Walter L. Hilliard III –
I’d first like to send out my prayers to the victims of the senseless mass-shooting attacks in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio.
Back in the late 1980s when I was starting my career, I worked as a school counselor and said many times there should be more counselors in schools than there are — not guidance counselors, but mental health counselors. Just about everyone goes to school in America so counseling, therapy, could be a critical part of establishing a healthy level of mental health in young people who will eventually become a major part of our society. But let’s not forget that the American school system is mainly all about brainwashing and preparing worker bees and flag-wavers who vote and believe in our corporate-run democracy.
Before the shooting, I didn’t really know anything about Dayton, itself; however, after the shooting, my mother told me that my grandmother lived in Dayton for a short period of time as a child.
But let’s dig into what really happened in Dayton.
The liberal media feverishly framed the El Paso shootings as being racist — anti-Latino — so they could link the shooting to President Donald Trump’s hateful rhetoric about immigrants from Mexico. However, the Dayton Police Lieutenant Colonel Matt Carper and others repeatedly stressed that the Dayton attack, carried out by Connor Betts, where six of the nine victims who were killed (27 others wounded) were Black, wasn’t race-based. The New York Times, for example, also quoted authorities as saying it was unlikely the shootings were based on race.
Additionally, the El Paso massacre also continues to receive much more news coverage than the Dayton shootings. And to his credit, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough showed a video clip of Trump laughing as he complained, “How do you stop these people” referring to Mexicans crossing the border; however, Scarborough pointed out that while the White people were laughing after someone shouting “Shoot them” in response to Trump, two African American children in the video clip were looking confused, not laughing at all.
But I digress.
So I decided to do a little checking about the authorities hastily denying race was a motivating factor in the Dayton shooting. A map showed the determined killer arrived with his sister and another person, parked a couple Blocks away from the club he targeted — apparently went back to his car after he and his sister separated in the club, got his body armor and gun, walked back to the club, passing several predominantly White clubs in the club district, and went to shooting outside and inside the “Black club.”
Why do I call it a Black Club? I call it a Black club because a CNN broadcasting of the clubs security footage showed the people standing in line outside the door of the club were almost all Black. I counted one White male and 35 Black people, clearly. So it’s no surprise six of the nine victims were Black, that’s damn near 70 percent (66 percent) and 97 percent of the people in line going into the club being Black — that’s a Black club to me.
We know the killer in El Paso was targeting Latinos based clearly on the evidence and based on the killer’s commentary.
America and its mainstream media does not want to make the Dayton shootings a racial issue because of our 400 year history of anti-Black racism; the police and society see Black people as perpetrators, to be stopped, harassed, incarcerated, or shot — not all police, but many — and not as victims. The media is no different and they’re also avoiding calling the Dayton attack a racial massacre. In fact, every time CNN and MSNBC, as well as other media outlets, show the Dayton victims — they show one, the killer’s sister. Did he kill her intentionally? Did he kill her because she liked going to Black clubs? And wouldn’t she likely be interested in dating Black men if she was was in a Black club that night? Yup, I doubt a White female that doesn’t like Black men goes to a club where 97 percent of the people in line on a security camera are Black.
Race had everything to do with the Dayton shootings.
