Ever hear about this story out of Knoxville, TN

You know I first heard about this on FOX News Channel on Bill O'Reilly where a white couple was killed in a carjacking. The Tribune writes about this story this morning which is what I'm writing about his. Well let me pull up some bits about this story...

The murders of [Christopher] Newsom and [Channon] Christian have resonated because they play into some of the deepest fears of urban crime harbored by many Americans. By all the accounts of authorities, the couple—Newsom, 23, was a talented carpenter and former high school baseball star; Christian, 21, was a senior at the University of Tennessee—fell victim to a random carjacking Jan. 6 in the parking lot of an apartment complex where they had gone to visit friends.

Authorities say the couple's assailants, some of them ex-convicts, forced their victims to drive at gunpoint to a clapboard house in one of Knoxville's roughest neighborhoods, where both victims were raped and then killed. Newsom's body, shot and burned, was found dumped beside nearby railroad tracks, while Christian, who was strangled, was found bundled in plastic garbage bags inside the house.

State prosecutors have lodged murder, rape and other charges against brothers Lemaricus Davidson, 25, and Letalvis Cobbins, 24; Cobbins' girlfriend, Vanessa Coleman, 18; and George Thomas, 24. Their trials are set for next year, and officials have not yet revealed whether they will seek the death penalty. A fifth suspect was charged in federal court as an accessory.

Yet as brutal as the crime was, Knoxville authorities have strongly denied that it was racially motivated. And they have sought to correct rumors, eagerly spread by white supremacist Web sites, that the couple had been sexually mutilated before they were killed and their bodies dismembered afterward.

"There is absolutely no proof of a hate crime," said John Gill, special counsel to Knox County District Atty. Randy Nichols. "It was a terrible crime, a horrendous crime, but race was not a motive. We know from our investigation that the people charged in this case were friends with white people, socialized with white people, dated white people. So not only is there no evidence of any racial animus, there's evidence to the contrary."

Newsom's parents do not accept that logic.

"If this wasn't a hate crime, then I don't know how you would define a hate crime," said Mary Newsom, Christopher's mother. "It may have started out as a carjacking, but what it developed into was blacks hating whites. To do the things they did, they would have to hate them to do that."

This was totally brutal. And while I knew one of the assailants was female, I had no idea she was 18. She got herself into something and now she just has to be an accomplice and her life is messed up right now. Even worse two people are dead and that make things worse.

Now in this article and on FOX News' O'Reilly Factor the big deal over this story is that the media outside of Knoxville aren't making a big deal about this story. Black leadership (ie Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and so on) aren't making a big deal about this story. This story isn't making great traction in the national media. Let's see what the Tribune says...

"There is a discomfort level [in the national media] with stories that have black assailants and white victims," said Michelle Malkin, a prominent conservative newspaper columnist and TV commentator who has featured the Knoxville case on her Web site. "If it doesn't fit some sort of predetermined narrative of how we view taboo subjects like race and crime, there's a disinclination to cover it."

Country music star Charlie Daniels, who lives 150 miles from Knoxville, contrasted scant coverage of the Christian-Newsom murders with the national media frenzy that erupted last year when a black woman accused three white members of the Duke University lacrosse team of raping her at a party. The white players were cleared in April after the accuser proved unreliable and no evidence corroborated a crime.

"If this [Knoxville case] had been white on black crime, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and their ilk would have descended on Knoxville like a swarm of angry bees," Daniels wrote on his Web site. "I guess the lack of TV cameras discouraged them."

Oh yeah an unfortunate side effect has erupted over this case. With people seeking to paint this as a hate crime and let's look at the president of the Knoxville chapter of the NAACP...

Neo-Nazis and other white supremacists have jumped on the case as well, drawn to the state where the Ku Klux Klan was founded in 1865. Hate groups have organized rallies in Knoxville and set up Web sites under the victims' names to spew racial invective.
...
Rev. Ezra Maize, the president of the Knoxville chapter of the NAACP, has been one of the few black leaders to address the case.

"It doesn't make me uncomfortable speaking out against this crime because it was African-Americans [allegedly] committing a crime against Caucasians," Maize said. "It's not a black-and-white issue. It's a right-and-wrong issue. Those who committed this crime were unjust in doing so and they should pay the penalty."

If I hadn't of watched FOX News I would be ignorant of this story, but the question is worth asking. Is this a hate crime? I wish I can provide the answer, but I would like to point out something.

I heard this saying when I was in high school where I took African-American history. My teacher in that class said, "Blacks can't be racist." The justification being that we don't have that power. We don't control the police, the economy, or the government. Therefore blacks can't enforce their prejudices.

You know I want to go back to the story of Sen. Obama's church with people referring to that church as racist or black supremacist. All they look at is the church's motto (Unabashedly black and unabashedly Christian) and their value system. Anyway one can argue that there's no way a black can't have any feelings of superiority. Not that I agree with that just like there are extremists everywhere else, blacks have their own as well.

None of this excuses hate especially the hate that is alleged to have reared it's head in this murder. There is a question worth asking here, "What is a hate crime?" Hopefully there will be an answer or perhaps a better answer in time.