Free Republic

Referencing the events in Ferguson, Missouri, US Attorney General Eric Holder called for more racial balance in the people police shoot. “What we had in Ferguson was a white officer shooting a Black teenager,” Holder recounted. “When we look at over all statistics, white officers shooting African-Americans is disproportional to their representation in the population. This establishes a prima facie case that racism is playing a role in the use of deadly force.” “We need to ask some hard questions,” Holder contended. “Why isn’t there a more proportionately balanced representation of America’s population when it comes to police shootings? Why...

Race has been in the news recently, as it should be more than it is. First the tragedy in Ferguson, Missouri captured everyone’s attention, and is still making news. Then a starkly racist email sent by Atlanta Hawks co-owner Bruce Levenson brought back the topic of race relations in the NBA where the owners are mostly white and the players black. And then this week psychologist Jennifer L. Eberhardt won a MacArthur “genius” award for her groundbreaking work on the powerful influence out-of-awareness racial attitudes have in the criminal justice system. Because her research can help us understand troubling news...

DETROIT – In a recent Detroit Free Press op-ed, University of California-Berkeley Professor Robert Reich places the blame for the city of Detroit’s bankruptcy on the “mostly white” residents of Oakland County. Detroit-in-ruins-15“But Detroit is really a model for how wealthier and whiter Americans escape the costs of public goods they would otherwise share with poorer and darker Americans,” Reich wrote. “ … But one thing is for certain: A very large and prosperous group close by won’t sacrifice a cent — the mostly white citizens of neighboring Oakland County.” The reaction of one Oakland County official was that Reich,...

Our famously gaffe-prone vice president, Joe Biden, has outdone himself. He stumbled through not one, not two, but three gaffes in less than 24 hours. For him, that's a personal best or, more accurately, a personal worst.. Yet if it is better to be criticized than ignored in politics, he can take little comfort from the way that hardly anyone outside of the Republican National Committee, whose website called it "Gaffetastic," seemed to care.

A raucous crowd disrupted speakers, threatened violence and accused police of murder Tuesday night as the fallout from the police shooting in Ferguson, Mo., reignited. And anyone who disagreed with the mob needed a police escort to get out. That was the scene of “democracy” as protesters apparently conceive it during a meeting of the St. Louis County Council in Clayton, Mo., as a meeting called to conduct local government descended into two hours of near chaos and mob rule, according to an account by the St. Louis Post Dispatch. The mob was on hand, of course, to “protest” the...

America is pushing forward in a post-racial society, blind to skin color. That's the conventional wisdom. But the research of Jennifer Eberhardt, the Bay Area's newest and only recipient of the famed MacArthur fellowship, the "genius grants," has proved otherwise. She has found that skin color prejudices the perceptions of jurors, police officers and even the ordinary student who volunteers in research at Stanford University. Black people, especially those with very dark skin and kinky hair, are more likely to be linked to crime, handed stiffer punishments or even sentenced to death than lighter-appearing individuals, according to her research. Eberhardt...

In the weeks and months after Trayvon Martin was killed, his mother saw 50 different photos painting him as a thug.. It was as if portraying the slain 17-year-old as something he wasn't — a muscle-bound, tattooed rapper, or a young man wearing his pants low and flipping middle fingers with each hand — somehow justified his death, Sybrina Fulton said. "At first, I thought I was at fault myself. I thought maybe it was the hoodie," she said. But Fulton said she soon came to realize that even in 2012, she didn't have to look to her son's sweatshirt...

A little over a year ago the debate was fierce over whether Florida state prosecutor Angela “Tough on Crime” Corey assigned to prosecute George Zimmerman for killing Trayvon Martin would dump the case. There was good reason for the debate. Zimmerman was not a police officer. But he was seen as the next best or worst thing to it since he had close ties with law enforcement and was a one-time neighborhood watch patrol officer. This automatically bestowed on him the shield that cops have from any charges of misconduct, especially in cases where the victims of their misconduct are...

LAPD officer defends handcuffing, detaining actress Daniele Watts amid controversy The officer, Sgt. Jim Parker, said he didn’t expect the situation to escalate as quickly into a ‘long, drawn out drama.’ BY CHIDERAH MONDE he police officer heard on tape demanding Daniele Watts' identification after she was detained in Studio City last week with her boyfriend says there was nothing racial about the incident. Los Angeles Police Department Sergeant Jim Parker told the L.A. Times on Tuesday that the "long, drawn out drama" with the actress could have been over within minutes, but instead it escalated quickly. "I figured I...

"Django Unchained" actress Daniele Watts cried out as a victim of racism this week after she was caught having sex in public. The usual Liberal media bought her story attacking the police as racists. Daniele Watts claimed she had been profiled (by police) for "kissing" her white boyfriend.THERE'S ONLY ONE PROBLEM... The facts of Daniele Watts' story don't add up.The police didn't approach Daniele because she was "kissing" her boyfriend. The police were responding to multiple complaints from locals that Daniele was having lewd sex in broad daylight for everyone to see in a car — with the car door...

If your life came to a tragic end, how would you want the news to tell your story? This is a question news organizations must constantly ponder when covering victims of gun violence. Following the Aug. 9 death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old male shot in Ferguson, Missouri, news outlets such as USA Today pulled photos from Brown’s Facebook page, showing him displaying what can be interpreted as a gang sign. As a result of the media coverage of Brown’s death, social media users have flocked to Twitter and Tumblr announcing their outrage using the hashtag #IfTheyGunnedMeDown to...

Make sure you watch both videos! See how the two videos give two different stories. Someone call Al Sharpton quickly before he gets the pitchforks out. With the nation a racial tinderbox in the wake of 18-year-old Michael Brown’s shooting death by a white police officer, a California firefighter threw out what could have been an incendiary spark by accusing a cop of treating him differently because he’s black. Little did Oakland firefighter Keith Jones know that the officer was wearing a body-cam video recorder when their tense encounter unfolded. And the video didn’t quite match the complaint Jones filed...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)During a Q&A with CSPAN, Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) discussed comments he has made many time in in the past claiming the Tea Party is motivated by racism because they are the old Dixiecrats from mainly Southern states Rangel said he was told not to talk about race anymore saying, "So people said please don't bring up that race thing anymore."(continued)

A Django Unchained actress is claiming she was 'handcuffed and detained' by police after being mistaken for a prostitute as she kissed her white husband. Daniele Watts, who played slave CoCo in the award-winning film, posted the news on her Facebook page on 2 September and said her arm was cut when she was handcuffed. Watts and her husband Brian James Lucas claim that they were kissing on a Hollywood street when police were called and they were asked to show their ID card to which Watts refused.

White man shoots and kills black man. Predominantly black population protests, riots, loots. Predominantly white police force overwhelmed. Governor calls out the National Guard. Curfew imposed. Similar events took place in Newark and Detroit in the summer of 1967. President Johnson responded by dispatching what would become known as the Kerner Commission to find the causes and propose a solution. The commission’s basic conclusion was “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal.” Among its findings, the commission reported action against “local symbols of white American society, authority and property.” No single triggering...

At first glance, this story doesn’t look like the sort of thing which would normally catch our attention, but it really does tie in to broader issues currently under discussion nationally in terms of race relations and how the police interact with those they serve and protect. Out on the left coast, quite close to the liberal Ground Zero of Hollywood, actress Daniele Watts ran into some trouble this week. (You may remember Watts from her appearance in Django Unchained among other roles.) As Reason tells the tale, she was outdoors, hanging out with her husband and talking on the...

It was not hard for me to make the connection between the tragedy in Ferguson, Missouri, and the catalyst for my work to stop the climate crisis. It was all over the news in August: images of police pointing military-grade weapons at unarmed black people with their hands in the air. These scenes made my heart race in an all-too-familiar way. I was devastated for Michael Brown, his family and the people of Ferguson. Almost immediately, I closed my eyes and felt the fear I have for my own family. In the wake of the climate disaster that was Hurricane...

The perpetual siren call of victimhood. Oh, how alluring, how comforting, how most pleasing is the mantle of victimhood. So pleasing, in fact, that even when the claim to victim status is tenuous at best, some people cannot restrain themselves from rushing before the news cameras to inform the world of how they have been mistreated. Pátio ergo sum. I suffer, therefore I am. Witness the case of Keith Jones, a firefighter in Oakland, Calif., who recently had a brief but mildly tense encounter with an officer from that city’s police department. Jones, 43, was leaving an Oakland Raiders football...

A race-baiting councilwoman in New York stormed out of a public meeting last week after a police sergeant called her out for trying to foment a riot. “You can’t talk about public safety and assist in public unrest,” said Troy, N.Y., police Sgt. Thomas Hoffman, who took the microphone Thursday at a Troy City Council meeting to describe Councilwoman Anastasia Robertson’s actions. According to Hoffman, the incident occurred when two white police officers patrolling a largely black neighborhood investigated a romantic dispute between two women, one white, one black. The white woman left the scene, Hoffman said, so the officers...

This letter sent to the Saint Louis Dispatch by Benjamin Crump clearly showcases the growing sense of desperation. As with almost all things from the mind of the Crump it will also backfire. Benjamin Crump should leave the thinking parts to his sidekick Daryl Parks. First the Letter:Benjamin Crump is not the sharpest tack in the tool shed. You see, in the mind of the Crump the judge blocking the release of the Juvenile criminal records of Mike Brown equates to the non-existence of the records; ergo in Crump’s mind there is no risk of criminal conduct being exposed. BIG...