Quote:
Originally Posted by valo403
What do you think the coverage would be like if this was a white child killed by a black man?
It's humorous that you think the press is going out of it's way here due to the shooters race when there is a long history of cases involving white victims becoming national stories while cases with nearly identical facts and minority victims barely make the local paper.
There is certainly a racial element to this story, although whether or not race played a role in Zimmerman's actions is a completely different issue, to expect the press to ignore it is naive.
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Generally, there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason why one story gets glommed onto versus another . . . . humans love a mystery and we always seem to have one on the go in the national media to entertain us.
Yet there are so many storylines of a similar nature at the same time that it would be impossible for them all to get the same national attention.
Maybe its unusual in this case, and therefore newsworthy, because it is actually unusual for a black to be killed by someone outside of his/her own race.
The majority of violent crime in the USA is intra-racial, not inter-racial.
A black murder victim is about 90% likely to have been killed by another black.
While African Americans comprise 13.5% of the U.S. Population, 43% of all murder victims in 2007 were African American, 93.1% of whom were killed were African Americans.
http://www.hhscenter.org/bonbstat.html
One specific example where a city bemoans the lack of white murder victims: Cincinnati.
http://www.wcpo.com/dpp/news/news_ar...ime-rate-rises
Interestingly, serious acts of violent crime against blacks were more likely to be reported to police than similar acts against whites, maybe because of volume.
Although its Wikipedia, this seems a fair and reasonably learned examination of Race and Crime in the USA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_an..._United_States
In this particular case, its an interesting storyline because of a law which may allow the killer to pursue and execute a suspect and then get away with it.
Its really this law which may be on trial and special interest groups on both sides of it will spend a lot of time vocalizing their defences.
Otherwise, its just another day.
Cowperson