The Knockout Game is too dangerous to “play” with

As a pastor I am used to presenting some sort of social commentary in my weekly messages. There is very little I have seen or known of in the past twenty years that I have not been able to critique on a biblical basis. However, a phenomenon has surfaced and gained some media attention that I was not only not aware of, I was actually surprised by and I have found it difficult to comment upon. It is known as the “knockout game”.

Recently several incidents featuring this “game” have come to light. The rules are simple. Groups of young people, predominantly black males, randomly choose a passerby and one of them attempts to knock them out with one surprise punch. This is filmed and posted on the internet and has spawned imitation in cities around the country. The victims are not only male. In one case a 78 year old woman was knocked out and did survive the attack. Some have not been so fortunate and people have actually died from these attacks.

One of the things that surprised me was this is not a new activity. It has been going on with some frequency for years. https://www.wnd.com/2013/11/surprise-media-finally-wake-up-to-knockout-game/ It is also surprising that the makeup of these perpetrators is almost exclusively black teens and it is this specific detail which makes these incidents difficult to comment upon. The reason is not because the participants in this “game” are almost exclusively of one ethnicity. It is because youths who themselves identify with the same ethnicity as the President are engaging in these attacks! It makes little sense to this writer that what appears to be racially motivated violence is on the increase now. Wasn’t the election of the first African-American President supposed to decrease racial tension in our land? It seems to be having the opposite effect.

This behavior should be stopped in it’s tracks for several reasons. One is because this activity is beginning to spread not only in frequency but also across the color and age barrier and other ethnic groups are getting involved. An attack, recently reported by Fox News featured perpetrators who were identified as 3 Hispanics along with a “Asian Pacific Islander”, and the ages were 20s and 30s this time. https://video.foxnews.com/v/2857639805001/allen-west-on-why-black-leaders-are-silent-on-ko-game/?intcmp=obnetwork

Another reason is the exacerbation of the old problem of “white-flight”, although given the majority of the makeup of the victims, perhaps this should now be called White/Asian/Jewish flight. For those too young to remember this is the increased incidence of “whites” moving away from the city to the relatively more secure suburbs. This came to attention as a problem in the 1960’s and has largely been off the radar since the 80s. Why was this considered a problem then? Because the economic base of the inner cities was seriously impacted, resulting in the “ghettos” of that time. I believe that as these attacks gain media attention, more “white flight” will follow further degrading the economic base, and thus the well being, of those remaining in the inner cities.

But there is one fact about all of this which disturbs me greatly. Very soon, there will be a different kind of fatality resulting from these attacks. As rightly predicted by Colonel Allen West in report cited above, one of these times the victim will be carrying a gun and then the attacker will lose his life. There has already been one incident of an attacker being shot in Michigan. Should someone be shot and then die as a result of this, racial passions could well heat up to a fever pitch in our land perhaps stronger than in the recent upheavals following the Zimmerman trial, and I do not relish the outcome of that. Worse yet, should something like that happen, retaliation by some white groups may go far beyond simply fleeing the inner city. Then we could see racial violence escalate to frightening levels in our land.

These attacks have but one object, to inflict injury upon another person. If the increased media attention does serve a positive function, perhaps it will be that these attacks are more aggressively prosecuted in the future. Maybe, just maybe, if a very steep price is paid as a consequence of these attacks, the incidence of them will decrease and even cease. However, don’t count me as among those who will hold their breath waiting for this to happen, as there has yet to be any significant comment, let alone action proposed, against this sociopathic behavior among the liberal leadership in the African-American community, most notably the President himself.