Andrew Hagen

On December 14, 2000, in Wichita, Kansas, a horrific, unparalleled sequence of savage, depraved acts occurred. The criminals were black; the victims white. On trial now are the two black men accused of the crime. Right-wingers are attempting to use the facts of the case to realign the ongoing discussion of racial politics in America more to their liking.

One of the great achievements of Americans in the past half-century is the attainment of what can be characterized as a racial peace. Some measure of justice has been achieved as well by the civil rights movement. Here on the Left we agree that more justice is required. The usual response from the Left has been multiculturalism. This is a loaded term. Its meaning is somewhat ambiguous. Broadly, however, multiculturalism stands for the proposition that American culture ought not be unified at any level, from religion to art to language to aspiration. Instead, the only unifying ethic of Americans ought to be adherence to values such as basic egalitarianism and personal freedom. Nothing else is required to be a good American under multiculturalism.

A variety of social critics have attacked multiculturalism. One of these critics is David Horowitz, the 60s radical turned neoconservative. Horowitz often uses Enlightenment or liberal rhetoric to advance the notion of a unified, egalitarian culture. His biases remain suspicious to us on the Left, however, just as do the biases of other conservatives like Dinesh D’Souza, author of the notorious End of Racism: Principles for a Multiracial Society. What we believe we smell is racial prejudice.

Now Horowitz brings to his readers’ attention a recent sequence of depraved, criminal acts, which can only be partially summarized here. On December 14, 2000, two black youths, allegedly Reginald and Jonathan Carr, committed the crime of home invasion, and, upon rounding up the five young, white residents of the house, forced them to strip. The women were then sexually assaulted and sodomized by the black men. Subsequently, the white men were forced at gunpoint to sexually assault the two women, even if the man was in a committed relationship with the other female victim. After they had all suffered the sexual assaults forced upon them for several hours, their tormenters packed the victims, still naked, into the trunk of a car, and drove them to a snowy field. There, one by one, they shot each of the victims once in the back of the head, execution style.

One of the victims survived the head wound. She played dead. Once the two attackers left, she ran naked through the frozen December night across the field for a mile to the nearest residence. There she told what had happened, not willing to undergo medical treatment until she made sure that the story would be preserved. Reginald and Jonathan Carr were soon arrested. The survivor has identified one of the Carr brothers. She is unable to successfully identify the other. The trial has now begun.

There has not been much national press coverage of the crime. Of course, the story received local coverage in Kansas.

Horowitz introduced the story for a national audience in Salon. (*). As Horowitz says, American Renaissance, a white racial magazine, has been covering the story. They are attempting to call it the “The Wichita Massacre” to help it gain notoriety. (†).

The story is indeed a brutal tale with emotional impact, as it has had on me. The account of Horowitz and American Renaissance should be partially welcomed for correcting an oversight of the media’s. Yet, their account is partially designed to realign the political discussion to their liking. They would like to draw attention to the alleged hypocrisy of the national media in covering white-on-black hate crimes closely, but black-on-white hate crimes not so closely. From that they will probably launch into a general attack on civil rights laws and affirmative action. Since the trial has began, the conservative newspaper Washington Times and the conservative web site Drudge Report, in addition to Horowitz’s Front Page magazine and Salon column, and the Kansas media have covered the trial. I believe the testimony of the surviving victim was broadcast on a cable channel. The crime has not received the national media exposure it should have, however. This is at least partially due to the crime having occurred in Kansas, which has no national media outlet.

One night of crime does not disprove the idea of multiculturalism. Like many others on the Left, however, my suspicions of multiculturalism had grown prior to Wichita. My objections are at the outset abstract. It’s not clear how a multicultural society would hold together and remain one, integral society. Wouldn’t it just splinter into a thousand shards? Furthermore, in my opinion the old Enlightenment idea of a universal culture is worth pursuit. It will not lead to racism or racialism or ethnic channeling or such. It will lead to equality. As is widely appreciated, the superficial differences between what we call “races,” scientifically categorized or not, have no bearing upon ability or rightful social standing.

I hope we on the Left begin to criticize multiculturalism in a rational way so as to present an alternative to the biased presentation being made by Horowitz and company. That will be the only way to build upon a foundation more solid than multiculturalism as the future proceeds.

Was the Wichita crime a hate crime? Is the media biased in covering only hate crimes of one category? The answers are the same. We should reanalyze the concept of hate crime. We currently emphasize the hate part of the crime too much and the crime itself not enough. Our emphasis should be the opposite. We will never truly prevent hate. It is a natural human emotion. We should never try to outlaw the emotion of hate. It is the action connected to the emotion that matters.

Nevertheless, hate crimes are particularly heinous because they threaten to tear apart our society’s fabric. We need to keep treating hate crimes specially to keep the racial peace that we have established. When, like that in Wichita, a crime of extreme depravity occurs, law enforcement should make a special effort to uncover any hint of motivational racial hatred. In the Wichita case, there appears to be little other explanation for the motive, but then again, we are drawing on scarce information. I’m not a lawyer, but it’s my understanding that Kansas does not have a hate crime law. If there had been a hate crime statute on the books, then law enforcement should have investigated that angle of the crime. In any case, the law should be blind to any difference between a white-on-black hate crime and a black-on-white hate crime.

We on the Left should attempt to complete the mission of the civil rights movement to clear the way for racial egalitarianism. In my view, we cannot achieve that without taking an approach different from that of multiculturalism. Let’s not allow the memory of the Wichita victims to be misused to promote strife. Let’s take this opportunity for reflection to reconsider our method of achieving progress while retaining focus on the goal.

Above all else, however, let us not forget what happened in Wichita. It was a crime of unmitigated evil. The survivor and the victims’ families must have our inexhaustible sympathy and support. What happened in Wichita must never be allowed to happen again.

I am not a lawyer. Don’t take any of this as legal advice.

Originally posted to Democratic Left.

Update: 12 December 2003. The Wichita Eagle has a special section on the events, including the trial. (‡)

Update: 9 January 2004. They were convicted and sentenced to death. (§)

This entry was posted on Friday, October 11th, 2002 at 06:01 and is filed under Multiculturalism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.