Debutante's Slaying Splits Savannah (along racial lines)

[ovidsen]

Crime has been a problem in Savannah, Georgia for a long time. Last year, the city's murder rate rose again. So why is a Christmas Eve fatal shooting getting so much attention? Could it be because the victim was young, white, blond and pretty? Call it the Natalie Holloway syndrome.

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/0108metsavannah.html?imw=Y

Debutante's slaying splits Savannah
Downtown crime: Response to tragedy may bring change, but highlights racial, economic divide.

By CAMERON McWHIRTER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 01/08/06

(snip)

At 3 a.m. Christmas Eve, (Jennifer) Ross was walking with friends through Orleans Square after leaving a cotillion. The well-dressed children of Savannah privilege were approached by three black men demanding money. When they grabbed for Ross' purse she resisted, and one of the men shot her. The muggers are still at large. (snip)

Savannah has transformed its downtown into a beautiful district of million-dollar homes, high-end restaurants and antique shops. The center city area's residents and visitors are mostly white. Yet outside downtown, much of the city of about 130,000 has remained, for the most part, squalid, poor, crime-ridden and black. Savannah is about 60 percent black and its median household income is below the national average. (snip)

But violence in the poor sections of town doesn't engender the same outrage among whites who live in the suburbs or downtown. (snip)

"We don't really care if a couple of crackheads want to shoot each other," (one resident) said.

[Gman]

1. Two things here

what the hell were they doing walking around like that at 3 in the morning? That just emphasizes their stupidity that is a result of their sheltered lives.

The other thing is that the guy that shot her has got to be the stupidest MF that ever walked the streets of Savannah. He's got to be the only MF that doesn't know that if he shoots and kills a white woman, he has guaranteed his self, or at the very least some other black man, the death penalty.

Rest assured some black man will die for this awful crime and it may or may not be the guy that did it. It won't matter really as long as they kill a black man.

[acmejack]

3. Sadly, I believe you are exactly correct.

All they will care about is extracting retribution.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

5. Not that it wasn't stupid, but

why shouldn't anyone be able to walk around at 3am or any other time of day? Why should that time be reserved for criminals? What about the woman who gets up at 3 or 4 in the morning so she can take a bus to scrub some rich guy's floors?

The real shame here isn't that a white kid got killed, or even that a black man will most likely die because of it. The real shame is that the people who have the money and the power to do something about crime don't care until it affects someone in their own class.

[ugarte]

2. Two societies and occasionally they meet...nt

[ChairmanAgnostic]

4. and 99% of the time, when they interact, it is the blacks going to the

mansions to clean, vaccuum, take out the trash (but never their daughters) and to scrub the toilets.

Not quite slavery, but not quite freedom either.