By now most people are familiar with the African American or Black racial category and/or distinction applying to persons of mixed race.   Indeed Barack Obama calls himself “black”, as does just about everyone with mixed racial ethnicities where one parent is black and the other white.
Some have even gone so far as to say that even various degrees of distance from genetic disposition allows a person to claim identification as the minority race.   The example of Senator Elizabeth Warren who claims native American lineage comes readily to mind.
But what about when the person is engaging in unlawful or criminal activity?  Does the behavior lend itself to alternate definitions of race?    That example became evident in the George Zimmerman case where Mr. Zimmerman was media categorized as “white”.  Then, after the reality of his actual Hispanic heritage surfaced, a new box  called white-Hispanic was born.
The emphasis was in keeping “white” as an identifier because it helped solidify the manipulation of race into the narrative.  Without it, the media hook was diminished considerably;  certainly it became less appealing.
Do you remember the 14-year-old thug, Philip Chism, who beat his 24-year-old white teacher, Colleen Ritzer, to death at Danvers High School?
A reader/blogger at freefabulousgirl.com noted an unusual outcome of his Massachusetts police report.
The cops categorized his race as “white” on the police report.
philip chism
As the noted article outlines:

[…]  Is this part of the effort of both Eric Holder’s Justice Department (which, in 2008, stopped reporting demographics along side homicide statistics, although they still collect the information – they just don’t publish it) and the soft-headed leaders in the Danvers, Mass police Department to hide that fact that this was another black on white crime, and that black on white crime is a much bigger problem than the famous “black on black crime” that does happen and that Conservative Inc. likes to talk about because talking about the real problem would be, ur, a problem for them?  (continue reading)

It does seem odd that when the police, government agency, or media, are accounting for criminal behavior by an African American suspect they seem to have a familiar tendency to avoid categorizing the perpetrator as “black”, even to the extent they will mistakenly categorize as “white”, or as in the Zimmerman case “white-Hispanic”.
One would almost think there was some intent to keep statistics from reflecting numerous realities.
Or something.

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