Chicago picked a strange time to go all colorblind on us. The occasion was the occasional riot in one of America’s premier high-end shopping districts: the Magnificent Mile. 

Wednesday night, 500 people rampaged through downtown looting, destroying property, attacking white people, defying police, stopping traffic, threatening tourists, and created lots of mayhem and chaos.

All on video. Some of which you can find here.

If local media is to be believed, race had nothing to do with the fact that every single one of the rioters was black. 

Strange behavior from a local media that is obsessed with race, especially white racism and black victimization. Every day, it is easy to find stories in Chicago about black schools, black politicians, black businesses, black neighborhoods, black income, black funeral homes, black mayors, black police chiefs, black district attorneys, black football players, black baseball players, black churches, black music, black television, black movies, black actors (wassup Jussie!!!), black history, black community activists, black nationalists and of course all the things that white people do to constantly aggravate them and force them into crime and violence wildly out of proportion.

Sorry about that. My check for reparations is in the mail.

This colorblindness may not be a permanent affliction, but it is at least the third time this year local media have come down with it. 

Last Saturday night, a couple of hundred of the fellas and lovely ladies did pretty much the same thing in the same place.

Ditto a few weeks before that.

To their credit, at least the Second City Cop blog and CWBChicago.com let us know about the violence and the official indifference to it. But even these usually stalwart sources of good info about Chicago just could not bring themselves to mention that, for at least the third time this year, Chicago had a good old-fashioned race riot.

The Fox affiliate did not even report the violence: They only real thing that happened was a large police presence “triggered,” apparently, for no reason whatsoever except for “monitoring.”

At least the NBC affiliate tried: Their crew said a large number of police where there for “crowd control,” and their ace reporter actually found an actual rioter to speak with. Though there is no video record of it, she said the “teen” told her they were down there doing something or other because they do not have anything else to do. Or anywhere else to do it.

Someone please notify the Pulitzer people.

Meanwhile, the Chicago captain in charge of explaining it all to us said the whole thing was about “socioeconomic” conditions.  And for that, we need a higher authority for some deeper understanding. Who better than the cast of West Side Story and their 1961 tribute to socioeconomic conditions:

Dear kindly Sergeant Krupke

Ya gotta understand

It’s just our bringin’ up - me

That gets us outta hand

Our mothers all are junkies

Our fathers all are drunks

Golly Moses natcherly we’re punks

Gee, Officer Krupke, we’re very upset;

We never had the love that every

Child oughta get

We ain’t no delinquents

We’re misunderstood

Deep down inside us there is good!

This is probably a better analysis than the one tendered by the former police superintendent Gary McCarthy, who told a black radio audience that black violence in Chicago was caused by the racist “Pilgrims.”

But not quite as good as the explanation from the former head of the local teachers’ union, Karen Lewis, who told us Chicago “belongs” to black people. Not “rich white people.”

Whoever is causing it, black mob violence and denial in Chicago is thoroughly documented in good ol’ Colin’s scintillating bestseller White Girl Bleed a Lot.  Not that I was the only one who wondered about this periodic burst of colorblindness. Lots of people in Chicago were asking about it, just none who work for Chicago media.

The Chicago Tribune’s Steve Chapman took a whack a few years ago at explaining it -- not the black violence but the required colorblindness -- after he got sick of all the readers wanting to know if he had sought treatment for his optical deficiencies.

“There are good reason not to identify the attackers by race,” opined Mr. Chapman. “It’s the newspaper’s policy not to mention race in a story, whether about crime or anything else, unless it has some clear relevance to the topic. My question to readers accusing us of political correctness is: Why do you care so much about the attacker’s race? If you fear or dislike blacks, I suppose it would confirm your prejudice. But otherwise it tells you nothing useful.”

This is worse that it appears. Not only are they experiencing periodic colorblindness, but these same folks are apparently also afflicted with acute amnesia.

Colin Flaherty has documented black violence in Chicago in three books, two of them bestsellers.  And let’s not forget all his videos and articles, many of which appear here. He also talks about it in his podcast, which you can get everywhere except iTunes, which took it down a few weeks ago. Guess why.