Hate Crime: Where are the Voices?

This story really bothers me. On a videotape played during a court hearing Phillip Grant, a murder suspect, said his victim "had to die" because she was white. That statement is disturbing enough but the response (or lack of it) is also concerning.

"I never seen her before, and I didn't care," Grant said. "As long as she had blond hair and blue eyes, she had to die." The statement also includes Grant claiming to have killed others and saying he is at war with the white race.

I can't help but think about how this would play out if the roles were reversed. If we had a white man saying this about a black women, the media parade by the likes of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and the rest of the media sponges would be inescapable. But I have yet to hear a peep out anyone about this.

In Grant's statement he said that, beginning at 11 a.m. that day, he walked around a parking garage, looking for a victim. "I was thinking that the first person I see this morning that looks white, I'm killing them," he said. The convicted rapist said he did not approach an older white woman walking through the garage "because she had already lived her life."

"I wanted to kill somebody who lived a lily-white lifestyle and was a closet bigot," he said. "I have no remorse whatsoever, because she was white," he said, adding that he believed he was fighting a race war. "

We need to come together, black, white and all other races and condemn this action, thinking and the words of this man. The sad truth is this case will not be tried as a hate crime, no one will step up to speak out against Phillip Grant and the story of a mother of two who lost her life for being born white will fade into the old news pile.

It is sad that at the age of 43 Mr. Grant has not learned that none of us chooses the color of our skin. The same as he was born black, Concetta Russo-Carriero was born white. Mr. Grant had no idea if she was racist. The only thing he knew is she looked different. That is the epitome racism. The so called "race war" Mr. Grant was fighting was with himself.