White Girl Bleed a Lot (8 page)

Lots of people joined with Reverend Moss to say they had no faith in the police investigation. And they believed the crime against Deandre and DeShawn was racially motivated.

“Where’s the video? Show it to us,” said an online commenter to a Meriden Patch article. “Hmmmm. I want to know why they had to go find this guy 22 hours later if he was attacked. I want to know. Doesn’t sound right to me at all. He’s so innocent? Really? Then why did he run and hide? Just someone answer that.”
⁸

But catching the Wrong Guy was not a problem. Hospital video and witness accounts led the police to his door less than one day after the attack. He handed over the knife and expressed surprise one of his attackers died.

Others in Meriden point to several other examples of black
mob violence and say this was not an isolated incident. Said MeridenMom:

Where was justice when my 40 year old brother was innocently “jumped” last summer by a group of teens/young boys and when the neighborhood churchman was “jumped” this past summer walking home from a nightly service by a group of boys. My kids knew and went to school wit both teens and knew exactly what happened before news reported it. Kids was high looking for trouble and jumped somebody.
⁹

Despite the best efforts of Reverend Moss to the contrary, the earth did not rock. No charges have been filed in the stabbing. Deandre was fifteen years old. DeShawn was thirteen.

Some of the violence in this book is black on white crime. But not all. In the next chapter we will look at the “dirty little secret” of racial violence targeted at Asians.

Black students assault Asian students in a Philadelphia high
school almost daily for years. The school tells the Asians to
quite provoking blacks. Then we go to San Francisco for the
“dirty little secret.”

L
ots of racial violence is targeted at immigrants, especially Asian. Surprised?

Where to start? Asian students? Or Asian business owners targeted for home invasion robberies? Let’s start with the schools. And then we will end this chapter with some recent home invasion robberies.

One year before racial violence became so fashionable on the streets of South Philadelphia, racial brutality was ignored, denied, and even condoned just a few blocks away in the halls of South Philadelphia High School. The school was 70 percent black and 18 percent Asian. And it took years for anyone to admit that black students were systematically beating and harassing Asian students on a daily basis. School officials told local network news affiliates the attacks were in no way racial. In private, they said the Asians were the ones at fault. The stations dutifully reported the denials—without
ever reporting on the claims of extreme and prolonged racial violence directed towards Asian students--by black students.

In 2010 the Department of Justice found that a contingent of largely black school officials dismissed, ignored, and even encouraged attacks on Asian students by black students. But that DOJ report was long after the attacks began.

In September 2009, G.W. Miller III of
Philadelphia Weekly
magazine detailed the attacks and the school’s tepid response. Despite the administration often calling harassment, intimidation, threats, and assaults “minor incidents,” the magazine nevertheless reported that:

At least six times last school year those minor incidents escalated into massive rumbles where outnumbered Asian students were pummeled by packs of teens, sending several of the victims to hospitals. Like the day last October when a group of around 30 kids allegedly attacked five Chinese students after school in the Snyder Avenue subway station, one block from school.

That incident started when a black student walked up to a Chinese kid in the cafeteria, touched his hair and allegedly threw a carton of milk at him. Rumors of threats filtered through the school on the day after the subway rumble, and the notion of continued violence froze Asian students.
¹

These kinds of assaults took place over a period of years and culminated on December 3, 2009, when black students from South Philadelphia high school attacked thirty Asian students, sending thirteen to the emergency room.

The Asian kids had wanted to be in school so badly they were willing to tolerate violence—until it became intolerable. Finally, Asian students went on strike.

School officials ignored the attacks at first, even refusing to meet with the striking students. Then school superintendent
Arlene Ackerman, who, like most of the people working for her at the high school, is black, hinted the attacks were motivated by earlier attacks by Asian students on blacks, and that it was not fair to blame just one race. She claimed that she did not want to “criminalize” students at such an early age. And, the attacks were taking up too much of her time.

The Asian students reported that school officials often looked the other way, and even participated in the verbal harassment that preceded the violence. LaGreta Brown, the school’s fourth principal in five years, was cited for a discriminatory attitude, particularly for referring to the advocacy group’s efforts as “the Asian agenda.” On the morning of the attacks, the complaint says, she escorted about ten frightened Vietnamese students past a large group of black youths on a sidewalk. She told them she would walk with them if they were afraid, the advocacy group claimed. But as soon as she walked away and returned to school, the complaint says, the Vietnamese students were assaulted again.

When the students complained, they were beat for that, too. So they went on strike. Check out this report from the
Philadelphia Inquirer
:

Somekawa described students at the school being mocked by staff: “Where are you from? Hey, Chinese. Yo, Dragon Ball. Are you Bruce Lee? Speak English,” quoting what students had told her.

Troung, the South Philadelphia student, recited a litany of problems with school staff.

She singled out the security officers, who she claimed forced Asian students to follow them into a lunchroom where they were attacked and who directed the frightened students to leave school after they were beaten.

Yan Zheng, another student, said that when students were fighting in the lunch room last Thursday, “the lunch lady did not do anything to stop them, and went around
cheering happily. … The staff shouldn’t just stand there and watch and say, ‘Stopping fights is not my job.’”

Duong Thang Ly said the school’s security officers “are the big problem,” saying they looked the other way when a group of African American students interrupted a lunch line and heckled a group of Asian students. They ignored groups of students as they roamed during class time, Ly said.
²

School officials conducted their own investigation. The district hired a retired black federal judge who said he focused his review on the two days prior to the mass beating and walkout, because if he went any further back that would cause problems in the present.

And not one reporter said “What do you mean by that?”

Attorneys for the Asian children dismissed the report as inaccurate and strangely narrow, ignoring the long history of racial violence against Asians at the school.
³

Finally, when the Department of Justice came in and found the school had a long history of black-on-Asian racial violence that school officials ignored, school officials admitted they might have had a problem. So they printed up some pamphlets and gave them to the Asian students, instructing them how to avoid antagonizing their black schoolmates with their racist behavior.

The leaders distributed a list of racial slurs and told the students: It’s wrong. And you need to know that slurs can escalate quickly and violently. … Immigrants can be too limited in English to recognize racist language—and the danger it may portend.
⁴

Well, that is quite a back story. Asian students—the same ones who were fighting for their right to get an education—apparently were going around insulting the black students so the black students had no choice but to assault and harass them every day for years. So give the Asians instructions on how to avoid antagonizing black students. Maybe we can get a copy for Emily Guendelsberger and her crew.

Can someone explain to me how this school district got away with this for so long?

Ackerman left shortly after the debacle was exposed by the Justice Department.

This is one school over several years, but these kinds of assaults took place over the years at several Philadelphia schools. Sometimes the explanations themselves are useful because they reveal the mindset of people in charge. Consider sociologist Elijah Anderson’s take on it in this
Philadelphia Weekly
article:

“The school may be thought of as black turf by some black students,” says Yale University sociologist Elijah Anderson, a renowned expert on black urban living. “The outsiders—the Asians who are making inroads—can then be called into account for any moves they make within that situation. You have race prejudice developing as a sense of group position, a proprietary claim on certain areas of the home turf.”

Anderson, who taught at Penn for 32 years and frequently uses Philadelphians in his research, believes that the school tensions are likely about dominance.

“It’s a human thing,” Anderson continues. “It could be Asians who get jumped. It could be blacks. It could be white, Italian, Jewish, whatever, if you know what I mean. This is not unique to blacks and Asians.”
⁵

Does anyone have the slightest idea what this guy is talking about? I do not “know what you mean,” Mr. Anderson. Perhaps
you could document the marauding bands of Asian and Jewish students beating black students and how that went unnoticed and uncorrected and even encouraged for years.

We’ll wait. Shall we notify the Department of Justice?

The dirty little secret busted wide open in Philadelphia in 2012. Over the three years prior, the
Philadelphia Inquirer
found:

at least 15 home invasions or other attacks on Asian business owners outside their businesses in Philadelphia, Delaware, and Montgomery counties in 2008, followed by another spike of at least 19 actual or attempted home invasions or burglaries in those three counties plus Chester County in 2010.

[In 2012] at least six robberies or attempted burglaries of Asian business owners were reported at a home or bank in Montgomery, Delaware, and Philadelphia counties. And this year, in addition to the family in Haverford Township, a couple was robbed during a home invasion in Oxford Circle.
⁶

By the time this news was less than a month old, at least two other Asian families became victims. These attacks have occurred in varying degrees of intensity and frequency for three years. I learned something important from YouTube and from talking to the district attorney’s office, yet which all the news stories fail to mention. In all the cases, all the suspects or perpetrators were black.

On June 8, 2012, the
Inquirer
reported a case where an Asian-American business owner and his family were attacked in a home invasion. “The victims were targeted as part of the recent trend in which thugs have attacked Asian business owners,” said the
Inquirer
. A group of armed black men:

terrorized and robbed an Asian-American business owner and his family. … The masked thugs forced him to lie face-down
in the kitchen, Cheng said. They isolated his wife and daughter in other rooms.

They pointed guns at him, asked where money was, and threatened to kill him if he didn’t obey, Cheng said. He told them where to find money.

The thugs tied the family’s hands behind their backs and stuffed their mouths with socks, Cheng said. After about an hour, they forced Cheng, his wife, and daughter into the basement before they fled with cash and jewelry, he said.
⁷

In April twelve Asians in Southwest Philadelphia were enjoying a night of karaoke when four black men with guns broke in and robbed the group. Also in April, four black men broke into the home of an elderly Asian couple and their handicapped son. The family was bound, threatened, and robbed. The mob’s entrance and exit was captured on a security video.

In March seven hooded black men with weapons surprised an Asian couple returning to their suburban Philadelphia home after a day at their beer distribution company. After threatening the couple with pistols, the thugs escaped with cash and valuables.