SGT. DALE TERRY (above), of the Chesterfield, Virginia sheriff’s department, discovered on Saturday the skeletal remains of what is unofficially believed to be the body of missing University of Virginia student Hannah Graham in Albermarle County. It was an uncanny discovery, according to interviews with Terry, because he was just about to suspend search of the abandoned property when he saw bones and a skull in a creek bed and the black pants Graham was wearing that night.

Graham’s pretty face has been flashed around the world since she disappeared while walking home drunk in tight blank pants and a sequined midriff on the night of Sept. 13 and encountered Jesse Matthew, the black “gentle giant” (he has actually been described as such) who is now believed to be a serial killer. While the President has made a big deal about sexual assault against women on campus, he has mysteriously said nothing about this very public case. This isn’t what people mean when they talk about campus sexual assault. Not at all. This is far too real to be part of that manufactured escapism, the primary aim of which is to make women more attached to their political knight errants than to the men who might safely walk them home. Campus anti-rape feminists have not been publicly shocked and horrified by this real life example, or used this opportunity to advise women to dress more modestly, refrain from drinking, make sure they have escorts at night and be wary of black men, who have a much higher rate of sexual assault and criminal violence. These advocates of women’s safety are nowhere when you need them.

Graham was only 18, and it is wrong to blame her for stupidity. But it is not wrong to blame the sham freedom women have been granted and the phony refusal to admit the facts about black criminality. One cannot help but think that Hannah Graham was taught never to be suspicious of a black person and that she might have acted on those lessons when she walked away that night from a crowded restaurant, where many people would probably have helped her get home, with Matthew, whose wild dreadlocks and fixation on her should have alarmed her, even if she was drunk. When she was on the streets alone in skimpy clothes at night, Hannah Graham embodied feminist freedom and Jesse Matthew, when he was dancing and drinking in a tony white restaurant and left with his arm around a white college student without anyone interfering, his dreadlocks obscuring his resemblance to the man in crime sketches, embodied racial freedom.

He also embodied racial freedom when, having allegedly sexually assaulted two women as a college football player more than ten years ago (one woman went to the hospital for treatment), he left two colleges without criminal charges or more serious consequences than expulsion. He has been apparently stalking women ever since, including Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington, who is believed to have gotten into a cab he was driving in 2009 and whose body was discovered in a similar manner three months later. The Washington Post early on in the Graham case quoted sources describing the accused as a “gentle giant.”

There are many women who have disappeared forever, including several women in the Charlottesville area in recent years, with none of the notice and attention that Graham’s case has attracted. Is it unfair that people have cared so much about her and so little about those other women? Yes, in a way it is. It is unfair. But then one cannot keep people from feeling what they feel about a pretty face that seems to be a symbol of innocence and wholesome goodness. And whatever is done to create standards that protect the Hannah Grahams will keep tragically anonymous women safer too.

— Comments —

RH writes:

If whites reacted to the murder of white women by black males appropriately, (and we all know what that means) black on white rape, murder and assaults would all but stop. But whites are too busy watching football and teaching our white daughters that black males are to be cheered not feared, that they’re all innocent and misunderstood at best, like Theo Huxtable of “The Cosby Show.” And we have paid a tremendous toll for our selfishness. Young, black males, by and large, are predatory… You know it, I know it and the statistics show it although they are being manipulated with malice.

A different America knew that once, and our white females like Hannah were protected. They were not raped and murdered by the thousands by black males.

Laura write:

Most young black males don’t rape and murder. If they did, there would be no hesitation about seeing this as a problem. Most young black males don’t rape and murder, but a significant minority does — with especial brutality.

David J. writes:

RH said, “Young, black males, by and large, are predatory…and the statistics show it….”

You said, “Most young black males don’t rape and murder.  If they did, there would be no hesitation about seeing this as a problem.”

I can always count on you, Mrs. Wood, for frank, politically incorrect honesty about racial matters and proper perspective against wild, misleading assertions made by commenters.

Laura writes:

While most blacks do not rape and murder, most blacks show no collective remorse regarding the rapists and murderers among them and no initiative to control them. Most Germans did not personally kill Jews under the Nazis, but Germans expressed collective remorse for the violence of the Nazis. Blacks often blame the crime rate on poverty or prejudice.

Terry Morris writes:

Laura wrote: “Blacks often blame the crime rate on poverty or prejudice.”

As do white liberals. In fact I’d say white liberals almost always blame the (black) crime rate on poverty, and/or, white prejudice, rather than often. So who is the more guilty, blacks or white liberals? Murder is worse than non-murder obviously, but white liberals are the more guilty in my view because they commit crimes of omission on the one hand, and subsidize and enable – encourage, even – black violence on the other. Not to mention that white liberals are firmly in control. But, of course, this is all true of white liberals with all sorts of immoral, inordinate behaviorisms indulged of all their pet minority groups.

Laura writes:

Yes,  I would tend to agree that whites are more to blame.

David J. writes: 

I am not trying to quibble, but another thought arose concerning your German example of collective remorse. Though blacks appear to take the cake regarding the paucity of group-wide contrition, perhaps the Germans are not an apt example. I am no expert on history, but the Germans showed (and, to their credit, are still showing) deep sorrow and regret about the heinous acts perpretrated under Nazi rule after almost the entire civilized world, in a vastly concerted effort, criticized, shamed, and censured them! Did such not incentivize Germans to national embarrasment and remorse? On the other hand, is the global community reproaching black Americans (or Zimbaweans or South Africans) for their extremely high crime rates?

I struggle to find examples of voluntary group remorse (though probably because of my historical ignorance). Do Turks apologize for Armenian genocide or assert that nothing of the sort actually occurred? Do southern whites in the U.S. rue their contribution to the Civil War or steadfastly maintain that they were on the side of angels and Lincoln is alongside Judas, Cassius, and Brutus in Dante’s version of hell? Have contemporary American liberals, of any race, regretted their demonstrable role in the destruction of the black family, major U.S. cities, and the morals of the lower classes? Have Muslims, en masse, apologized for any of their actions since the seventh century?

Although, counter to my point (if I even have one), white Americans do show an undeniable, and likely excessive, regret for the historical enslavement and oppression of blacks. White South Africans, with few qualifications, do the same. Albeit, did not both groups receive the ire of world opinion before their present, apologetic states?

Anyway, I guess my point is that human groups tend to apologize and repent chiefly in response to mass criticism of their deeds. Group guilt is seldom voluntary. If the people of the world would openly blame blacks in unison for their wrongdoings, perhaps more members of the black race would begin to confess their collective sins.

Laura writes:

You seem to be saying that blacks cannot prompt collective guilt in their own racial group. Maybe they would express guilt, you say, if whites pressured them. But that merely confirms my point. They seem to lack, probably through no fault of their own, the moral initiative on a group level. You also do not mention a single historical example of blacks, whether in the West or in Africa, engaging in prolonged public remorse or atonement. Has that occurred? The horrible massacres in Africa, the blacks who sold others into slavery — have there been public exercises in remorse that have captured the attention of whole nations that are in any way similar to the mass self-lacerations of white guilt? Maybe there are instances of this that I am not familiar with. I know that individual blacks are capable of understanding right and wrong, and of feeling guilt, and I know there are highly conscientious and articulate blacks who point out the wrongs committed by blacks and yet who do not command the attention of large numbers of blacks. I agree with you that whites could inspire more of this self-awareness in blacks if they wanted to do it.

David J. writes:

In a previous email, I agreed with you that blacks, as a group, tend to lack the introspection and self-accusation that are evidenced in other peoples like the Germans.  I then added a more nuanced point that, throughout the annals of history, groups tended to apologize and display remorse for collective misdeeds in response to and after they have received ample criticism and opprobrium from others.  For instance, the Japanese have made several measures, if not reluctantly, to apologize for the Rape of Nanking in the face of Chinese diplomatic pressure.  The public regret has not been altogether voluntary.

I’m not saying that an ethnicity or race (or state or nation or community) cannot be self-motivated to atone for past crimes.  However, joint self-atonement has more often occurred as the result of the expressed, external moral outrage of others, not by voluntary moral compunction.  Can you think of many examples to the contrary?

Is the international or Western or Christian community continually holding blacks to task for their amazingly high levels of crime?  Not at all.  If my aforesaid notion is correct, even if blacks were endowed with the same inclination to guilt as others, one probably should not expect them to apologize absent any external pressures.

By the way, you asked me to proffer an example of blacks engaging in self-guilt in the aggregate.  Meager an example though it may be, for what it’s worth, the Ugandan president, on behalf of his people, has publicly apologized for the country’s past sins.

 Laura writes:

The shame for Western wrongs has largely come from within Western nations themselves. The guilt over slavery and colonialism was mostly generated by white Westerners. There are public crimes that go unexamined, of course, but it was not external pressure that led to apologizing for these things.

One example of a black American who did criticize his own racial group and hold it to high ideals was William Hannibal Thomas, author of The American Negro: What He Was, What He is and What He May Become, which was published in 1901. He was very critical of slavery, but he also argued, eloquently, that the greatest problem afflicting blacks at that point was their own immorality and that they required “enforced discipline” to live well in American society. Thomas has been generally ignored or blasted as a traitor.  He has not been acclaimed by African-American studies programs.

There are whites who criticize society and are ignored too (especially certain bloggers), so I don’t mean to suggest that whites collectively recognize everything wrong they do. But it does seem that they tend to be more self-critical, both individually and collectively, than blacks. Perhaps that’s why they have a higher suicide rate.

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