Why No Police Investigation Of A Racial Hate Crime?
03/27/2012
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Now that the Trayvon Martin case has raised awareness of racial bias and hate crimes on the streets of America, it's time to look into other cases that were ignored by the cops. 

For example, on May 14, 2011, Matthew Yglesias, now of Slate and a prominent advocate of urban ambulation, was walking home from dinner with pundits Megan McArdle of The Atlantic and Peter Suderman of Reason. In a neighborhood about a mile north of the U.S. Capitol building, he was assaulted from behind by two black males who knocked him to the ground and kicked him when he was down, then ran off without trying to steal anything. Several months later, he confirmed on his blog that the attackers were black.

That evening Yglesias blogged about the attack, blaming it on a lack of population density. This wonkish concept was taken up and discussed seriously in the blogosphere for a couple of days, with only the ruder corners suggesting that the real issue here was that Yglesias appears to have been the victim of an unprovoked racial hate crime of the Polar Bear Hunting or Knockout King ilk, having been picked out solely because he was white and alone.

Since our awareness of the need for good police investigation of racially-charged violence has been raised, isn't it about time for a police report to be made public on the apparent racial hate crime committed against Yglesias?

Or, am I being naive and missing the point that blacks attacking a white for no reasons other than animus and intimidation aren't really a racial crime when viewed through the proper lens of "Who? Whom?"

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