Anchor Wendy Bell's Racist Facebook Rant Is Everything Wrong With How We Talk About Crime
It's heartwarming indeed that a journalist tasked with informing the public about important issues could feel compelled to share casually racist wisdom on her Facebook page.
Behold!
"You needn't be a criminal profiler to draw a mental sketch of the killers who broke so many hearts two weeks ago Wednesday," wrote Wendy Bell, a news anchor with WTAE in Pittsburgh, according to the Associated Press. "They are young black men, likely teens or in their early 20s. They have multiple siblings from multiple fathers and their mothers work multiple jobs."
Bell, who is white, was referring to a crime that occurred March 9 in nearby Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, where two still-unidentified shooters opened fire at a backyard barbecue and killed six people, all of whom were black.
"They have multiple siblings from multiple fathers and their mothers work multiple jobs."
"These boys have been in the system before," Bell added, describing who she assumed the perpetrators to be. "They've grown up there. They know the police. They've been arrested."
Not a single suspect has been identified as of Thursday, by the way.
Bell's controversial post appeared on her Facebook fan page Wednesday, according to multiple reports. Not long after, a separate page had been created calling for her to be "held accountable" for her statements.
Bell had deleted the original post by Wednesday evening, and issued the following apology:
"I now understand that some of the words I chose were insensitive and could be viewed as racist," she wrote. "I regret offending anyone. I'm truly sorry."
It's remarkable how, in the wake of such a staggering tragedy — and in a single Facebook post, no less — Bell managed to both irresponsibly speculate as to the killers' identities without any evidence, and to collectively demonize all young black men, people with siblings from multiple fathers, people whose mothers work multiple jobs and people who've been arrested or incarcerated.
Considering the racial asymmetry with which America's incarceration system operates — locking up black men at incredibly high rates — the number of people who also fit the above profile but still manage not to become bloodthirsty killers is legion.
To top it all off, Bell also insulted the entire city where the crime took place, of which 66% of the population is black and 22% lives below the poverty line: "I will tell you [the killers] live within 5 miles of Franklin Avenue and Ardmore Boulevard and have been hiding out since in a home likely much closer to that backyard patio than anyone thinks," she wrote.
The pathologizing of American blackness is certainly nothing new. It often takes the form of coded "dog-whistle" phraseology, meant to hint at tropes associated with blackness without explicitly using racist language. Examples include when House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) attributed "inner city" (read: black) unemployment rates to "a real culture problem" of men there "not learning the value and the culture of work" in 2014.
This kind of statement, along with the fallacious notion of so-called "black-on-black crime," ignore the systemic racism that informs both — namely that a pattern of anti-black job discrimination and that, in a racially segregated country, people tend to kill people who live near them, go much further toward explaining these phenomena than merely saying, "something is wrong with black people."
But facts can be inconvenient. When confronted with her own racism by a Facebook commenter, Bell reportedly replied that what she wrote wasn't "racism," but "realism":
Perhaps someone should tell her that it probably isn't "realism" if she made it up based solely on her own racist presumptions. Here's a full transcript of Bell's original Facebook post, for your reading pleasure, via FTVLive:
Next to "If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times," I remember my mom most often saying to my sister and me when we were young and constantly fighting, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." I've really had nothing nice to say these past 11 days and so this page has been quiet. There's no nice words to write when a coward holding an AK-47 hoses down a family and their friends sharing laughs and a mild evening on a back porch in Wilkinsburg. There's no kind words when six people are murdered. When their children have to hide for cover and then emerge from the frightened shadows to find their mother's face blown off or their father's twisted body leaking blood into the dirt from all the bullet holes. There's just been nothing nice to say. And I've been dragging around this feeling like a cold I can't shake that rattles in my chest each time I breathe and makes my temples throb. I don't want to hurt anymore. I'm tired of hurting.
You needn't be a criminal profiler to draw a mental sketch of the killers who broke so many hearts two weeks ago Wednesday. I will tell you they live within 5 miles of Franklin Avenue and Ardmore Boulevard and have been hiding out since in a home likely much closer to that backyard patio than anyone thinks. They are young black men, likely teens or in their early 20s. They have multiple siblings from multiple fathers and their mothers work multiple jobs. These boys have been in the system before. They've grown up there. They know the police. They've been arrested. They've made the circuit and nothing has scared them enough. Now they are lost. Once you kill a neighbor's three children, two nieces and her unborn grandson, there's no coming back. There's nothing nice to say about that.
But there is HOPE. And Joe and I caught a glimpse of it Saturday night. A young, African American teen hustling like nobody's business at a restaurant we took the boys to over at the Southside Works. This child stacked heavy glass glasses 10 high and carried three teetering towers of them in one hand with plates piled high in the other. He wiped off the tables. Tended to the chairs. Got down on his hands and knees to pick up the scraps that had fallen to the floor. And he did all this with a rhythm and a step that gushed positivity. He moved like a dancer with a satisfied smile on his face. And I couldn't take my eyes off him. He's going to make it.
When Joe paid the bill, I asked to see the manager. He came over to our table apprehensively and I told him that that young man was the best thing his restaurant had going. The manager beamed and agreed that his young employee was special. As the boys and we put on our coats and started walking out — I saw the manager put his arm around that child's shoulder and pat him on the back in congratulation. It will be some time before I forget the smile that beamed across that young worker's face — or the look in his eyes as we caught each other's gaze. I wonder how long it had been since someone told him he was special.
There's someone in your life today — a stranger you're going to come across — who could really use that. A hand up. A warm word. Encouragement. Direction. Kindness. A Chance. We can't change what's already happened, but we can be a part of what's on the way. Speak up. Reach out. Dare to Care. Give part of You to someone else. That, my friends, can change someone's course. And then -- just maybe THEN -- I'll start feeling again like there's something nice to say.
h/t FTVLive
