"Polar bear hunting" -- creation of a racist meme [View all]

[Onlooker]

Have you noticed that more and more right wing sites are reporting that the "knockout game" is "sometimes called polar bear hunting." The New York Post, World Net Daily, and all these less well known sites are reporting that. The interesting thing is that nearly every reference to "polar bear hunting" is only a few days only, and virtually all the references are on anti-black sites. A search of google blogs, for instance turns up various blogs (from 11/22 or later) that are clearly racist.

While the Urban Dictionary contains a reference to it from 2010, the person who wrote that reference only wrote one reference for the Urban Dictionary and I found a possible source for that reference by using what appeared on that website. This is from 2010:

http://smilepolitely.com/opinion/polar_bear_deconstruction/

"CPD Sgt. Jim Rein puts a undeniably catchy name to this phenomenon: "Years ago, I can't say a specific year, that was part of a local gang (rite) to see if you could knock out someone with one punch. They call it polar bear hunting." The N-G (Champaign, IL., News Gazette) would later run a retraction regarding the use of the phrase, as Rein intended the phrase to describe events in past years and not necessarily describing these attacks in those words, but you can't put a genie back in the bottle, as they say."

So, it seems to me that before the "knockout game," there was a ritual called "polar bear hunting" by a single local gang in Champaign, IL. Now, the right wing media, to sow panic among white righties, is picking it up as if there are roving mobs of black youth everywhere going "polar bear hunting." By the right wing media using this phrase, they are populating the internet with it, and pretty soon I bet other media will pick it up as well. But, the reality is that the knockout game is not called polar bear hunting, and that's just an attempt by the right wing to frame this exaggerated issue as black racism.