Austin Hipsters on black mob violence: ‘We are color blind.

The white hipsters of Austin want us to know that race had nothing to do with the 200 black people who fought, destroyed property and threw rocks at police a few days before Halloween.

White people do it all the time, said Katie Friel, who writes for Culture Map in Austin. But the only time anyone calls it a riot is if it involves a large number of black people, she says. She pointed to a 2011 punk rock concert where mostly white fans tried to tear down the chain link fence. Police sprayed pepper gas. No one said that was a riot, she said.

“If Austin wants to grow into the creative, supportive, progressive community we claim to want to be, we need to stop thinking, seeing and reporting in black and white,” she said.

Highland Mall: Was it a “riot” because they’re black? – CultureMap Austin



Which is strange because none of the local media reported what witnesses, Twitter, Facebook, night-vision videos and other internet sources revealed: Everyone involved in the Austin mayhem was black.

Police: Multiple arrests made at Highland Mall | www.statesman.com

The Austin Statesman was merely following the advice of a recent article in the monthly magazine of the Society of Professional Journalists. The topic was how to cover racial violence. The advice? Don’t.

The riot that was not a riot began the Saturday night before Halloween at the annual House of Torment in the parking lot of the Highland Mall. Police arrived to find 200 “unruly” teenagers roaming the area, fighting in at least five different places.

When police ordered them to break it up, they threw rocks instead. Several rioters urged fellow miscreants to bigger and greater acts of violence. It took every officer on duty in Austin more than two hours to bring the violence under control. Not before dispensing generous amounts of pepper spray. Four black people were arrested and charged with crimes ranging from rioting to using a fake ID.

Seven people were treated at the scene for riot-related injuries. Much of the violence took place under a grainy black and white, night-vision police video from a helicopter that monitored the violence.

Video of mall riot shows punches, unruly crowd | kvue.com Austin

Police said they did not know why so many black people were rioting. One spokesman said the rioters were “silly.”

That is a different excuse than what we heard from a similar episode of black mob violence at a recent showing of a scary movie in a suburb of Rochester. There, a police spokeswoman explained why 500 black people were fighting in and outside of a scary movie:

“They have pent up energy from being scared in the movie theater and they come out and they don’t know what to do with that energy,” said Lt. Jonna Izzo to Rochester News 8.

Articles: The Blood Flows in Rochester

So they riot.

Local police did not offer up that explanation here. Perhaps because promoters of the haunted house said none of the rioters were customers of the House of Torment, where ticket prices begin at $25.

Or maybe the ticket price is what scared them. If we depend on the sketchy local media, we may never know.

The Austin Statesman and other local media dutifully neglected to report that everyone arrested and everyone involved in the mayhem was black. Many commenters to local news sites pointed that out, but most of these remarks were removed minutes after going up.

The comments blasting the censored remarks as being racist were allowed to remain.

But at least the brave hipsters at Culture Map opened it up for some straight talk. Said one reader:

“Serious question: how you gonna write about this story and leave out the fact that Highland Mall has previously called police to disperse large, mostly black crowds? Were you not here during Texas Relays a few years back?”

For non-Austinites, here is what he is talking about: In 2009, the Highland Mall and several other local businesses closed in advance of the Texas Relays — a state-wide track and field event at the nearby University of Texas.

The Austin Chronicle said the Texas Relays caused “flares of uptight resistance to the annual influx of thousands of mostly African-American visitors. The sparks raised questions – again – about the city’s too often less-than-progressive track record on race.”

The president of the local NAACP weighed in, accusing the mall owners of racism. And accusing the city of not living up to the standards for black people it created in the city council’s African American Quality of Life Initiative from 2005.

Others pointed to the track record of racial violence surrounding the Relays and compared it to the rolling racial violence of Freaknik in Atlanta — another annual gathering of black college students that the black mayor, black police and black city leaders ran out of town 13 years ago because of the large-scale violence, destruction and fights with police.

This mayhem at the Texas Relays and the House of Torment is part of a pattern of black mob violence documented in White Girl Bleed a Lot: The Return of Racial Violence to America and How the Media Ignore It.

One security guard told wrote about racial violence at the Highlands Mall:

“I worked as a security guard last year during the relays and there were fights verbal and physical between rival schools, numerous instances of racial discrimination against whites,theft, police officers assaulted, Then someone shot off a gun in there and the police finally shut down the mall early. Why are these not mentioned or addressed by the NAACP or Austin City Council?”

Meanwhile, Richard Boland of the Peaceful Streets Project is urging anyone who feels police were too rough with the rioters to file a complaint with the NAACP or the Austin Chapter of the ACLU.

As for the mall, racial violence will soon be a thing of the past there. All the anchor tenants left long ago. One of the owners filed bankruptcy. And it was recently sold to a Austin Community College for office space and classrooms.

Highland Mall is dying. | Austin | Yelp

Full-scale riot breaks out at Texas haunted house – Norfolk Crime | Examiner.com

Police: Riot Breaks Out At Highland Park Haunted House – keyetv.com Austin News, Weather, Traffic KEYE-TV Austin – Top Stories

Local group organizes protest of Highland Mall – YNN – Your News Now

Four face charges after weekend Highland Mall riot

Scenes from a ‘ghetto mall’ | That Other Paper