Balkanization in the air - the rationalization of African American anger through violence against whites - Demystifying Multiculturalism - Cover Story

National Review, Feb 21, 1994 by Minoo Southgate

NEW YORK--"gorgeous mosaic" or urban Bosnia? What do the reactions to Colin Ferguson's shooting 25 commuters on the Long Island Rail Road, apparently because they were "white," suggest as an answer to our question?

Talk-show hosts and callers on the black-oriented radio stations WLIB and WWRL treated the gunman as a black Everyman, an archerypal bearer of black rage--at once a victim and a hero. On Clayton Riley's program on WLIB, NAACP counsel Laura Blackburne said she "grieved" for "Mr. Ferguson because he is as much a victim as the rest of us. How could we permit a man to walk around with such bottled up rage?"

The mayhem on the 5:33 train was retribution for the whites' sins against blacks, one caller explained. "These people who enslaved our fathers, enslaved our mothers--they earned it."

Riley himself said Ferguson "is no more enraged about a whole lot of things than I am and a whole lot of other people are." He had "snapped"; they had not--not yet.

On WWRL, American and Caribbean blacks joined in blaming white racism for black failure and rage-- Ferguson's and theirs. "It just shows you how the system here can destroy people's minds psychologically," said a Jamaican woman. "When you refuse housing, jobs, and, you know, drives people crazy [sic]. He's from Jamaica .... He was not used to the racism that exists in America .... We can't just blame the person."

The shooting was a warning, many thought. "White people are just not going to get the message," said one. "They're going to refuse to understand .... They're going to get shot with their own guns."

The Reverend Joseph Lowery, head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, rejects the notion that the LIRR shooting was a hate crime. "People who deliberately set out to violate the rights of blacks, who take a guy out of a car and burn him, that's a hate crime," he says. "It's not the same thing as a guy who blows his stack or suffers a brain explosion and goes berserk."

Al Sharpton characterized Ferguson as a deranged loner rather than an anti-white and anti-Asian racist. "The press jumped to make it a racial incident and to blame people like us . . . rather than to deal with the fact that [Ferguson] is a sick man," Sharpton complained.

Of course, Ferguson could be both mad and bad (and thus dangerous to know)---a deranged loner whose mental illness was given a push by the surrounding atmosphere of antiwhite racism and black victimhood. Tocqueville noted in his Recollections that the 1848 revolution was preceded by the appearance of madmen ranting in the streets and cafes of Paris. These madmen were, in effect, deranged prophets who had distilled their frenzy from the surrounding miasma of social and political hatreds. Might not Colin Ferguson be just such an interpreter?

Despite enormous civil-rights and political gains over the past two and a half decades, not only has black rage not subsided, it has been elevated to a virtue, a badge of honor sported by the black privileged class as well as the underclass. And because a guilt-ridden white establishment has ignored or excused expressions of this "rage," the most vile and absurd racial slanders have gone uncontradicted. Hence white racism becomes the explanation for every ill that befalls the black community.

The militant editor and publisher of New York's Amsterdam News, Bill Tatum, wrote that the shooting was a reaction to the defeat of a black incumbent mayor by a white Republican. Ferguson reflected "the unrest, anger, and resentment, and feelings that white media played a role in the loss of Dinkins."

Other "root causes" radicals gave Ferguson a broader historical perspective. In a City Sun op-ed, Professor Sam Pinn of Ramapo College compared Ferguson to Nat Turner and called his massacre a justified political act--like the Watts riot and the Los Angeles "rebellion."

Among radical blacks Ferguson gained mythic stature, and his defense became a "cause." When at his "Stop the Killing" rally in New York, Louis Farrakhan mentioned the LIRR shooting, he drew cheers from the audience. According to Guyanese-American attorney Colin Moore, when Ferguson was walked to his cell in shackles and handcuffs, his black fellow prisoners "got up and gave him a standing ovation."

In the cacophony, it was not Jesse Jackson or David Dinkins but half a dozen ordinary black New Yorkers-- Jessica, Barbara, Anne, Ross, and Jill--who crossed the racial divide.

Jessica called Bob Grant on white-oriented WABC to say that Ferguson was "not a hero to us, because killing people because of race and color is not being a here."

"I am black and I'm outraged at [Ferguson]," said Barbara. "As far as Al Sharpton and his crew, it's people like that who make me ashamed of being black."

The others expressed similar sentiments. "I would like to join those other women," said Anne, "and to say that there are more of us than there are of the others .... We're proud of our country, and we have morals, and we have values." These black callers showed more courage and honesty in a few minutes than New York's establishment has been able to muster in two decades.