AP: IT MUST BE THE JOOOZZZ (AND THE ITALIANS)

Hate Crimes By People of Color is Uncomfortable for the A.P.

Posted by David Kelsey (JewSchool)

The Associated Press reported on a horrible hate crime endured by an Asian-American student, "NEW YORK Nov 13, 2005 — Eighteen-year-old Chen Tsu was waiting on a Brooklyn subway platform after school when four high school classmates approached him and demanded cash. He showed them his empty pockets, but they attacked him anyway, taking turns pummeling his face. He was scared and injured bruised and swollen for several days but hardly surprised. 

At his school, Lafayette High in Brooklyn, Chinese immigrant students like him are harassed and bullied so routinely that school officials in June agreed to a Department of Justice consent decree to curb alleged "severe and pervasive harassment directed at Asian-American students by their classmates." Since then, the Justice Department credits Lafayette officials with addressing the problem but the case is far from isolated."

Why Bensonhurst, you ask? Well, the A.P. dutifully notes, "In the last five years, Census data show, Asians mostly Chinese have grown from 5 percent to nearly 10 percent of Brooklyn residents. In the Bensonhurst neighborhood, historically home to Italian and Jewish families, more than 20 percent of residents now are Asian. Those changes have escalated ethnic tension on campuses such as Lafayette High, according to Khin Mai Aung, staff attorney at the Asian-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, which is advocating for Lafayette students."

The problem, as Mike Berman noted, is that,

"If you consult Fafayette High School’s 2003-4 Annual School Report, you will find that Lafayette High School’s current ethnic composition is 11.8% white, 45.8% black, 25.1% Hispanic and 17.3% Asian." And hence, "those changes" to the neighborhood "historically home to Italian and Jewish families" most likely had nothing to do with it. That is to say, Italians and Jews most likely had nothing to do with it, and it is never said which group the assailants belonged to. 

If a writer (say, Erin Texeira) wants to selectively gloss over the assailants race in a hate crimes case out of a double standard (when say, they aren't white), that is duplicitous enough. But to intentionally insinuate hatred in specific communities who had nothing to do with the case is outright forgery. And it came from "the world's oldest and largest newsgathering organization."