White Supremacists of All Colors

A driver plowed through a group of protestors in Seattle blocking a highway. He ended up hitting two women, killing one. To be clear, Washington State Patrol closed the highway because of the protest (as they have done repeatedly before), and so far they're not quite sure exactly how this car made it to the area where the protest was happening. Speculation right now is that WSP may have overlooked an on-ramp.

There is video, and it's really awful to watch:

A graphic video posted on social media showed the vehicle racing toward the group of protesters who are standing behind several parked cars, set up for protection. The car swerves around the other vehicles and slams into the two people, sending them flying into the air. The driver, who was alone, fled the scene after hitting the protesters.

Immediately, people (including a Seattle council member) denounced the attacker as either right-wing or white supremacist. And I kind of hate that this detail becomes a third-rail flashpoint, but the driver is a 27-year old black man. Anecdotally, the only people I saw who took steps to identify the driver and his race were what you'd consider "heterodox" reporters like Andy Ngo.

I get that people are always looking out for the salient narrative and the driver's identity throws a wrench in what otherwise would have been breathlessly reported as a hate crime. But I noticed a similar pattern with high-profile attacks in New York City against Hasidic Jews last fall, nearly always committed by black individuals. This has become a trope of ridicule within right-wing circles.

To be clear, my point isn't "why don't you talk about black perpetrators of violence??". Heather Heyer, the woman killed in Charlottesville by someone with documented Neo-Nazi and white supremacist beliefs, gets routinely cited as an example of right-wing violence to be vigilant about. But it's just one data point. Ideally I would like to push back on exactly those grounds and to request further evidence of a dynamic worthy of national attention, but I've never had a positive reaction to that sort of inquiry. It's confirmation bias on steroids. We know that white supremacists are a danger to our society, and this one example is just an illustration of what we already know.

Is the death of Heather Heyer proof that white supremacist pose an especially pernicious threat to our society? I don't know! I need more evidence than just one incident. Is the Monsey Hanukkah stabbing incident proof that black people harbor violent resentment against Hasidic Jews? I don't know either! The car attack that happened over in Seattle is likely to fall into relative obscurity because of the same dynamic playing out but in the opposite direction.

SSC had an essay describing a situation where once a topic is taboo (say for example, race and IQ), the individuals comfortable speaking about it get fewer and fewer to the point where the only ones willing to raise it usually do so for what would be seen as opprobrious reasons (for example, literal white supremacists using it to justify ethno-states and eugenics). At that point, if you're one of the "good ones" that somehow stumbles into talking about it, then everyone around you will start to question whether you're a white supremacists, because those people are the only ones that bring up this topic.

I think this happens within these circumstances too. Basically the people that want to talk about racial disparity in criminal conduct tend to be primarily white supremacists that want to use those disparities to support their ideology. So once that topic is tainted, everyone else (justifiably) becomes terrified of invoking that association by even mentioning it.

I really don't like this phenomenon. I want everyone to be able to discuss racial disparities, sex disparities, cultural disparities, etc. whatever, without immediately being put under suspicion of operating under bigoted motivations. Sadly that's not the reality we live in.