14 is greater than 1.....or maybe not

This past week, a Saint Louis native and Old Miss student, Alexandria Kostial was murdered in Mississippi by a fellow student.  It didn’t take long before the cops caught the bastard, who has already been arraigned and, if I was a democrat, I would declare him to be certainly guilty.  By all accounts, Kostial, who was attending summer school and teaching fitness class, was a lovely young girl, a great student, very active and with a lot of promise.  Pictures of her reflect a very pretty, blonde young lady.

Her story has been all over the local news….every day for a week.  Last night there was a huge candle light vigil for her in Saint Louis.  I think her funeral is today (I might be wrong on that point).  Now, before I go forward, be reminded that I am a 57 year old WHITE guy, 6’2”, blue eyed and sandy, light brown (and gray) hair.  I don’t live in Saint Louis, but I can see the arch on the river from my neighborhood, which is predominately white (and geriatric, I might add).  


So my view on what follows should put to bed the idea of “white privilege”.

In the last three weeks…..21 days…..fourteen black children and young teens have been murdered in Saint Louis.  At least one of them was ahigh school super athlete with a very bright future.  The story makes the news for one news cycle….one.  The story is updated whenever another body drops, and the story is then repeated once.  There has been no coverage of the mandatory, and largely useless, vigils or pleas for the guilty to come forward.  Fourteen children and teens in 21 days.

Wall to wall coverage of a  tragedy involving some dickhead murdering a lovely young white girl 300 miles from home, and a one off for 14 murdered children…..the murders themselves a tragedy, but the failure to cover them, as big a tragedy.

Am I the only one that thinks that this is jacked up?  Now, don’t get me wrong….if I am not going to STL to go to the zoo, Cardinal Nation or the Arch, I ain’t going to STL……and when I DO go….it is with  Mr Sig Sauer on my hip.  The place is a liberal led, crime infested shithole, with more murders per capita than Detroit.  The northern part of the city is the worst, but there are other parts that are also isolated Little Big Horn shooting districts.  But 14 children, ALL of them black, in 21 days, in the Gateway to the West, completely overshadowed as news, by the murder of a single white girl?  This cannot be right.

I mentioned this to Janet while we were watching the news this morning, and she got a little fired up.  Does the murder of a pretty, white, Saint Louis native, in Mississippi get more ratings than covering the murder of the fourteen black kids in their own city?  Is it a better story?

How could it be?  Why is Saint Louis not in a daily public outrage over the 14 murders, while everyone is heartbroken about the one?  Is it racial?

The answer is that it might be racial, and this is the problem in Saint Louis….the 14 murders are not connected.  There has been one arrest in one of the cases.  All of the children and teens were black.  Almost all of the murders were random shootings (I don’t think more than one or two of them have been determined to be targeted), and in the areas where the shootings took place, the community is not known for liking cops, even black cops.  And this entire scenario is not new to Saint Louis.  Of one thing we can be certain; no police officer was involved in any of the shootings or the entire city would be on fire.

I think I know the solution to this, but that would involve an entire book to address….and I have a building project to get back to.

As an American, with a fairly strong sense of right and wrong (having done plenty of both), I AM angered at the death of the white girl…..but I am enraged that 14 black children have been murdered in the city, and it got virtually no coverage.

That is my whitie view.