Move over "Weezy", and Mr. Capehart strikes back.

Before I start this post I would like to say rest in peace Sherman Hemsley.(There is a pretty decent and on point tribute to him in the link I provided) Dude almost made it cool to be a House Negro. I just hope that he "moved on up" today.

So anyway, one of the pitfalls of being an opinionated black man in America--- who isn't afraid to speak his mind--- is all the negative feedback you get from ignorant  small minded folks. People who can't really debate you on the facts and issues at hand, so they resort to juvenile, petty, and sectarian attacks.

The e-mails are numerous, and the comments...well, you see a lot of them on this blog.

Jonathan Capehart is a sometimes television commentator and a writer for the Washington Post. He is a pretty intelligent dude who has strong opinions on certain issues. One of them is the Trayvon Martin case. It is a case that he has written extensively about over the past few months. I am sure that the poor guy gets his share of nasty e-mails, comments and letters, and one particular stalker person drove him to write an entire column in response.

I have vowed not to give  anymore of my own personal opinions about the Martin case until after the trial, but the following is a cut and paste job from some of Capehart's column that I thought I should share with you:

"Some fellow named Rick, who has emailed me from two different addresses since last week, really didn’t like what I had to say about Sean Hannity’s interview with George Zimmerman. His first email came Thursday morning, the day after the killer of Trayvon Martin said he had “no regrets.” The second one came later that day. And ever since he has emailed asking for a response. “I will send this to you ‘ad-infinitum' until I get a reasonable and rationale [sic] response from you,” Rick wrote me via email Saturday night.

Well, Rick here comes your answer.

“One of the burdens of being a black male is carrying the heavy weight of other people’s suspicions,” I wrote at the outset of the national furor over Zimmerman not being in jail for killing Trayvon. We already know that Trayvon brings out the worst in people. But Rick’s racist rant — complete with misspellings and poor grammar — gives my statement renewed relevance as he joins far too many others in denigrating the life of a person he didn’t know by using stereotypes to justify his hate. 

Much in the way Sanford Police Detectives dissected Zimmerman’s call to the department that rainy night on Feb. 26, I dissect Rick’s missive. Would that folks like Rick gave Trayvon the same benefit of the doubt they are demanding be given to Zimmerman.

I read your response in regards to the Hannity/Zimmerman interview. It is so full of holes a semi truck can drive thru the huge gaps you leave.
Martin broke this guys [sic] nose and was pounding his head into the concrete... he probably was in the process of killing him before he got (justifiably) shot.

This requires us to believe Zimmerman’s version of events. Understandable simply because we only have his side of the story. Trayvon is dead. Clearly, there was some kind of physical fight as Zimmerman’s injuries attest. Yet, few if any Zimmerman supporters seem to ask themselves this question: What would you do if you were a 17-year-old staying as a guest in a neighborhood not your own and were accosted by a stranger who you noticed had been following you in a car?

Besides, as I’ve written many times, Zimmerman’s story is the one “full of holes.” For instance, I’m still trying to figure out how Trayvon’s hands were found under his body when Zimmerman told police in several interviews that he pulled Trayvon’s arms away from his body mere seconds before police arrived.

Martin is just another typical example of an "angry, black, and totally uneducated" product of black culture which believes in Jerry Springer tactics for problem resolution.

What this portion of Rick’s racist rant ignores is a report from Trayvon’s teacher at Dr. Michael M. Krop Senior High School in Miami where he was a junior. He was “an A and B student who majored in cheerfulness,” she said. Nothing that I have seen since that February report disputes that.

Trayvon spent some time at the George T. Baker Aviation School after his regular school day because he wanted to be involved in aviation either as a pilot or a mechanic. He used to help his father Tracy Martin when he coached little league baseball. His father also credited Trayvon with saving him from a fire when he was just 9 years old.

Sure, Trayvon was suspended from school three times, including for being found with a plastic baggie that had traces of marijuana. Trayvon is hardly the first teenager of any race caught dabbling in doobies. Yet, this seeming rite of adolescent passage has given people like Rick an excuse to brand Trayvon a hard-core thug itching to kill someone for the hell of it, despite ample evidence to the contrary...." [Entire article]

I have to give it to you Mr. Capehart, you are one patient man. 

 

You can add Rekia Boyd to the list.

I know that I have been telling black men to be careful out here in our new "post-racial A-merry-ca", but now I have to send the same warning to my sisters living here in Babylon.

Sorry ladies, you aren't safe, either. There is a target on you as well, and you can thank our "color aroused" society for that.

I bring you the case of Rekia Boyd:

"Her death certificate says killed by police, but I feel like my sister was murdered," says Martinez Sutton, whose 22-year-old little sister, Rekia Boyd, was shot in the head by an off-duty Chicago detective on Wednesday, March 21. She died the following day at Mount Sinai Hospital.

Boyd's death comes less than a month after the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, leaving many troubled by the regularity with which unarmed people of color are shot, particularly by individuals claiming self-defense. And for those left grieving, the failure of authorities to hold the shooter accountable is the greatest injustice of all.

In the case of Boyd, Chicago police almost immediately echoed the account of the off-duty detective responsible for her death. Police say the officer in question drove up to a group of people in Chicago's Douglas Park around 1 AM on Wednesday, March 21, to investigate a disturbance near his home. He rolled down his window and asked them to quiet down at which point police say 39-year-old Antonio Cross pulled out a gun forcing the detective to open fire in self-defense, hitting Cross in the hand and striking Boyd in the head.

But neighbors, witnesses and Cross paint a vastly different picture. Cross told WGN News that he was unarmed and on his cell phone at the time of the shooting. When Cross asked why the officer shot him, he says the officer's response was, "I thought your phone was a gun." Cross has since been charged with a misdemeanor of aggravated assault.

Local news outlets initially reported that police failed to recover Cross' alleged weapon. However, Police would not confirm or deny... [Source] 

I can see you racists scrambling to find a link to prove that the man who shot Ms. Boyd wasn't white. That seems to be the new thing now: It's cool to kill the unarmed black person as long as it's not a white person doing the shooting. "Hey we are not racist, the Indian/Mexican/Cuban/Asian did it"

But let me kill that argument before you even try to make it. The truth of the matter is that the race of the po po who shot this poor woman to death is irrelevant to me. (I actually don't know his race, and don't care.) He too could be suffering from some "color arousal" issues. I don't care if he is a black man. It happens all the time; Black boys in blue put the blue over black. Yes folks, sometimes slave catchers actually wear uniforms.

Rekia, you didn't deserve to die this way. Those charged with protecting and enforcing the law should not be killing innocent people. But there will be no national outcry or outrage over your death. Some folks will say that you deserved to die because you were hanging with the wrong type of people, at the wrong time, and in the wrong part of town.

Just as they try to argue in the Trayvon Martin case, that this is the cost of being black in A-merry-ca. An A-merry-ca, they wail, where blacks commit a disproportionate number of violent of crimes. Not poor people. Not people who aren't properly educated. Blacks! 

" Kelly invited Fox News analyst Bernard Goldberg onto the show to discuss the matter. “While no decent person is happy about what happened, no matter what your politics,” he said of the shooting, “there are some people whose purposes are served by what happened. And I’ll tell you about the two: The national media. The national media doesn’t do stories about black-on-black crime. It doesn’t interest them. They don’t do stories about black-on-white crime, which happens in far, far greater numbers than white-on-black crimes. They don’t do those stories either. But this is like a movie script handed to them from Hollywood. ‘Oh my goodness! A white guy — or, in this case, a white Hispanic guy — shoots an unarmed black kid. Perfect story.”   

It might be "perfect" to you Mr. Goldberg. But I guarantee you that it's not "perfect" to the family of Rekia Boyd.

Now it's "The Butler", and musings from the house on Trayvon Martin.

When will it stop? Now we are told that there is a movie called “The Butler” in the works. Really?!! “The Butler”?!! Boy leave it to Hollywood to find a formula and run that puppy into the ground. I like Forest Whitaker, the man is a fine actor, but I am begging him not to do this flick. I don’t care if my homie Lee Daniels is co-writing and directing it. I say enough of these "Magic Negro roles. This one will focus on the Reagan White House. Lawd help us. "How you doin Miss Nancy, I have your tea for you". "Thank you Eugene, Could you bring my slippers please?" "Sure Miss Nancy, do you want the white ones or the pink ones? " [Source]

I feel like throwing up.

I know who will probably love this movie, my man Juan Williams. Juan is at it again. This time he penned an article for the Wall Street Journal where he pretty much stated the obvious (and what us real black folks have been saying all along) about the tragedy that is black on black crime.

Of course Juan, in typical house fashion, has to make this about black folks not being responsible enough to point out the obvious ills and pathologies in many black communities.  

"The shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Florida has sparked national outrage, with civil rights leaders from San Francisco to Baltimore leading protests calling for a new investigation and the arrest of the shooter.

But what about all the other young black murder victims? Nationally, nearly half of all murder victims are black. And the overwhelming majority of those black people are killed by other black people. Where is the march for them?
Where is the march against the drug dealers who prey on young black people? Where is the march against bad schools, with their 50% dropout rate for black teenaged boys? Those failed schools are certainly guilty of creating the shameful 40% unemployment rate for black teens.

How about marching against the cable television shows constantly offering minstrel-show images of black youth as rappers and comedians who don't value education, dismiss the importance of marriage, and celebrate killing people, drug money and jailhouse fashion—the pants falling down because the jail guard has taken away the belt, the shoes untied because the warden removed the shoe laces, and accessories such as the drug dealer's pit bull....." blah blah blah.

Welcome to the party, Juan. Thanks for inviting your racist friends from FOX NATION to join us . Sadly, you won't get any solutions from them. Just the same old racist crap. Of course you will be pleased to know that you are not like those other Negroes, you ask the tough questions. You are courageous, Juan. You stand up to your own people. You are not afraid to call them out. *throwing up again*

Anyway, what folks like Juan Williams and other racist apologist in A-merry-ca fail to understand, is that this case isn't just about the shooting of a young black man by some out of control vigilante. It's about a system of justice-- and those charged with upholding it--- that does not treat the lives of young black men the same way that they treat others. Most intelligent people in this country (black and white) realize that if Trayvon Martin and the shooter reversed races, George Zimmerman would be eating three meals on the County right now.  

Juan has to understand that this isn't about Civil Rights Inc. rallying around yet another bad whitey cause. This is about other young black men seeing how their lives aren't valued by society as a whole, and then thinking nothing of taking the life of someone who looks like they do. They know where they are in the "pecking order", and when they take the life of someone down at the bottom of the food chain with them they know that it's not that big of a deal. Three lines in the local paper and no mention on the evening news; that's it.

"Supposedly all of this is just entertainment and intended to co-opt the stereotypes. But it only ends up perpetuating stereotypes in white minds and, worse, having young black people internalize it as an authentic image of a proud black person."

I get it , Juan. You have to be very careful about how you are perceived by white folks. *looking for a nice jigging tune*  But the people in authority in A-merry-ca should also be concerned about how they are perceived by all A-merry-cans.
Right now the police department in Sanford, Florida is in the spotlight because they are not looking very good to the rest of us.  And when some of us see what was done in the Trayvon Martin case, we know exactly what kind of signals it is sending: Young black man your life isn't worth a damn thing. And whether you are wearing a Hickey Freeman suit or a hoodie and baggy pants, it doesn't make a damn bit of difference.       


Pic courtesy of Brotherpeacemaker blog.