The motorist, Steve Utash, was white. The mob, witnesses say, was made up of a dozen black men. A crowd of onlookers gathered while the mob beat Mr. Utash within an inch of his life. He was saved by Deborah Hughes, a black woman and a retired nurse who carries a .38. After attending to the child, who was not critically injured, Ms. Hughes lay across the body of Mr. Utash and promised herself that she would put a bullet in the next person to strike him…

Was the beating race-related? Probably. This is America, after all. This is Detroit. We have a history. The city has endured three major race riots. In my lifetime I remember two out-of-work white autoworkers in 1982 beating a Chinese-American man to death because they thought he was Japanese. In the early 1990s, white cops went to prison for beating a black motorist to death. Last year, a white man shot a black woman to death after her car broke down and she was wandering the neighborhood, presumably looking for help. Now this. So the circle spins on. Black mob. White fear. More guns.

Sadly, the talk after the attack on Mr. Utash wasn’t about a man who stopped to do the right thing. It wasn’t about Ms. Hughes, the gun-toting angel of mercy who saw no color except the red of his blood. It wasn’t about the use of justifiable force or the value of carrying a sidearm.

Instead white people asked: Where were the old-school civil rights advocates who usually spoke out against such beatings? Where was Reverend Al? Why did it take Jesse Jackson almost two weeks to say something? Not that any of them really wanted famous civil rights leaders coming to town and marching around. What they seemed to be demanding was an admission from black leaders that blacks harbor racial hatred, too.