LASHAWN BARBER LOOKS AT MEDIA COVERAGE of the ugly murder-rape case from Knoxville that I mentioned a while back. My earlier comment on the case has had me excoriated by some white-supremacist sites for covering up a hate crime.

Well, to be a hate crime, the motivation has to be hate. I haven’t seen any evidence of that so far. It’s certainly true, of course — as LaShawn notes — that if the races were reversed the press would be all over this case and lots of people would be confidently pronouncing it a hate crime without any evidence other than the races of the perpretrators and victims, but since it’s black-on-white crime they’re making less noise. That’s the press.