A more positive view of race relations in America.

T        The  Field Negro education series continues.

Folks are always ripping me about my cynicism when it comes to race relations in America, so tonight I want to give you a positive article about race relations by Jamelle Bouie.

"On race relations, President Obama is feeling optimistic.

At least, that’s how he comes across in an interview with NPR’s Steve Inskeep, who asks if “the United States is  than it was” when he took office. “No,” Obama says, “I actually think that it’s probably in imore racially dividedts day-to-day interactions less racially divided.”

If America seems more divided, he says, it’s because we’re more aware of our racial shortcomings. “It’s understandable the polls might say, you know, that race relations have gotten worse—because when it’s in the news and you see something like Ferguson or the Garner case in New York, then it attracts attention.” And if many white Americans have a shocked response to claims of unfairness and discrimination, it’s because it’s outside their purview. “If you’d asked whites in those jurisdictions,” he said, referring to racial profiling in Illinois, ‘Do you think traffic stops were done fairly?’ the majority of whites probably would say ‘yes’ because it’s not something they experience. It’s not because of racism; it’s just that it’s not something that they see.”

It’s easy to dismiss this as undue optimism or a retreat to 2008-style post-racial thinking, especially given events in Cleveland, Ferguson, and New York, and the stark divide in how blacks and whites see law enforcement. But Obama isn’t wrong. When it comes to race relations, America is better than it’s ever been.

The most obvious observation is the fact of Obama’s election—and re-election—to the presidency. As a milestone in American life, this goes beyond electoral politics. “The person who occupies that office is not only the head of the executive branch of the federal government,” writes Harvard Law professor Randall Kennedy for the American Prospect, “The president is also the nation’s mourner-in-chief, booster-in-chief, spouse-in-chief, and parent-in-chief.” He continues: “That a black man has been the master of the White House for the past six years does indeed reflect and reinforce a remarkable socio-psychological transformation in the American racial scene.”

You can see this in the data. According to authors Lawrence D. Bobo of Harvard, Camille Z. Charles of the University of Pennsylvania, Maria Krysan of the University of Illinois, Chicago, and Alicia D. Simmons of Stanford University in “The Real Record on Racial Attitudes”—a paper in the 2012 volume of Social Trends in American Life: Findings from the General Social Survey Since 1972—whites have progressed on a wide range of measures. As recently as 1990, more than 40 percent of whites supported a homeowner’s right to discriminate on the basis of race; by 2008, that number had dropped to 28 percent (including 25 percent of highly educated Northern whites). The same goes for the percentage of whites who said blacks were “less intelligent” than whites, which dipped from nearly 60 percent in 1990 to less than 30 percent in 2008." [More]

The article goes on to tell us how whites have become more tolerant of other races and blah blah blah.

OK, if it's racial progress to still worry about how we are viewed by whites and their attitudes towards us well then so be it.

Personally, I don't see this as progress, I see it as more of the same.

But hey, that's just me.

*Pic from nationofchange.org. 

 

Peacekeepers?

If you happen to be an angry, unemployed, white male, with a penchant for guns, you should probably be in Ferguson, Missouri with your fellow brothers from "Oath Keepers" right now. These marauding band of "patriots" and protectors of freedom, have decided that it's best for them to be in Ferguson protecting the status quo instead of fighting with the people who are trying to bring about change through civil disobedience and protests.

It's not surprising that the "Oath Keepers" guys don't see the irony in their actions. Somehow I think that irony is lost on these types of people.

The good news is, of course, that there was only four of them. The bad news is that they were heavily armed and did not seem to be able to articulate why they are there in the first place. (Not to mention that more are sure to come.)

Unless I am missing something, the folks from the law enforcement side seem to be well prepared for anything that may come their way, so they really don't need these vigilante types making an already tense situation worse. In fact, it looks to me like they (law enforcement) are ready for war.

The "Oath Keepers" look like they are ready for war as well. They sure had a lot of fire power. It's amazing that the authorities are charging a reporter with trespassing and obstructing justice, but not these "Oath Keeper" guys. The reporter was armed with a camera, the "Oath Keeper" guys are armed with guns.

Of course they don't pose a threat to these like-minded individuals who, for the most part, are probably just glad for the company.

"The men said they were part of a group called "Oath Keepers," which describes itself as a non-partisan association of current and former U.S. soldiers, police and first responders who aim to protect the U.S. Constitution. They told reporters on the street that they were in Ferguson to protect a media organization.

The men attracted immediate attention in the mostly black neighborhood, which exploded into violence on Sunday night as protesters marked the one-year anniversary of the killing of an unarmed black teen by police.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a non-profit civil rights organization, has described the "Oath Keepers" as a "fiercely anti-government, militaristic group," and St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar condemned their appearance in Ferguson." [Source]

Hmmm,  a " fiercely anti-government, militaristic group". I think that they will fit right in.

*Pic from thedailybeast.com 

This is not a happy anniversary.

The Field Negro education series continues.

On the one year anniversary of the shooting of an unarmed young man of color in Ferguson, Missouri, another story has some of us folks scratching our collective heads.

"Arlington, Texas, police fatally shot a 19-year-old college student they claim broke into a car dealership early Friday morning, but some members of the dead man's family find the police version of the story hard to believe.

According to the Star-Telegram, around 1 a.m. Friday, police were notified of a burglary in progress at a GMC Classic Buick dealership. Police say a security company called for emergency help after company employees witnessed a man using his car to crash through the dealership's showroom window.

"The officers went and confronted him. There was an altercation. An officer discharged his weapon and struck the suspect," Sgt. Paul Rodriguez, a police spokesman, told the Star-Telegram.

The Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office identified the dead man Friday afternoon as 19-year-old Christian Taylor. Taylor was a sophomore at Angelo State University and a member of the football team. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
 

Rodriguez added that Taylor was unarmed when he was shot.
 

Police identified the officer involved in the shooting as 49-year-old Brad Miller, a recent graduate of the academy, who was working under the supervision of a training officer at the time of  the shooting. Miller has been placed on administrative leave.

"We're having two independent investigations—a criminal and administrative," Rodriguez said. "As an agency, we take the loss of any human life as serious, but we owe it to our community to conduct a clear and transparent investigation to determine what exactly took place."
 

Clyde Fuller, Taylor's great-uncle, told the Star-Telegram that the story that is being described doesn't add up. He said his great-nephew was set to return to college and that he excelled at football.

"He was a good kid. I don't see him stealing no car or nothing like that," Fuller said.

"I think something is going on that somebody is lying about," Fuller told the Star-Telegram. "... They say he's burglarizing the place by running up in there? Nuh-uh. Something doesn't sound right."

Rodriguez told the newspaper that the officers are in the process of receiving body cameras, but don't have them yet, and as such, Officer Miller was not wearing one during the shooting.

He added that there are several security cameras in the dealership, but said police haven't found footage that shows the incident clearly." [Story]

I know my white brethren, you are tired of all these stories about police brutality and young men. Just remember, though, your child could be next.

Wait.......

"You think you've heard this story before. A young, unarmed man is gunned down by police, black activists are outraged -- the only difference with this scenario is that the young man is not black, he's white.

Nineteen-year-old Zachary Hammond was on a date July 26 when he was fatally shot twice by a police officer while at the back parking lot of a Hardee's fast food restaurant in Seneca, a city 40 miles from Greenville, near the North Carolina border, according to Eric Bland, the attorney representing the teen's family.

 

The Seneca Police Department said the officer was conducting a drug investigation and shot Hammond in self-defense.

 

"He was a uniformed officer, he was in a marked vehicle, was out of his vehicle on foot approaching the suspect vehicle -- weapon drawn given it was a narcotics type violation," Seneca Police Chief John Covington said to CNN affiliate WHNS.

 

A small amount of marijuana was found in the front passenger's compartment in Hammond's car.

"He was a 19-year-old, 121-pound kid killed basically for a joint," Bland said. " [Story]

 

Let it not be said that the Field Negro is not as equally outraged when he sees a potential state killing of a young man from the majority population.

 

This situation,  like the one above in Arlington, Texas, should be vigorously investigated. And if it is found that the killings of these young men were unjustified, the officers involved should be held accountable in a court of law. 

 

*Picture from twitter via theroot.com

 

 

A hollow victory.

Now this from Arthur Chu:

"My Twitter feed is celebrating some unusually badass victories going down in the world of civil rights at the moment.

We have a clearly documented case of horrific, vicious racism verbalized as blatantly as you could ask for–brothers of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon gleefully chanting in praise of white supremacy and in mockery of murdered black men. We have an unusually badass university president who, rather than employing the usual stalling-for-time-till-the-story-dies approach of university administrators, expels the two identified ringleaders on the spot and immediately severs the University of Oklahoma’s ties with SAE.

And despite the usual apologetics blaming peer pressure, alcohol and all the other usual white male excuses for white male behavior, it looks like the media isn’t having it regarding 19-year-old Parker Rice, the man caught on camera leading the boisterous “There Will Never Be A N***** SAE” chant. Rice has already lost his admission to OU, and the stain on his reputation will follow him for a long time. As it should.

Meanwhile the long, painful drama in Ferguson, Missouri, has finally achieved something like a positive result–after the grand jury’s infuriating refusal to indict Darren Wilson it seemed like no closure for the Ferguson protesters would be forthcoming. But the U.S. Department of Justice has provided, if not justice for the Brown family, at least validated the Ferguson protesters’ perception of entrenched, overwhelming racial prejudice in the police force that caused the Brown case to explode in the first place.

(We’ve also now seen Thomas Jackson’s resignation as chief of police of Ferguson and the subsequent shooting of two police officers by an unidentified protester or protesters, who, thankfully, are expected to recover.

Jackson’s resignation is good news and to be celebrated. The attempted murder of two police officers is a tragedy and to be condemned. Both events are signs that our culture needs to continue to change, and that we cannot tolerate a return to “normalcy” when normalcy means a world filled with violence and rage.)

Now, finally, someone is losing his job. We don’t have to settle for the anticlimax of Officer Darren Wilson voluntarily retiring in order to “heal the community,” still insisting he did nothing wrong, collecting $400,000 in crowdfunded support along the way.

Now we have a much more satisfying ending to the story, with disgraced city manager John Shaw taking full responsibility for the endless documented abuses of the Ferguson police force and stepping down immediately–only the most recent of five high-profile terminations, including a corrupt judge and three employees–two police officers and a clerk–shown to have passed around racist e-mails on the job. Yes, we all kind of knew that people must’ve been expressing nasty sentiments like that behind the scenes. Yes, we all kind of knew that the city’s “law and order” policies hid race-based motivations.

I should be happy about this news. I should be ecstatic.

So why am I instead kind of anxious and annoyed?....

......The Oklahoma University chapter of SAE does not have a monopoly on toxic racism. And while we could put some of the blame on SAE’s roots in the antebellum South, pillorying SAE specifically won’t fix the fact that de facto segregation is de rigeur in fraternities and sororities across the country. It won’t change the ugly, dehumanizing culture that infects frat life in general, even at fancy Ivy League schools way above the Mason-Dixon line, even in the frats that pledge future senators and Presidents of the United States.

On a larger scale–while the rest of the country is looking down our collective nose at the benighted conditions in Ferguson, the USA as a whole has the highest incarceration rate of any nation in the world, with black men six times more likely to be incarcerated than white men. It doesn’t matter how racist Ferguson is–a single small town in Missouri is nothing more than a tiny blip in this trend.
And wagging fingers about Missouri’s slaveholding Border State past and the dysfunction of backward old St. Louis are a convenient distraction from 12-year-old boys being shot up north in Ohio, and from the organized, militant dysfunction of the police force of the great metropolis of New York City, which, it turns out, also has issues with exploiting its most vulnerable citizens for revenue.
A bunch of fratboys don’t develop an oral tradition of singing racist chants laughing about lynchings without racism being deeply woven into the culture of our fraternities, our schools, our whole society. A single small town doesn’t systematically put its black citizens under apartheid to generate revenue–a town’s officials don’t feel safe joking about its black citizens as subhuman–without racism being deeply woven into our politics, our legal system, our methods of policing.

The urge to find a single scapegoat after a tragedy is overwhelming. And unlike the common use of the term “scapegoat” I’m not saying these people don’t deserve what they get–just as Michael Brown (the other one) deserved to be raked over the coals for the aftermath of Katrina, just as the buck stopped with George W. Bush for the war in Iraq, just as in most complex human tragedies there nonetheless is a specific person who, through negligence or malice, pulled the fatal trigger.

But it’s ridiculous to say that our history would’ve been completely changed if Bush had died or been incapacitated after choking on that pretzel in 2002–a Cheney presidency would’ve been no different. It wasn’t him, it was the apparatus around him, it was the cultural and political and legal mechanisms that got him elected in the first place, and if you replaced him with another guy from the list of Republican candidates he got drawn from it’s hard to see how history would change.

Just as if Parker Rice hadn’t pledged SAE we’d see that same video only with some other fratboy douche leading the chant. Just as if Darren Wilson hadn’t been on patrol that day some other cop would, eventually, have shot some other unarmed teenager (as we can tell by the number of other atrocities that have happened in the past few years across the country). Just as if Capt. Henke and Sgt. Mudd had never been hired there’d be two other civil servants comparing the President to a chimpanzee on government e-mail servers somewhere–and there probably are now, even as I write this.

Just as the Racists Getting Fired Tumblr is ultimately a grandstanding waste of time. Sure, it proves that we’re in an enlightened enough society that people foolish enough to openly broadcast their racism on a social media platform linked to their real identity get fired for it.

So what? There’s millions of other racists with protected Facebook or Twitter accounts, or who are smart enough to use a pseudonym, or who are smart enough to not post racist rants at all, going around doing as much or more damage than some random careless insurance salesman who gets caught by the Internet.

I’m worried about celebrating victory over individual obvious racists not because it’s too harsh on racism but because it’s too soft on racism. It reinforces the idea that racism is an outlier, an aberration, the belligerent drunk shrieking racial slurs, and that once we remove a few bad apples things can get back to “normal.” [Read more here]

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere".

"WASHINGTON (AP) — A Justice Department investigation found sweeping patterns of racial bias within the Ferguson, Missouri, police department, with officers routinely discriminating against blacks by using excessive force, issuing petty citations and making baseless traffic stops, according to law enforcement officials familiar with its findings.

The report, which Ferguson city officials said would be released Wednesday, marks the culmination of a months-long investigation into a police department that federal officials have described as troubled and that commanded national attention after one of its officers shot and killed an unarmed black man, 18-year-old Michael Brown, last summer.

 

It chronicles discriminatory practices across the city's criminal justice system, detailing problems from initial encounters with patrol officers to treatment in the municipal court and jail. Federal law enforcement officials described its contents on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly before the report is released.

The full report could serve as a roadmap for significant changes by the department, if city officials accept its findings. Past federal investigations of local police departments have encouraged overhauls of fundamental police procedures such as traffic stops and the use of service weapons. The Justice Department maintains the right to sue police departments that resist making changes.

The city of Ferguson released a statement acknowledging that Justice Department officials supplied a copy of the report to the mayor, city manager, police chief and city attorney during a private meeting Tuesday in downtown St. Louis. The statement offered no details about the report, which the city said it was reviewing and would discuss Wednesday after the Justice Department makes it public.

The investigation, which began weeks after Brown's killing last August, is being released as Attorney General Eric Holder prepares to leave his job following a six-year tenure that focused largely on civil rights. The findings are based on interviews with police leaders and residents, a review of more than 35,000 pages of police records and analysis of data on stops, searches and arrests.

                    

Federal officials found that black motorists from 2012 to 2014 were more than twice as likely as whites to be searched during traffic stops, even though they were 26 percent less likely to be found carrying contraband, according to a summary of the findings.

The review also found that blacks were 68 percent less likely than others to have their cases dismissed by a municipal court judge. And from April to September of last year, 95 percent of people kept at the city jail for more than two days were black, it found.

Of the cases in which the police department documented the use of force, 88 percent involved blacks, and of the 14 dog bites for which racial information is available, all 14 victims were black.

Overall, African-Americans make up 67 percent of the population of Ferguson, about 10 miles north of downtown St. Louis. The police department has been criticized as racially imbalanced and not reflective of the community's demographic makeup. At the time of the shooting, just three of 53 officers were black, though the mayor has said he's trying to create a more diverse police force."

Is the injustice outlined in this Justice Department report limited to Ferguson, Missouri?

For America's sake I hope so.

The Ferguson wait.

This will be a bifurcated post.




Any minute now we will hear if that Missouri grand jury will indict Ferguson police officer, Darren Wilson.




I am waiting with the rest of you, and, frankly, I have no idea if 9 of these 12 people will find that there is enough evidence presented to go forward with a trial of the man who shot Michael Brown to death.




It's been three months, and all the evidence the prosecutor had was submitted to this grand jury. Yes, a prosecutor can indict a "ham sandwich", but that is only if he wants to.




This prosecutor did not seem hungry to me. But we will see.......


Part 2:


So there will be no indictment of Officer Wilson. I am still watching the prosecutor, Robert McCulloch; and he is giving a strained and canned explanation of the grand jury investigation and why Officer Wilson was not indicted.


He seems to be defending the shooter and demonizing the victim.


He kept talking about what a "tragic incident" this was and how sad he is for the family of Michael Brown. Now he wants to get a discussion going with the community and to "stay engaged". It just seems like a case of too little too late to me.


Sadly, once again a family has deal with a son who was murdered in a very public way, and once again the killer will go free.


Most of us, of course, are not surprised. Those of us who saw the build up to this announcement pretty much saw the writing on the wall.


“Regardless of the grand jury's decision, the Brown family and our legal team ask again for peace and calm, even though we understand people may have feelings of anger or disappointment...”


Yes they do Mr. Crump, and given what has been happening in America of late we can't really blame them.


Now I am watching the president say that we must "respect the rule of law" and that we must protest peacefully if we disagree with the decision.


That might sound like a fair request to some, but let's not forget, we all must respect the rule of law. Not just the citizens protesting the grand jury decision in the Michael Brown case, but the people sworn to uphold the law as well.

Some Love for the GOP, and 15 more seconds of Darren Wilson.

I would like to join Juan Williams in congratulating some newly elected African Americans who happen to be members of the grand old party.




The election of these individuals was historic in significance and should not be ignored.

I, too, like Mr. Williams,  hope that these Negroes will not be just "window dressing" and tokens who lend cover for the racists in their party.

Tim Scott has been a senator for a while, and he does not have the greatest track record, but I will give Mia Love and Will Hurd a chance to prove my suspicions wrong.

Hopefully, two years from now, I will be writing about all the positive aspects of their ascendancy to congress, and not how, like Clarence Thomas and those of his ilk, they are doing more to hurt people of color than to help them.

 

"Scott is positioned to become Congress’s leading advocate for reform of a broken public education system that is failing too many children. With nearly half of black students dropping out of high school, there is a desperate need for new ideas in the Senate on education.

Similarly, Love, as mayor of Saratoga Springs, Utah, focused on bringing more jobs to town. With black unemployment nationally over 11 percent, Love’s voice and her ideas for economic development create new opportunities for black Democrats to do business with Republicans.

Hurd’s CIA experience as an undercover officer in the Middle East brings a black man’s perspective to debates on dealing with Muslim extremists.


To be clear, it is up to Scott, Love and Hurd to be more than window dressing for a GOP with a major problem as a party defined by the anger of older, white, conservative men.
But they’ve beaten the odds so far. I’m rooting for them to do it again."

Nothing wrong with "rooting for them", Juan. Just don't be too disappointed if they drop the ball.


Remember, there are some other folks "rooting for them" as well.




Finally, the state of Missouri has declared a state of emergency in anticipation of the grand jury verdict in Ferguson.

Michael Brown's family attorney says that the governor of that state is "preparing for war" and he is concerned that the governor's actions will incite what is sure to be an already angry crowd if the grand jury does not indict Officer Darren Wilson.

My money says there will be no indictment, but we will see.

And speaking of Officer Wilson, forget the Michael Brown incident for a minute, apparently this guy is just  not a very good police officer.

"The Ferguson, Missouri officer who killed an unarmed 18-year-old is featured in an online video taken by a man who said Darren Wilson unlawfully arrested him and violated his rights.


The 15-second video shows an officer alleged to be Wilson in uniform in the middle of a conversation with resident Mike Arman, who made the brief recording.


Resident Mike The video begins with Arman asking the officer his name, and Wilson replies, "If you wanna take a picture of me one more time, I'm going to lock your a-- up."
Arman replies he is not taking a picture but recording the incident, then Wilson walks several feet toward him.


Arman asks Wilson if he has the right to record the incident and Wilson replies "no" and says "come on" as the video comes to a shaky end.


The video shows only a small glimpse of the encounter but Arman writes in the description of the video posted Friday that Wilson violated his First Amendment rights, arrested him unlawfully and lied on the police report." [Source]




Mr. Arman, at least you are alive to tell your story. Consider yourself lucky.

America dodged a bullet, and Rand reaches out.

Now that we have confirmed that there was a Palin family brawl in Alaska back in early September, and that the Palins acted like a bunch of drunken rednecks, maybe the Palin supporters can apologize to the blogger who broke the story.
 
"The report corroborates the stories told by eyewitnesses — that the Palins appeared at a birthday party in Wasilla, that they all seemed moderately-to-heavily intoxicated, and that some of the family members ended up punching people — but added a new detail: there were apparently two separate fights, one in which daughter Bristol Palin repeatedly punched the party’s host in the face.


The first incident also involved Bristol: according to the report, Track, his father Todd, and his friend Steven Lebida had decided to leave the party after “some guys were talking rudely to his sisters, making them cry,” when someone sucker-punched Lebida in the back of the head. As Todd helped Lebida up, four men allegedly descended upon Todd, causing Track to throw himself in the brawl to defend his dad. (Other witnesses said that Track was the one who attempted to start a fight.)


People alerted the host, Corey Klingenmeyer, that there was a fight going on outside his garage, and he attempted to break up the fight, when an incredibly drunk Bristol Palin approached him, furious that an unnamed woman had hit her little sister Willow. According to one witness, Bristol asked him “Who the fuck are you?” and when Klingenmeyer told her that he was the homeowner and didn’t want any trouble at his son’s birthday party, the following exchange happened:

She then told him he doesn’t own this place and that she will kick his ass. He says then that she hits him in the face.  

He says he then tells her to hit him again if it makes her feel better and she does. He says he lets her hit him 5-6 times in the face and that she was hitting pretty hard. After about the sixth punch he grabbed her fist as she punched again and he pushed back and she falls down. He says she gets up and tries to punch him again and he grabs her fist again and pushes her away and she falls down again." [Source]

And to think, they almost became the second family of the United States.  


Finally, I swear this Rand Paul guy is making a very confused person out of me. I honestly don't know what to think of the guy.


On one hand he is the only high profile member of the republican party who seems to be making a concerted effort to reach out to people of color, and on the other hand he is been known to put confirmed racists in positions of power within his inner circle.


He also criticized the 1964 Civil Rights Act, while suggesting that property rights trumps civil rights. Not good.


But now the man is going to Ferguson, Missouri for crying out loud. And recently he has criticized his fellow GOP pals for doing a terrible job of reaching out to minorities. This is something that he seems to be taking it upon himself to do.


"..Paul said. “I think in the Republican Party, the biggest mistake we’ve made in the last several decades is we haven’t gone into the African American community, into the NAACP and say you know what, we are concerned about what’s going on in your cities and we have plans. They may be different than the Democrats, but we do have plans and we do want to help.”


Well I will be.... A republican politician actually sat down with black people to see if there can be a meeting of the minds, and to see if republican policies can help the black community.  


I know that there was a "blood" moon, recently. Maybe there is a blue one tonight. 

     

Not all eyewitnesses are the same.

I swear I am not making this up. A pundit on CNN was explaining this evening that now that two white witnesses have come forward to say that they saw Michael Brown with his hands raised before he was shot; it could be problematic for Officer Wilson.


The host, Wolf Blitzer, nodded his head in agreement. They went on to admit (and I am paraphrasing here) that these witnesses lend credibility to the other eyewitness accounts because they did not have a dog in the fight.  


Of course we all know the real reason that these two construction workers will be found more credible than the residence of Ferguson. If you guessed the color of their skin please move to the head of the class.


All those Negroes just cannot be trusted with their version of the story. They are too biased, and they are.....well.....Negroes.


"Two men, shocked at what they saw, describe an unarmed teenager with his hands up in the air as he's gunned down by a police officer.

They were contractors doing construction work in Ferguson, Missouri, on the day Michael Brown was killed.

And the men, who asked not to be identified after CNN contacted them, said they were about 50 feet away from Officer Darren Wilson when he opened fire.

An exclusive cell phone video captures their reactions during the moments just after the shooting.

 

"He had his f**n hands up, one of the men says in the video.

The man told CNN he heard one gunshot, then another shot about 30 seconds later." [Source]

Thankfully the men have now come forward.


Thank you "Mr. Charlie", for helping to make the wheels of justice turn faster.


Those Negroes in Ferguson could not have done it without you. 

When being the "Magic Negro" is not enough.

"..Obama expressed sympathy for the "passions and anger" sparked by the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, but said giving in to that anger through looting and attacks on police only stirs tensions and leads to further chaos. He said overcoming the mistrust endemic between many communities and their local police would require Americans to "listen and not just shout."


Sorry Mr. President, but with all due respect, when they do "listen" all they hear is just more of the same kind of things you have been saying.




And I get it, you are the president of all Americans, you can't seem to be favoring those Negroes over all others. It's how you got elected in the first place: The "Magic Negro", the "uniter", who speaks well and seems so non-threatening. The Negro who views himself as an American first and who only sees "one America."




If you had been any other kind of Negro you would not have been elected.



But I also understand the angst and criticism that you are getting from folks like my homeboy, Marc Lamont Hill.




 "In an official White House statement on Wednesday and a brief speech from Martha's Vineyard on Thursday, the President played his usual role of "the uniter," preaching calm and healing to the American public.

I wish he'd just said nothing.

To be clear, I didn't have any unrealistic expectations for Obama. I didn't expect him to pump a black fist in solidarity or scream "fight the power" from the makeshift press room. I didn't even need him to take a clear side on the issue. I did, however, expect him to tell the truth. Instead, the President delivered a polite but ultimately dangerous message to the American public.

Noticeably absent from President Obama's remarks was the issue of race. Despite Ferguson being 68% black, Ferguson's police force is nearly all white. Blacks in the town comprise 86% of all vehicle stops and 85% of all arrests. Over the past week, black residents of the town have complained of racial harassment from law enforcement. That, combined with the trend of unarmed black men being the victims of extrajudicial killings, makes the racial implications of Brown's death quite strong.

Even if one were to believe that Michael Brown's killing had nothing to do with race -- a naïve position at best -- the wave of protests and debates that emerged after it happened have been undeniably racial. By not mentioning this racial dimension, the President reinforced the immature notion that racism can be defeated simply by pretending it doesn't exist." [Source]

The thing is, Marc, in the minds of most Americans it doesn't exist. And that black person speaking from the podium with the Presidential seal on it, in their minds, proves it.

One of the bitter ironies of all of this is that in spite of Barack Obama going out of his way to be the president of all Americans and not show favoritism to his father's ancestors, he is still viewed by those on the right to be the most divisive president ever.

They are decrying the fact that racial tensions have increased and not decreased  during his presidency. Failing to realize, of course, that the anger and hate have come primarily from their ideological soul-mates in the majority population, who resent the fact that a black man such as Obama could have been elected to lead them. (Twice!)

So yes, racial tensions have increased, but it's not because of the way that the very non-racial Barack Obama acted in office; it's because he is in that office in the first place.

"There are young black men that commit crime. We can argue about why that happened — because the poverty they were born into or the school systems that failed them or what have you— but if they commit a crime, then they need to be prosecuted," Obama said. "Because every community has an interest in public safety."

Yes they do "need to be prosecuted," and so do the police officers who are charged with keeping the public safe and not breaking the very law that they are charged to uphold. 

*Pic from Scott Olsen-Getty Images.

 

 

What will they say about Dante Parker?

We are being shown the tape over and over again. The one where the now deceased teenager is allegedly robbing a convenience store.


It was released by the Ferguson, Missouri police department to make the victim in the Michael Brown case unsympathetic to the rest of us. It is a playbook that we have seen before, and the last time that it was used it worked to perfection.


Now, though, the people have gotten smarter, and they understand the tactic that is being used. It will be interesting to see if it works again.


Let's keep something in mind: The police officer who shot Michael Brown did not know that he was a suspect in a "robbery". (DID NOT KNOW.) Not that it would have made any difference if he did. You don't get to act as judge, jury, and executioner as a police officer. And, the last time I checked, there is no death penalty in the United States for a crime against someone's property.


"The manner in which Ferguson officials disclosed the information Friday, which included a police report on the robbery but no new details about last Saturday’s shooting, set off renewed anger among residents and quickly overshadowed the release of the officer’s name."  


A "release" that was too long in coming.


Anyway, I wonder what the police in San Bernardino County are going to say about Dante Parker. *In Pic*


"A married father of five in Southern California died after he was tased multiple times by police trying to arrest him for attempted burglary.


Dante Parker, 36, was riding a bicycle in Victorville on Tuesday afternoon when a deputy stopped and questioned him about an attempted break-in at a nearby home, the San Bernardino Sheriff's Office said.


The person who reported the suspicious activity on Bucknell Court said the suspect rode away on a bike. When the deputy found Parker, he appeared "to possibly be under the influence of an unknown substance," the sheriff's office said.


Cops said Parker became belligerent and fought with the female deputy, who shot him with a stun gun several times and called for backup.


Parker's co-workers at the local Daily Press newspaper, where he was a pressman in the printing department, said that didn't sound like the hard-working gentle giant they saw every day.


"He was a big teddy bear," Press publisher Al Frattura told the Daily News. "He worked in our production department for 12 years...he was part of our family." 
"He's a family man, he loves music....it's just so unfortunate," Frattura said. 
Richard Loredo, Parker's former co-worker, told the newspaper the police version of the story was "totally wrong; that's just not Dante."' [Source] 


Sounds like he was a hard working family man.


Now let's see if the cops in San Bernardino are as good at spinning as the cops in Missouri.