A guest blog by Daniel Artz
I keep reading the stories and viewing the videos of the McKinney Pool Party Fracas that is threatening to become the North Texas version of Ferguson or Baltimore, with Black teens now staging protests both at the residential subdivision where the fighting/mob scene started, and at the McKinney Police Department, calling for the firing (or worse) of the police officer shown on video kneeling on the back of a Black teenage girl in order to subdue her.
BUT there are almost NO media sources which tell the whole story; it is in their interest to keep feeding the race frenzy.
Here is a brief synopsis of the genesis of the event. This all happened at Craig Ranch, a majority white but broadly integrated neighborhood in McKinney — there are hundreds of Black residents of Craig Ranch, including Tatyana Rhodes, a 20-year old self-styled "Party Organizer" who lives with her mother at Craig Ranch. Craig Ranch has a public park adjacent to a private pool club which is owned and operated by the Home Owners' Association. While the Park is open to the public, the private pool area is NOT — it is open to residents of the neighborhood, and admission is by ID only. Residents may arrange with the HOA to host a private pool party, limited to 20 guests, but may NOT exclude residents from the pool area, and must pay a fee and make advance arrangements to host such a pool party.
Several days, maybe a week or more, before June 5, Tatyana Rhodes was advertising through Social Media — on Facebook, on Twitter, through Instagram — a "Cookout and Pool Party" at the public park in Craig Ranch. She had hired a DJ, arranged for tables, power for the Sound System, etc., BUT SHE MADE NO ARRANGEMENTS WITH THE HOA FOR ANY POOL PARTY AT THE PRIVATE POOL AREA.
The DJ set up and started playing in the mid-afternoon, and a large crowd of teens, mostly Black, many residents of Craig Ranch but also many non-residents from outside the neighborhood, showed up for the party; the estimates I have seen are 200 or more. At the same time, there were residents of Craig Ranch, including families with children, using the pool club. There were complaints about the music — loud, mostly Rap and Hip-Hop, many songs with very vulgar lyrics (a lot of F-bombs) that bothered many of the parents who had taken their children for a swim. When the party-goers who were not residents of Craig Ranch were denied entry to the pool, many started climbing over the chain link fence to get into the pool. A private security guard at the pool club tried to stop several, and was assaulted by a group of pool-area trespassers. More and more party-goers invaded the private pool area, forcing out residents who were rightfully in the pool area, assaulting a white Craig Ranch mother who was at the pool with her 3 children, and the police were called.
One officer showed up, the party crowd was unruly and refused to comply with police demands to leave the pool area. Back up was requested, and eventually nine officers in total showed up. There were fights between party-goers and local residents, a large crowd of unruly teens (mostly Black), and most were refusing to comply with police demands. That 10-second video of the police officer kneeling on the back of that Black teen-aged girl does NOT show what happened beforehand, when the girl was defying police demands, confronting the police, shouting epithets, etc., nor does it show how she responded with violence and assaulting the officer when the policeman tried less intrusive methods of restraining her.
This is not a race thing — it's a culture thing. The culture of the ghetto, where loud vulgar language is the accepted method of communication, where respect for property and the rights of others is considered "uncool," where physical assault is an acceptable response for any real or imagined offense, and where the only imperative is to do what you want, regardless of its impact on others. So now it's going to turn into a racial demand for "justice." Well, real justice would mean arresting every last one of the teens who thought it was a good idea to jump the fence into a private pool area they had no right to be in and charge them with criminal trespass. Real justice would mean the HOA sues Tatyana Rhodes for making an offer of a "Pool Party" when she had no right to open up the pool to party-goers, and putting a lien on her mother's house in Craig Ranch for the penalties assessed. Real justice would involve charging that little teen-aged brat who had to be subdued by the police with resisting arrest and assault of a police officer. Then lock all of the agitators and rioters up for a long, long time. But I'm pretty sure that is NOT what the current protestors believe is "justice."
Reasoned debate is impossible without a common understanding of terms. So long as the race baiters think that "justice" means that a raucous group of ill-mannered and bad-tempered teens should be allowed to run free, trampling on the rights of others, there will be a great many people opposing that particular brand of "justice."
Daniel Artz resides in Sunnyvale, Texas.
