Western New England University panel discusses racial profiling in wake of Trayvon Martin shooting

More than a year ago, before most people had ever heard of Trayvon Martin, Miniard Culpepper didn’t want his son going around with the hood of his sweatshirt pulled up over his head.

“I told him that people need to be able to see who you are,” Culpepper, regional counsel for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Affairs, said Friday during a panel discussion of racial profiling conducted during the 2012 Fair Housing and Civil Rights Conference at Western New England University.

Culpepper, who is also an ordained minister and part-time pastor of Pleasant Hill Baptist Church in Dorchester, said young black males have to make their way in a society where they are often unfairly perceived as a threat. Gang members sometimes wear hoodie sweatshirts to disguise their identities, Culpepper said.

The Massachusetts Fair Housing Center in Holyoke and HAP Housing in Springfield have been organizing the annual Fair Housing and Civil Rights Conference for six years. HAP housing is a nonprofit that facilitates access to housing and home ownership. This year’s even drew 270 people Friday.

Meris L. Bergquist, executive director of the Massachusetts Fair Housing Center, said organizers put together a panel on racial profiling in response to the Trayvon Martin case because the case prompts questions of who is perceived to belong, or not belong, in a neighborhood.

Culpepper said the same level of outrage engendered by the Martin case should well up in cases of black-on-black violence. “It doesn’t matter who takes the lives of our young black males,” Culpepper said. “It’s a life that’s gone . Enough is enough.”

“the same level of outrage engendered by the Martin case should well up in cases of black-on-black violence. ‘It doesn’t matter who takes the lives of our young black males,’ Culpepper said. ‘It’s a life that’s gone . Enough is enough.’”

While agree with the sentiment, I should point out that I’m all for black people killing black people if it’s in self-defense.

This racial profiling thing is a red herring, by the way. If you don’t want to be followed for wearing a hood, I’m with you. I don’t like to be followed, either. But if you don’t want to be shot as well, here’s a novel idea: don’t assault the person who’s following you (which is what I assume happened, according to the evidence I’ve seen).

Nearly all armed robberies caught on camera involve someone wearing a hooded sweatjacket or mask.

They are now trying to PC “children born out of wedlock” hiding under hoods or masks so that any sort of proactive defense, which is common sense, is RACIST.

This death by a thousand cuts is getting boring. Let us all just get it over with. Tell white people which disintegration chamber they’d like us to show up at.

Trayvon Martin sounds like a basically ok kid who was going bad, but that’s neither here nor there. He had the hoodie (and the gold grille) and whether he was a good kid or not, people looked at that and identified him as potentially bad. And I’m sure other blacks did, too.

My son (I’m white) bought a “FU copper” car and took to wearing a motorcycle jacket and a style that made him look like he might be trouble. Then he bought a bike. This was back in CA in the early 80s, when biker gangs were a big problem. However, he certainly was no problem, had a job, was home every night at the right time, had a nice girlfreind, was in school, etc. (and then joined the Navy and did two hitches, leaving when it became apparent that Clinton was out to PC it all).

So the long and short of it is that one evening when he was zipping along the freeway to see his girlfriend, the cops pulled him over, the SWAT team came out, and he was face down in the dirt with guns pointed at his head. Why? Because he was wearing the same type of clothing as some young white guy who had just stuck up a convenience store.

They released him when they checked him out, and in addition, the bad guy spun out and was caught about the same time.

He was upset, but I told him that he may have liked the “dangerous” image but he wasn’t going to like what this brought him. Black parents should tell their kids the same thing.

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