rush, steal, run. But this time the cops were ready. When twenty-four black people showed up in eight cars, Stockton police and the highway patrol “quickly converged on the business and rounded up the suspects.” They arrested fourteen adults and ten kids on this one. And one of the cars they had used was stolen as well.
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Keep It on the Down Low.

B
lack mob violence against gay people is a perfect storm on three fronts: 1) Newspapers do not report black violence; 2) victims do not report the crimes; and 3) being gay is “about the worst thing you can be in black culture,” CNN anchor Don Lemon told
The New York Times
.
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That is why the issue of black-on-gay violence is more widespread and less reported than most people think. I will start with the benign and work toward the violent. But first let’s take a look at some facts. In 2008 seventy percent of black people in California voted overwhelmingly for Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriages. Gay writer Dan Savage belled the cat:

I’m done pretending that the handful of racist gay white men out there … are a bigger problem for African Americans, gay and straight, than the huge numbers of homophobic African Americans are for gay Americans.
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In the hyper-sensitive environs of the politically correct, this was a shot heard round the world.

Black antipathy towards gay people is featured in the work of the most popular black hip hop performers. Comments from super star 50 Cent represent hundreds of articles and videos old and new easily found on the Internet. 50 Cent hating on gay people:

I ain’t into faggots. I don’t like gay people around me, because I’m not comfortable with what their thoughts are.
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Holding homophobic views is one thing. Committing violence against gays is another. And more people are finding it harder to ignore the “anti-gay violence that plagues the black community,” says a headline for an article by Kenyon Farrow in
The Grio
, a black news Web site produced by NBC News. “Incidents in the black community usually receive little or no attention, we have our own problems with homophobic violence here in the U.S.”
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In 2012 when Brandon White was leaving a convenience store in the Jack City area of Pittsburgh, he was surrounded by ten black men, three of whom knocked him down, punched and kicked him, and even slammed him with a tire. Another member of the gang shot video while repeating “no faggots in Pittsburgh Jack City.”
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White, who is gay, told CNN he did not report the crime “because he did not want to draw attention to himself.” After the video was posted on YouTube it was picked up by World Hip Hop. White could not even bring himself to watch the video at first, he was so humiliated and embarrassed. It was only after the video went viral that he reported the crime.

“I was very violated,” said White. “Who’s to say they won’t come after me again … Who’s to say they won’t kill me?”
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They even brag about “stealing necklaces, display gang signs, and refer to themselves as ‘goons.’ One man describes himself as a ‘wild dog,’ while another says, ‘I’m the Tasmanian Devil.’”
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Two of the men have been arrested and await trial. In 2010 in what was probably Atlanta’s largest and most vicious assault on gay people, hundreds of black people raged through a crowd at an outdoor summer movie festival in an Atlanta gay neighborhood. One commenter to Creative Loafing complained that it was “a dreadful sight. People were being hit … as they walked to their cars… I also cannot believe that police did not see a mob of 50 walking down the street assaulting innocent people.”

Jesse Rhodes, another witness, told the local gay paper that many of the black mobs were targeting gay people:

What happened last night (June 3) at Screen on the Green was not simply “fights” between unruly teens as the local TV stations would like their audiences to believe. These savages went apeshit and hunted down gays and lesbians to attack!

They specifically began targeting members of the LGBT community around Blake’s and along 10th St. The local news media is acting as if this were a simple scuffle and that’s totally unacceptable.

It was like a riot in a third world country.
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Rhodes said that they “felt like sitting ducks.” One of his good friends was jumped by five black people. When Rhodes and his friends were leaving the park the mob called them “faggot” and other obscenities. The women were called lesbians, but you didn’t hear about any of that in the local mainstream press. The next day, Atlanta police said they had no reports of any anti-gay violence, and very little information about violence of any kind at the festival.
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The Chicago neighborhood Boystown is an “eclectic” (that’s the journalistic code word for ‘gay’) area that is usually tranquil. However, in the summer of 2011 Boystown and the similar neighborhood of Streeterville to the south saw more than its share of black racial violence.

In June 2011 Chicago police arrested five black teenagers for a series of four attacks and robberies in Streeterville. They were part of a mob of about twenty. In one incident a man was “knocked off his bike, then punched and robbed.” In another incident a mob of twenty threw a baseball at a man’s face, knocking him to the ground. Then the group “punched and hit him several times.”
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The local NBC affiliate reported on the incidents and the arrest, but the report was lacking. Any distinguishing features of the victims or assailants? You could not tell if you only listened to this account, but the people arrested were black. At least one of the victims was gay. And everyone was a lot happier not talking about it. Except for one local gay resident who says the problem of violence and lawlessness is reaching epidemic levels:

A rash of violent crime by black youth in Chicago’s predominately gay and wh8ite Lakeview neighborhood (aka, Boys-town) has residents on edge, and sparking age old tensions between Blacks and the White GBLT community,” said one video blogger. “It’s been going on for a couple of years. People are getting very, very frightened.”

The blogger says white people are afraid to mention the race of their attackers, for fear of being labeled a racist. “But if it’s true, it’s true,” he said.

In July 2011 in Boystown, a man accidentally spilled a drink on another man. That’s the way the papers report it, when it could have just as easily been reported the other way: a group of thugs were bumping and shoving people on the street. The man
who got wet was part of a black mob. The soon-to-be-victim, Rubin Robinson, was also black. He was a beautician and actor walking with his boyfriend.

One gay paper said that there had been an uptick in crime and reported that a large community meeting was held to address the problem. “Some comments appeared to blame crimes on people, especially youths, who come into the neighborhood from poorer, largely black and Latino areas.” The meeting drew nearly eight hundred people. “Some attendees demanded a larger police presence … others asserted that the youth programs at the Center on Halsted, Chicago’s LGBT community center, bring crime into the neighborhood.”
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The newspapers failed to mention that many victims of racial violence are gay. Robinson got stabbed and beat up. The local ABC affiliate reported:

“It was an obvious mob mentality. You saw people cheering it on. People running in to give one quick jab or kick and then back out and cheering them on. It’s scary,” Sall said.

Though unrelated, residents say this is the third stabbing in the area in recent weeks. The last one happened five days ago, just one block north, when a man was robbed in a 7-Eleven parking lot at Halsted and Roscoe.

Residents say the problems are due to large groups of people from outside the neighborhood loitering in the area. Alderman Tom Tunney, 44th Ward, said Monday night that this is a subject that has been coming up for the last couple of years.

“There tends to be large groups of minority youths on Halsted. Whether they are patronizing the businesses or not, it’s an area where they feel safe. It’s a balancing act that we’re trying to make it safe for everyone,” Tunney said.

“There tends to be large groups of minority youths on Halsted.”
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Third stabbing in recent weeks? The subject has been coming up for years? Minority youths? No one knew about the serial gay bashing in Boystown until this Alderman revealed it almost by accident. Almost apologetically for noticing the predators were black.

In July 2012 a mob of black people pelted cars outside of a gay club with bottles and rocks. When police were slow to respond, one man accused them of being racist because they would not arrest the black law breakers. The article asks if it’s a problem of police not doing enough or if their hands are tied due to lack of manpower. One commenter at the end of the article said, “this type of uncivil behavior is a nightly event in Boystown,” then offered a more appropriate question:

If, for a moment, we exclude the race of the offenders and only judge them by the content of their character, these same people – who happen to be black – would be singled out for attention because of their actions, not the color of their skin. Why should we lower our basic standards of acceptable behavior in order to appease these people.
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