While the Left has a ‘how many angels can fit on the head of a pin’ debate amongst themselves about the ascription of ‘hero’ status to Charles Ramsey, a black man with a propensity for domestic violence himself, a central more obvious point is overlooked.
Like the black homeless guy with the FM radio voice a couple of years ago, the media (as predictable as children) fixate on the relatively anomalous phenomenon of a ghetto black guy ‘doing the right thing’ in any context.
When they find an instance of it, they feel the need to swoon.
The sociological richness of Ramsey’s extended quote on his ‘rescue’ of the three girls is worth quoting, as well:
“I knew something was wrong when a little pretty white girl ran into a black man’s arms. Something is wrong here. Dead giveaway. Dead giveaway. Dead giveaway. Either she homeless or she got problems. That’s the only reason she run to a black man.”
In her piece struggling to make sense of Ramsey within the larger context of black male crime, I had to crack up at Liliana Segura’s The Nation-fitting aside:
I recently sat in a Memphis courtroom as a white prosecutor pointed at a black man whom he hoped to send back to death row, imploring jurors not to be fooled by the “well-dressed, well-groomed” man before him. “Not quite the same as he was back then!” he cried, triumphantly, pointing at a sixteen-year-old mugshot of the defendant, confident that the dark image of him in a hoodie would look threatening enough to scare the jury. You can put a black man in a suit, in other words, but underneath it he is still a criminal.
It reminds me of an old joke Ms. Segura would surely disapprove of:
Q: What do you call a black guy in three piece suit?
A: The defendant.