The tragic death of the seven-year-old Jazmine Barnes in Houston has captured the nation’s attention and sadness. The young, black girl was killed in what appeared to be a random drive-by shooting. The perpetrators shot at her mother’s car, and initial reports suggested that the killer was a white man. The incident was widely reported as a hate crime by a white supremacist, and the usual suspects in the media whipped themselves into a frenzy over rampant racism in America – but in the end, the murderers turned out to be two black gangsters. Oops.
The Young Turks (TYT) is a progressive YouTube channel, followed by millions of viewers. When the news about the shooting emerged, TYT released a series of videos trash-talking whites, and parroting the notion that America is a fundamentally racist country.[perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=”24″] …try to hide their blunder behind the tragedy that a young child was brutally murdered.[/perfectpullquote]
When the police released information about the killers’ real identities, TYT deleted their three initial videos. Popular, liberal YouTuber “AtheismIsUnstoppable” published a video in which he made six predictions about how the Young Turks would explain away their embarrassing misjudgment, with eerie accuracy.
#1: Race Does Not Matter
“AtheismIsUnstoppable” guessed that TYT would pivot and say that the race of the suspects does not matter. What matters is justice, and now the killers have been caught and that’s good. This is disingenuous, since the only reason this murder hit the headlines was due to the assumed race of the people involved.
#2: Gun Control
The Young Turks would shift their focus to gun control, describing how important it is to get firearms off the streets so that senseless murders like this one can be prevented.
#3: Trash Talk Whites
TYT would still focus on what a problem white racism is, despite the fact that no whites were involved in the crime.
Shaun King
#4: Sweet Talk Shaun King
Media personality and political activist Shaun King was the one who first released information that the killers were black, although he had first jumped to the premature conclusion that the criminal was a white supremacist. King, who is sometimes described as “the whitest black man in America,” changed his mind about what had happened when he received credible information from witnesses. It turns out that it may not have been a random shooting after all. The shooter was reportedly a Facebook friend of Jazmine’s mother, and King had refused to commit to the idea that the killing was random.
“AtheismIsUnstoppable” predicted that TYT would praise Shaun King for obtaining the information about the real killer, ignoring his initial willingness to engage in the spread of unsubstantiated, and ultimately incorrect, information.
#5: Think of the Children
He foretold that they would try to hide their blunder behind the tragedy that a young child had been brutally murdered. Rather than taking responsibility for their grossly unjust racial attacks on whites, they would wag their finger and morally demand that people should think of the children.
#6: Don’t Explain Why You Deleted the Videos
Finally, he expected that the Young Turks would not explain why they deleted their first three videos on the topic. This turned out to be the only prediction he got wrong. TYT said they took the videos down because the information in them was outdated, but it appears that the only reason they mentioned it was because they were responding to people’s questions about why they had removed the content.
The reason that “AtheismIsUnstoppable” was able to make a nearly perfect forecast is because people who are ideologically possessed follow a simple script. Facts do not matter. They only sprinkle facts into their already predetermined storyline.
Don’t be Too Quick
The moral of the story is this: Don’t be too quick to draw conclusions based on incomplete evidence. Wishful thinking, mind reading, and confirmation bias have caused the media to chase a ghost. People are still looking for these elusive white supremacists. Until they can find actual evidence fitting their narrative that institutional racist violence exists in the U.S., these hyperbolic reports are fast becoming illusory urban myths.
