Journalists in Indianapolis Show Their True Colors: Feel Sorry for the Families of Amanda Blackburn's Black Killers and Say "Stop Calling them Animals"

During the press conference on November 23, 2015 where members of various Indianapolis law enforcement and government agencies announced their intentions to charge an 18-year-old black male with murder for the death of Amanda Blackburn, a most interesting question was asked by a journalist. 

Basically, he wanted to know how law enforcement and prosecutors felt about the negative impact a guilty conviction would have on the black suspects and their families. 

Tim Swarens, the opinion for the Indianapolis Star, writes that we shouldn't call the murderers of Amanda Blackburn "animals." He's right... a certain N-word is far more apropos...

Seriously. 

Here's what was asked (identity of the journalist is not known, but you can watch the press conference at this link):

"These individuals have been involved in other crimes. Does this speak to the difficulty in trying to reach young people? The suspects are no strangers to police. They've had run ins with police before. They've had criminal pasts. Both are young men - 21, 20 and younger [18-year-old Larry Taylor is accused of murdering Amanda Blackburn and the child she carried]. They have presumption of innocence, but their lives, if they lead to conviction, are essentially ruined, their families lives are devastated by what has happened. Does this speak to a larger issue for these two?"

A larger issue? How about the violent nature of the black community in Indianapolis white taxpayers subsidize with welfare, food stamps/EBT, and the escalating costs of incarceration (because punishment is no longer unusual and blacks no longer fear going to jail)?

Terry Curry, Marion County Prosecutor, answered the strangely sympathetic-to-the-plight-of-the-murderer-and-their-family question with the usual nonsense of "cycle of violence continuing generation after generation and people wearing these type of killings as badge of honor" nonsense. 

No. 

They are animals. 

Worse than animals. 

A certain "N-word" comes to mind...

Two years ago, Todd Erb's wife and daughter were murdered in a "home invasion gone wrong" in Indianapolis. The culprit? A black male named Christian Rene Haley. 

He's an animal too. 

Just don't tell that to the Tim Swarens, the opinion editor of the Indianapolis Star.[Swarens: No, Amanda Blackburn’s accused killers aren’t ‘animals, 11-25-15]:

The legal analyst for FOX News grew more agitated the longer she spoke Tuesday night about a murder case that has horrified Indy for more than two weeks.

“They got rid of the electric chair in Indiana in 1995,” Katie Phang, a Miami-based trial lawyer and regular guest on Greta Van Susteren’s talk show, said. “And I think frankly they should bring it back for these three animals that were involved in the murder of Amanda Blackburn.”

Let’s think about that comment, echoed by others in our city. Not to debate the ethics of the death penalty, or to argue over whether a particular means of execution is more appropriate than another (Indiana uses lethal injection).

And not about whether an officer of the court should have publicly convicted suspects immediately after their arrest. (For the record, only two men, not three, have been charged in Blackburn’s murder thus far).

No, I want to focus on the use of the word “animals” to describe Amanda’s accused killers.

It’s the wrong word, and, more important, it’s one that sends the wrong message.

Hear me out, please. I am in no way defending those accused of this barbaric crime. If convicted, these men should never taste another day of freedom again. And if Marion County Prosecutor Terry Curry does decide to pursue the death penalty, I won’t object.

But I do object to using words such as “animal” to dehumanize the accused — not for their sake. But for our own.

The fact is these young men are products of our community. They grew in our midst from the innocent children we all are at birth to become the dangerous predators they appear to be today. They attended our schools, lived in our neighborhoods, mingled with the rest of us on our streets.

As ugly as it is to think about: Our city, parts of our culture, helped to mold them into criminals so wanton that they invaded homes, terrorized the innocent, and, in a last despicable act, apparently murdered a young woman and her unborn child.

Those facts should prompt us to ask why this happened in our city? Why has Indy suffered through another year marred by rampant violence? Why are we losing so many of our children to criminal depravity? Why have we failed as a community to successfully intervene in so many wasted lives?

No, these black murderers (and, yes, virtually every homicide and nonfatal shooting in Indianapolis has a black suspect, though the city is only 26 percent black) are not part of the white community, but the dysgenic reminders of our egalitarian nightmare. 

They are responsible for "hurricane of violence" in Indianapolis, not the 58 percent of the city that is why (save white enablers/excuse-makers of black dysfunction). 

Worse, journalists like the identified reporter who showed sympathy with the black murderers of Amanda Blackburn and the opinion editor of the Indianapolis Star seem to find more common ground with the black thugs (and their families) terrorizing the city and making it unlivable than they do with the survivors of black criminality or the memory of their victims. 

But what do you expect from Tim Swarens, who once lamented in an editorial about stereotyping blacks for the extreme amount of crime blacks commit in Indy? [A caution on suspect descriptions, 3-4-2007]

Last week we faced one of the more challenging decisions editors ever face, and we didn't handle it well.

It involved the carjacking/robbery/rape of a young woman after she entered her car in a Downtown parking ramp. Police said the assailant was a black male in his late teens, small thin build, approximately 5 foot 8 with medium complexion and short hair. He was wearing a blue polo shirt with thin yellow and white stripes, and blue pants.

We didn't publish that description. Why?

Lacking, to my surprise, a written approach for dealing with such matters we operated under the common newspaper standard to be wary of all such descriptions because they most often are so vague as to be meaningless.

Does it really help to know that an assailant was, say, a 6-foot-2 blond, upper middle-age white male? Not really. Those guys are everywhere. I'm one of them. But at least when somebody of that description is mentioned, every one of the huge selection of men in my universe isn't thought of as a potential criminal.

Now substitute a black male with black hair. All of a sudden all black men of that description are considered suspect.

That's an injustice from my perspective and from the perspective of most other editors. Most Americans, when they think of crime, fall victim to a racial stereotype.

Let's be honest. When black men commit crimes there is an unfair tendency to blame all black men. Not so with whites.

Here's another truth: When The Star doesn't print a description of a black suspect alleged to have been involved in a crime, my phone will ring and my e-mails will pile up with messages that angrily accuse us of bowing to the evil forces of political correctness.

When the authorities seek a white suspect and we don't print the description, I don't hear a peep. That speaks volumes, don't you think?

What do I think? I think you're on the side of black criminality, Tim. I believe with all my heart you, and the journalist who showed sympathy for the KILLER of Amanda Blackburn and his ACCOMPLICE, have a career in journalism (black power public relations is a more apt job title) because you agreed to always write under the assumption black people are innocent.

But you're right: Larry Taylor isn't an animal anymore than Christian Rene Haley is an animal or Simeon Adams is an animal.

My beloved dog is an animal, who loves my family and shows far more empathy to humans than Taylor, Haley, or Simeon Adams ever have.

There is a word, Tim Swarens, for Taylor, Haley and Adams, and it is one white people in not only Indianapolis but throughout America are beginning to utter more and more under their breath.

It starts with an N and ends with a profound and evocative ER.

You can fill in the rest, you vile, feckless worm.

So, like you, I object to calling Amanda Blackburn's accused murderer an "animal."

He's a N-I-G-G-E-R.

With a capital N.