Black mob violence and denial have a new poster boy: Ray Widstrand of St. Paul, Minnesota.
Widstrand moved into a black neighborhood in the summer of 2013. Soon after, he took an evening stroll and met some of his new neighbors, He then found himself in the hospital -- the victim of a vicious beating at the hands of a large black mob. Widstrand suffered broken bones, a fractured skull and permanent brain injuries.317
His attackers were just some kids lashing out, Widstrand said later. And he was a kid once and he did the same thing, so let’s all just get along.
And Widstrand doing the same thing? That part is not true.
This same story of what white people can expect in a black neighborhood played out in 2012 in a Chicago courtroom. Only this time they broke out the big guns: A Harvard professor.
Here’s what happened: A California college girl was arrested at the airport, then released into the deepest and most dangerous ghetto in Chicago.
A black part of Chicago.
Soon after her release, she was attacked and thrown out of a seven-story window. Her family sued. During the trial, a Harvard professor testified that if a white person walks through a black neighborhood, people could reasonably expect some very unreasonable violence to be visited on that person.
The professor called it Routine Activities Theory: R.A.T.
The judge explained R.A.T. by saying the victim “was a white female in a predominantly black, poor neighborhood (and) she had a much higher risk of predatory victimization.”318
Judge Frank Easterbrook went on: “She was lost, unable to appreciate her danger and dressed in a manner to attract attention. She is white and well-off while the local population is predominantly black and not affluent, causing her to stand out as a person unfamiliar with the environment and, thus, a potential target for crime.”319
The city said R.A.T. was thinly disguised racial profiling and had no business at trial. But at the trial, R.A.T and race were everywhere – no matter how hard the city worked to keep it out. No matter how dedicated local media were to ignoring it.
Easterbrook said the situation was so transparently dangerous that Chicago police “might as well have released her into the lions’ den at the Brookfield Zoo.”320
The City of Chicago settled for $22.5 million.
Like Dr. Singh, Widstrand told local reporters he forgave his assailants. Though there is not one sign that any of his attackers is asking for it.
Marlin Newburn says their forgiveness is really just a mask for denial. Newburn was a prison and law enforcement psychologist for more than 30 years. He says this fake forgiveness may be placing more people in danger because it allows the media to ignore racial violence. Says Newburn:
When talking about crime victims who have been naïve or otherwise ignorant of dangerous environments, forgiveness also appears to be a knee-jerk response to not just the physical assault, but the traumatic destruction of an ideal the victim may have harbored regarding their assailants,” Newburn said.
In the case of black mob assaults, victims often believed the supposed put-upon black race need only to be understood and seen as social victims, and a blanket acceptance of all blacks do in life is part of being a good person.
Prior to being assaulted, many of the victims who I’ve talked with over the years had harbored a sense of nobility and even adolescent invincibility since they had convinced themselves that their “higher value system” exempted them from social dangers to include physical harm.
After the assault, that belief is destroyed, and something has to replace it quickly for emotional stability, hence, instant forgiveness.
Newburn says some people are too eager to be nice. There is a name for that:
I just read this victim's comments to reporters and saw straightaway he is a classic "masochist altruist, non-psychotic".
These people have a need to suffer or "be the victim" in order to assuage feelings of low self-worth, jealousy, envy, anger and/or overall feelings of inadequacy. “They have a terrible time experiencing pleasure or joy of any kind.”
Some say that attitude reflects a “blame the victim” mentality. Others say telling the truth may save the next victim.
Widstrand requires assistance with every phase of his life now. He wears a helmet to protect his fractured skull. Singh is back at work as a doctor in Harlem. His wired jaw is now wire-free.
The day after Widstrand told reporters he was forgiving his assailants, a car of at least four black people pulled up to a woman talking on her iPhone on a St. Paul street. KTSP picks up the story:321
Three other men got out of the vehicle and one of them pulled her by the hair to the sidewalk, pushed her to the ground, pulled her pants down and then urinated on her, the criminal complaint states.
The woman reported she thought she was going to get raped. She heard one man say, “Mitch you took that white bitch’s phone.”
Continuing a long tradition, neither of major local papers identified the alleged urinating assailants as black. The only local TV or radio station to do so was KTSP.
No word yet if the woman forgives her wig-wearing attackers for this public humiliation. Widstrand and Singh, however, said they plan to continue living in the neighborhoods where they were attacked, R.A.T., or no R.A.T..
For every Ray Widstrand, the trolls like to mention Emmitt Till. “Or all the white guys who shoot up schools. Only white people do that.”
Really? What about Lakim Faust?
You know: Lakim Faust.
Never heard of him?
Exactly.