Valleyfair Attack Seen in New Light.

Last week Star Tribune editor Nancy Barnes announced that the paper was suspending reader comments on online local news stories because "Local crime stories spawned ugly, racial hate-mongering comments aimed at a wide variety of minority and ethnic groups."

This will not come as a shock to blog readers willing to venture away from this site. The story that finally tipped the Strib's policy certainly provoked such comments throughout the state on blogs and talk radio.

I wasn't going to touch this story initially, even though it encompassed several themes of interest — fear of Others, unreliability of eyewitnesses, racial perceptions and prejudices, the right to self defense, etc. This reluctance was not because I want to defend or explain the behavior of the eight thugs accused of stomping a father defending his daughter from unwelcome attention outside an amusement park.

No, I didn't want to spend the rest of a busy week dealing with comment chihuahuas who were mad because I might have implied their comments were racist. Been there, done that. I'm interested in more substantive discussion.

But there's been a new revelation, as often happens, that casts a new light on all those early snap judgments.

In the wake of recent news reports that a group of young black men at Valleyfair attacked a father defending his daughter, the Scott County attorney's office has been inundated with calls urging that they be charged with a hate crime.

But County Attorney Patrick Ciliberto said Thursday that is not an option because both the suspects and the victim are black.

— "Attack on dad at Valleyfair not a hate crime," Star Tribune

The original news story, based on initial police reports, did not report the race of the perpetrators — who were quickly and profanely presumed to be black.

Nor did it report the race of the family attacked — who were presumed to be white.

Here's where this gets sticky for me. In the absence of complete information, I jumped to the same conclusion as did the talk radio hosts, callers, bloggers and commenters who saw this as a reverse hate crime.

I, too, visualized a white victim.

This, despite the fact that black-on-black crime is far more prevalent than black-on-white attacks in the Metro area.

The latest report also raises other questions. In addition to the hate crime angle, there was a lot of brave comment by people not on the scene about how they would've waded into the situation to drive off the attackers. We'll never know how these virtual violent Samaritans would've actually behaved had they seen a black girl being harassed or black man being beaten by other blacks. Nor will we know whether people on the scene, who were criticized by some for not intervening, had their decisions affected by the race of those involved.

But we can still discover whether the positive impulse to assist the victim after the fact has gained or lost steam since it was announced.

And one last wrinkle, one of the accused attackers was convicted in March 2008 of carrying a pistol without a permit in a public place.

Minnesotans in a changing state don't gain anything by calling each other animals or racists or cowards or cowboys. But I'm not sure we're able to have a deeper conversation about crime and punishment, rights and protections, or how good intentions go wrong when race enters the story.

Comments

[Mitch Berg]

Charlie,

You got yourself a regular little army of strawmen here!

I, among the vast majority of commenters on this case, didn't comment on the race of anyone - attacker or victim. I don't believe in hate crime laws, hence remained silent on invoking 'em.

By the way, I and several other blogs beat the Strib on the "illegal carry" charges by well over a week.

Now, speaking of casual racism...:

"there was a lot of brave comment by people not on the scene about how they would've waded into the situation to drive off the attackers. We'll never know how these virtual violent Samaritans would've actually behaved had they seen a black girl being harassed or black man being beaten by other blacks."

We'll never know? Maybe - but the tone of your comment clearly implies you have a good guess, right?

And while I wasn't especially bellicose about the "intervention" thing, especially with guns (because if you shoot, or point at, the wrong people in the confusion of a brawl, the county attorney will clearly put you in jail for longer than any of the four attackers with records have *ever* been in jail), I do believe you're wrong.

[Charlie Quimby]

Mitch, it's not about you. There was not a single link to your posts or your name here.

As a commenter at Anti-Strib, you indeed were not bellicose. See paragraph above.

And "we'll never know" means we'll never know.

[Mark Gisleson]

And Barnes was absolutely correct to shut down the comments. The Strib's failure to monitor their comments has resulted in them becoming a cess pool of hostility and misinformation.

Whoops — she only shut down local news story comments? Well, I guess that won't fix the problems at The Big Question....

And Mitch, seriously dude, that's some world class defensiveness on your part. Your name never once crossed my thoughts as I read Charlie's post, or any other coverage of the Valleyfair wilding.

For one microscopic moment I did wonder what Anti-Strib had to say about it, but then, thinking about Anti-Strib, I realized I really didn't care what they thought about any race-based crime or news story.

And yes, I thought the victims were white also. But I also thought the perps were white too. In Minnesota, if a crime makes the news, I assume everyone involved is white because that's a good description of the state. That and the fact that the Strib doesn't seem to focus much on black on black crime.

[Sherry]

This story is disturbing on so many levels. The closest, my teenage daughter wanted to go to Valley Fair right about that time, with her other teenage friends, and no parents. This could have happened to her.

Who cares what race they are, to be at a public place and be attacked like this is very disturbing. Having a gun would not solve anything. Would you be scoping out every visitor at the Fair, seeing if someone is ready to attack? Then firing on them.

And what about Mitch's idea "you could shoot or aim at the wrong person"? I guess its a good thing he could think there is a wrong person to aim and shoot at.

Minnesota Nice - If you have lived anywhere else you know it doesn't exist.

[MBerg]

Charlie,

Didn't think it was all about me, although in reading my comment it's not a completely unreasonable read of what I wrote... chalk it up to speed.

But, rightly or wrongly, it looked to me like you were going after commentary on this attack much broader than just Anti-Strib.

Mark,

Defensive? Pffft. Nope.

[Tracy]

We knew that the attackers were black as their pictures were on the WCCO news website.

The Red Star could have added the pertinent details to the original story and saved the Savage Police Dept. as lot of hassle. In the end they had to publish the truth anyway, so their PC BS failed.

As for helping the "victim", we did alot of work and found out quite a bit more than was in the article.

1. He doesn't want any help.
2. The girl harrassed wasn't 12
3. There are other personal issues leading to more questions than answers.

You do have one good point. Black on Black crime is so much more common that one wonders why the Red Star ran the poorly written story in the first place.

[Hal Davis]

Who's "we"?