A 22 year old White man from Palm Bay, Florida is accusing a black teenager of attacking due to his race and listening to Hip-Hop music.
David McKnight told WFTV.com that he was listening to Atlanta rapper Gucci Mane’s “Wasted” single on a sidewalk when he was accosted by several black teenagers. Among them was 14 year old Joshua Lamb, who informed McKnight “you shouldn’t be listening to rap music because you’re white.”
McKnight retorted he “could listen to whatever he wanted,” and was subsequently attacked by the group.
“I couldn’t get away fast enough,” McKnight told WFTV.com “One of them spit on me, punched me, knocked me down… I got a couple of kicks in from a couple of them.”
McKnight told police Lamb was with at least seven other individuals.
“I told him to drop it. I was like, ‘Just drop it, let’s go, there is eight of you and one of me. Just drop it,’ ” McKnight recalled. “And he says, ‘I’m not dropping anything.’ Bam! [He] punched me. I feel it’s a racial thing.”
McKnight suffered a swollen eye, broken toe, and choke marks from the assault.
Police were only able to arrest Lamb and booked him on misdemeanor battery and giving a false name at Brevard Country’s juvenile detention center.
At press time prosectuors are reviewing the case. If Lamb is charged with a hate crime, his battery charge can be upgraded to a felony.
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Well of course the cynical Hip-Hop purist in me want’s to quip that McKnight caught that beatdown not because he was white, but because he was listening to Gucci Mane.
In all seriousness that attack was not warranted, but there all some holes in the story that have yet to be substantiated. Was he blasting music from a parked car, or was McKnight posted up Radio Raheem style with a boombox? Well all know discussions can degrade into arguments very quickly. I wonder if he was first asked to turn it down and then the racial comments started coming in once he refused.
Either way, the violent escalation that was uncalled for. A hate crime by definition is when someone is targeted for violence because of race, religion, sexual orientation etc. So if all the facts are true, Joshua Lamb has a problem. His saving grace may be the fact he is still a minor.
This makes me further appreciate Afrika Bambatta’s statements last week about the importance of understanding the history of Hip-Hop. It was a ghetto music created and cultivated by disenfranchised people as a creative, positive outlet for cultural expression in a world that refused to give them any. It was and is a black music art form that’s welcomed latinos, asians and whites.
Being that Gucci and Plies themselves like to “get wasted like them white boys,” I’m sure they would be equally appalled by this case.
Beats, Boxing and Mayhem 
yo yo dat shit was madd funni wen dat mann got beat up i was dere wit josh lol that shit was funni as fuk manee and da reaon he got stuck in his shit cuz he said yall are nothin but niggers bitch well if we dat we will sho u wat u is cracka