For more than two years, WND has been at the forefront of reporting a wave of racial violence in the U.S., manifested in what many news outlets are at last acknowledging as "the Knockout Game."

But when the U.S. Justice Department finally decided to act upon on the trend of typically black violence, the Obama administration filed its first hate-crime charges against a white man, Conrad Alvin Barrett of Katy, Texas.

"The charge marks the first time the administration has taken action on a 'Knockout' case after the game became an Internet and media phenomenon," the Washington Times reported. "It chose a case in which the person accused is white, even though most other cases reported in the news have involved black assailants."

Until recently, virtually the entire news media were scared to touch the story, while one journalist – Colin Flaherty – bravely reported week after week, for years on WND, about the “Knockout Game” and many other forms of growing black-on-white violence in America. Get the whole story from Flaherty in “White Girl Bleed a Lot” -- TODAY ONLY at the radically discounted price of just $4.95!

The disparity between the trend and the DOJ's charges has led several voices to conclude there may be more than irony behind the administration's actions.

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Colin Flaherty, who researched and documented hundreds of cases of racial violence for his 2013 book, "White Girl Bleed A Lot: The Return of Racial Violence to America and How the Media Ignore It," told WND the administration may be using the case to manipulate public opinion on the Knockout Game.

"I have uncovered hundreds of recent examples of black mobs and black teens taking violent actions toward specifically white targets. There can be little doubt there is a racial motivation behind these crimes," Flaherty told WND. "Where have Obama and his DOJ been until now?

"White people don't have a monopoly on hate," Flaherty continued, "and it smacks of some alternate agenda for this administration to ignore scores of black hate crimes until a white hate crime is found to finally pounce upon."

Flaherty suggested that "agenda" may be to keep the state of racial tensions in the U.S. under wraps.

"For years, there has been an effort to scrub news stories about these crimes of any details about the assailant's race," he explained. "The press has been so determined to avoid any mention of violence among blacks, that it has created a false narrative that it's only 'youths' committing these crimes. I have to wonder if the administration didn't deliberately seize upon this case, knowing the publicity would further the narrative there's no problem with black violence in America, just random violence."

Allen West, the black former congressman from Florida, also questioned whether the charges don't reflect a political agenda on the part of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

"I am glad the U.S. Department of Justice has finally stepped forward, but it begs the question, what took so long?" West asks on his blog. "Does Eric Holder's inaction regarding previous crimes involving blacks attacking whites actually reflect his own hate crime?"

West continues, "The real question behind the decision to prosecute Mr. Barrett is not his actions, but rather the perception of an even more heinous double standard emanating from the Obama administration's Department of Justice under Eric Holder – sure seems like it's being used as a platform for the progressive socialist version of social justice."

"If the Barrett case were the beginning of a trend of the DOJ equitably prosecuting these brutal and senseless crimes as hate crimes, then that would be all well and good," chimed in Arnold Ahlert at FrontPage Magazine. "However, the notion that the DOJ's newfound interest in prosecuting this particular type of violence is colorblind remains doubtful."

Horace Cooper, constitutional attorney and co-chairman of Project 21, the National Leadership Network of Black Conservatives, told OneNewsNow the DOJ's selective enforcement of hate-crime legislation may be risking the laws' constitutionality.

"The only case that they're able to find is the one example out of a hundred where the victim was black and the perpetrator was white," Cooper said. "That's a very curious outcome."

Cooper said it appears the Justice Department believes "only whites can engage in hate crime and not blacks."

"If the only way and the only time [a hate-crime law] is ever going to be invoked is to somehow target white Americans, and not target all criminals equally, it becomes constitutionally suspect," says the Project 21 spokesman.

Barrett faces up to 10 years in federal prison for violating the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. Barrett allegedly videotaped himself sucker-punching a 79-year-old black man in a "Knockout Game" just days before Thanksgiving.

According to prosecutors, the attack happened Nov. 24, but it wasn't until 12 days later that authorities connected the attack to the cell-phone video of it.

In the video, according to a federal affidavit filed in the case, Barrett allegedly said: "The plan is to see if I were to hit a black person, would this be nationally televised?"

He then allegedly "hit the man with such force that the man immediately fell to the ground. Barrett then laughed and said 'knockout,' as he ran to his vehicle and fled."

The victim suffered two jaw fractures and was hospitalized for several days, the complaint said.

In the racially charged and sometimes deadly "Knockout Game," one or more assailants, usually black, target a randomly selected white person and, for amusement, try to knock out the unsuspecting victim with a single punch. Nationwide, there have been at least six deaths attributed to the Knockout Game and hundreds of cases have been documented in the book "White Girl Bleed A Lot."

The most recent example of the "Knockout Game" involves a couple taking a late-night stroll at the open-air mall in Charlottesville, Va., when they were viciously beaten.

Jeanne Doucette and her boyfriend Marc Adams were enjoying the Christmas lights downtown when Adams tripped and was immediately pounced upon by three black men.

They beat him severely, breaking his ankle, cracking ribs and knocking out one of his teeth, reports the Charlottesville Weekly.

While Doucette suffered bruising to her head and tearing of the cartilage in her ear, Adams bore the brunt of the men's aggression, sustaining broken bones and a concussion that he said has robbed him of any memory of the incident and its immediate aftermath.

According to the victims, the attackers never uttered any racial epithets and therefore police are not classifying it as a "hate crime."

The assault moved up the street as Adams and Doucette tried to escape their attackers. They screamed at passersby for help. They screamed at their attackers to stop. No one listened. The beating continued.

Then came the laughter, one of the identifying aspects of the"Knockout Game."

"They were laughing, high-fiving, hugging, and then returning to kick him," said Doucette. "There was some kind of camaraderie to it."

Doucette managed to take photos that appear to show the assailants as they kicked and pummeled her boyfriend into unconsciousness.

Nearly two weeks after the attack, the physical wounds are healing, but both Doucette and Adams are troubled by what they see as a lack of response from the Charlottesville Police Department. Doucette said police refused to release her photos to the public.

"I don't understand why they couldn't even have the courtesy to call and say we're not even going to look for them," she told the newspaper.

On Dec. 29, Doucette posted the pictures she'd taken to her Facebook page and said she quickly received several tips that she has passed on to police.

Her frustration at the lack of an investigation is palpable.

"I feel forgotten about," Doucette said. "I feel like I'm not safe."

As WND reported, lawmakers in New York are fighting back against the "Knockout Game," proposing it be made a felony and calling on President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder to respond.

After years of establishment media silence about the Knockout Game, the New York City attacks pushed the vicious pastime into the national media spotlight. However, the damage from the game was evident years ago. As early as July 2011, the American Thinker featured an article on the Knockout Game.

The media is slowly starting to acknowledge that the attacks are a form of racial violence. A New York City CBS outlet reports:

There have been seven so-called "knockout" or "polar bear" assaults in the Crown Heights and Midwood sections of Brooklyn… The alternate name "polar bearing" comes from the fact that the victims are white.

In the Huffington Post, Al Sharpton wrote that the attacks are racist:

These kids are targeting innocent people, and in many cases specifically targeting Jewish folks. We would not be silent if it were the other way around, and we will not be silent now. This behavior is racist, period.

Black mobs routinely terrorize cities across the country, but the media and government are silent. Read the detailed account of rampant racial crime in "White Girl Bleed A Lot: The Return of Racial Violence to America and How the Media Ignore It."

See a trailer for "White Girl Bleed a Lot":