Jamelle Bouie is a black columnist for Slate who, like most black columnists, specializes in calling people racist. However, unlike many other columnists, Bouie at least seems capable of reading the arguments of the people he's denouncing. And today, Bouie holds a unique spot among liberal journalists by suggesting a bloodbath isn't necessarily the best response to the occupation of a government building.
Bouie notes how many liberals are sneering that the FBI seems more restrained in dealing with the white occupiers than local cops are in dealing with the black residents of their cities. He also observes that liberals seem to believe the occupiers would be dead if they weren't white. But as he writes:
It’s not just that these are different organizations—local and city police forces versus the FBI and other federal agencies—and different kinds of confrontations with different procedures, but that there’s also a different history involved. Confrontations at Ruby Ridge and in Waco, Texas ended with scores of dead (white) civilians, and inspired the Oklahoma City bombing—the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil prior to Sept. 11, 2001.
Law enforcement has been willing to use lethal violence against armed white protesters and the results were catastrophic. It’s no surprise federal agents are cautious; they walk with the hard-learned lessons of the 1990s. Even if the Bundys are paper tigers, no one wants to relive the past. In that, law enforcement officials are correct.[Is the Oregon Standoff Evidence of a Racial Double Standard? January 5, 2016]One thing Bouie does not bring up though is that occupations by black protesters with guns is hardly new. Eric Holder reportedly participated in an "armed" takeover of a ROTC campus in the 1970's. No one was prosecuted [As college student, Eric Holder participated in 'armed' takeover of former Columbia University ROTC office, by Charles C. Johnson and Ryan Girdusky, Daily Caller, September 30, 2015]
