When Illegal, Segregated, Black University Band Goes to Japan to Perform, Its Members Go on Shoplifting Spree, University Lies about Its Students’ Crimes, and the L.A. Times Censors Its Own Story

Re-posted by Nicholas Stix
Thanks to reader EAHILF for the heads-up.

[My headline is based on the 1964 U.S. Civil Rights Act, which makes racial discrimination illegal anywhere and everywhere, including the private sphere. However, the CRA is never executed, where racially segregated, black institutions are concerned.]


Texas Band of Thieves Stuns Japanese Hosts
By J. MICHAEL KENNEDY and LESLIE HELM
Dec. 16, 1992
12 A.M.
TIMES STAFF WRITERS
HOUSTON —
[Los Angeles Times]

There is certainty about the basic facts of the case: A large group of American university band members, in Japan to perform at a football game halftime, went on a shoplifting binge in a Tokyo shopping area last week and stole thousands of dollars’ worth of electronics.

Later reports said the shopkeepers were stunned by the brazenness of the thieves from Texas Southern University’s Ocean of Soul Marching Band, who reportedly picked up compact disc players, tape recorders, pocket televisions and video game software and dropped them into their shopping bags and coat pockets before walking out of stores. They committed the thefts on Dec. 7, the day after they marched at halftime in a game between the University of Nebraska and Kansas State.

News of the incident was played down by the Houston university for more than a week, during which the thievery was called first an incident of “misconduct.” Later, the university explained that “some small items had been taken from merchants but were subsequently returned.”

All that changed on Tuesday, when Japanese newspapers and television news stations reported the spree, embarrassing the all-black university, forcing it to acknowledge the thefts and causing the school’s president and others to suggest that the already negative Japanese view of blacks had been further eroded.

[N.S.: Blacks? But the story said nothing previously about blacks. How could this incident possibly have anything to do with blacks?]

On Tuesday afternoon, William H. Harris, the university president, issued a statement in which he said the students involved “have brought a great dishonor” to the school and said punishment could range from reprimand to dismissal.

He conceded that as many as 28 members of the 120-member band may have participated in the spree, which occurred in the Tokyo business district known as Akihabara, Japan’s electronics bazaar.

[If Harris “conceded that as many as 28 members of the 120-member band” were thieves, you can take it to the bank that the true number was over 30.]

“It reinforces all Japanese prejudices against blacks,” said Frank Gibney, president of the Santa Barbara-based Pacific Basin Institute and a well-known Japan scholar. “It also reinforces the view in Japan that Americans are getting more desperate and lawless. This one takes the cake.”

Gibney’s view was echoed Tuesday by students at TSU.

“They just screwed it up for the rest of us,” said Carla Ferguson, 20, a junior majoring in health administration. “It makes the band look bad, the school look bad and our race look bad. You don’t go all the way to another country and start stealing things.”

One ironic twist was that on the day the shoplifting occurred, several Japanese politicians were trying to atone for previous slurs about foreigners.

[“Foreigners”? But there’s no examples of “foreigners,” as such. The only example given is of blacks.]

Seiroku Kajiyama, secretary general of the Liberal Democrats, professed his shame at making a statement in 1990 comparing blacks to prostitutes in Japan.

In the version of the story that broke Tuesday in the Japanese press, shopkeepers saw the TSU students stealing goods from their stores, where items had no anti-theft devices because shoplifting is so rare. They gave chase and, eventually, police boarded the band’s buses and told the students they would not be allowed to leave for the airport until the pilfered goods were returned.

[This story is unwittingly informative about shopfitting and race in America. Department stores in America spend billions of dollars per year on anti-theft devices and security guards, all because of blacks. Many items have not one but two anti-theft devices, e.g., a sensitized, electronic strip and an oversized, pointy, plastic container to make it difficult to hide the item. A matching, sensitized, electronic strip on the exit doors would then trigger an alarm if the item had not been desensitized by the cashier. However, when I moonlighted at Toys’R’Us (1997-1998), in order to help black shoplifters, the racist, black chief of loss prevention store never turned on the alarm system. And security guards who did their jobs diligently were routinely thrown out of the store.

As per the Great Divergence, black supremacists and their white lackeys have promoted a racial fairy tale, in which innocent blacks are routinely harassed in stores, falsely arrested, and maliciously prosecuted.

And stores have increasingly yielded to black supremacists. After a strapping, youngish black woman, Jacquetta Simmons, sucker-punched a slender, 70-year-old, female greeter at a Batavia WalMart on Christmas Eve, 2011, when the latter asked to see her receipt (standard practice), the store eliminated the greeter job. My experience is that “respectable,” racist blacks are especially violent to whites during Christmas season.]

Kazuo Kawamura, a detective, said that more than 100 items were placed on the aisles of the buses and that the value put on them was $18,500, with another $3,500 worth not recovered. In all, he said, 119 items were reported stolen.

Harris disputed the number and value of the stolen goods, though he could not provide his own figures.

“One or two started to take stuff and then it snowballed,” he said.
Kennedy reported from Houston and Helm reported from Tokyo.

[N.S.: Another lie. The blacks from TSU stormed the store, just like we have since become accustomed to seeing mobs of young, black criminals do, in storming and ransacking stores and brutally beating anyone who tries to stop them on videos for several years.]


UPI Archives
Dec. 17, 1992

UPI Archives

Texas Southern disciplines students, dissolves band
[UPI]

HOUSTON -- The president of Texas Southern University Thursday ordered the school's famous 'Ocean of Soul' marching band dissolved and a dozen band disciplined for engaging in shoplifting during a visit to Japan.

President William H. Harris said the action was taken because a university investigation found at least 12 band members had engaged in shoplifting. He said investigators also found 28 non-students traveled as band members.

[N.S.: Note that the December 16 story above had the university president “conced[ing] that as many as 28 members of the 120-member band” had stolen electronics in Tokyo.]

Harris said the investigation will continue and additional disciplinary action is possible, but the university determined that the 'Ocean of Soul' band, known for its high-stepping, energetic style, would be dissolved.

'That order is effective immediately, and TSU students have marched for the last time under that once proud name,' he said in a brief statement.

Earlier this week, authorities in Japan reported members of the 120- member band shoplifted $22,000 worth of electronics from a Tokyo shopping center. The band had performed at the Coca-Cola Bowl game between the University of Nebraska and Kansas State University.

The Houston Chronicle on Thursday quoted campus sources who said that 66 of the people who traveled to Tokyo were not enrolled at TSU, but it was unclear if they were involved in shoplifting. Another source quoted in the story said the band was a conglomeration of students, alumni and friends.

Harris said the university found that 28 persons on the trip were not enrolled students. He said although the university could take no disciplinary action against them, they would be banned from any future participation.

Harris also said since band activities had been canceled, 'all university personnel have been relieved of band-related duties.' A spokesman said later the band director and two assistants had been assigned to other duties.

Harris did not say what kind of disciplinary action was being taken against the 12 band members.

Earlier this week, Harris said he was disgusted by the thefts but also said that the value of items taken as reported by the Tokyo police was exaggerated.

Harris said no charges were pending against any TSU student in Tokyo. He said all of the stolen items were returned to shop merchants before the band left Japan.

[Harris lied.]