The Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson says the murders of nine African-Americans in South Carolina allegedly by a young white racist would have received much less coverage in the media if the shooter had been black.
"Black-on-black you would not have heard anything about it. If you would have heard anything, it would have been a small, little mention of it," Peterson said Thursday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
Newsmax TV.
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Dylann Storm Roof, 21, is charged with fatally shooting six females and three males during a prayer meeting Wednesday at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston. The horrific violence has received wall-to-wall coverage on the cable news channels.
"Even if it was a black man killing white people in the church, you would have heard little or nothing about it. [President] Barack Obama would not have held a press conference about it," said Peterson, president of the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny.
"An incident just happened down in Florence, Ala., where blacks are attacking white families … and you don't hear anything about it. The police are saying, 'Well, we don't know yet if it's a hate crime because it's black-on-white.' Any time it's the other way around, automatically it's a hate crime in their minds."