Free Republic

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...

I know, I know, I’m the guy that just keeps pointing out obvious truths but never offers any real solutions. Bear with me anyway. My freshman year, I took a classical fencing class through Cornell P.E. with Maître d’Armes Adam Crown. He said some very interesting things to us before he left. For example: 1.When it is not time to act, it is time not to act. 2.If you can call Obama a black president, you can also call him a white president. 3.America is exhibiting signs of becoming a fascist country. 4.In vino veritas (translation: “In wine there is...

BETHLEHEM, Pa. - The mother of slain teen Trayvon Martin will be part of a discussion at Lehigh University Tuesday. As part of the University's MLK Committee, a "Rap Sessions' event discussion will be offered at 7 p.m. in Baker Hall. The panel will feature Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin, and will be moderated by hip hop artist and activist Jasari X. Martin was a 17-year-old African-American high school student was fatally shot by a neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman in February 2012 in a Sanford, Florida, neighborhood. Zimmerman was acquitted of the crime in July 2013. Other...

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...

(93-PHOTOS-AT-LINK) Evidence photos released by the Fourth Circuit Court State Attorney's Office and the lawyers for George Zimmerman in the shooting death of teen Trayvon Martin. Sanford resident Zimmerman has been charged with second-degree murder...

FERGUSON, Missouri— It has been a month and a day since Michael Brown was shot and killed, his body left for hours in the street like strange, fallen fruit for his loved ones and neighbors to wail over. Protests, riots and violent clashes with the police have slowly cooled in the St. Louis suburb, but Brown’s family continues to languish under the weight of an uncertain investigation and the burden of mourning the death of their 18-year-old son – both privately and publicly. “Each day it seems to get worse for them,” Anthony Gray, a family attorney, told msnbc. “Because...

Talking Points Memo, 8/27/14: Conservative pundit Ben Stein appeared on Newsmax on Tuesday to discuss the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and challenged the use of the term "unarmed" to describe Brown. Stein was discussing the shooting with host Steve Malzberg and said the use of the term "unarmed" to describe Brown, who was "apparently on marijuana," was akin to "calling Sonny Liston unarmed or Cassius Clay unarmed." "He wasn't unarmed," Stein said. "He was armed with his incredibly strong, scary self. Stein mentioned both Michael Brown, the unarmed teen killed by a white police officer...

Jasmine Rand, the attorney for Trayvon Martin’s family in the State of Florida v. George Zimmerman trial, spoke at Lehigh on Thursday in a lecture called “Sexualizing Race, Gendering Sex.” Trayvon Martin was a young African-American man walking home from a 7-Eleven in Sanford, Fla., late at night while wearing a hoodie and holding a package of Skittles. George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch coordinator for Martin’s gated community, shot him for “looking suspicious.” Throughout the trial that followed the incident, the phrase “I am Trayvon Martin” was used to generate support for the victim. “That phrase, it was born on...

In an effort to combat police brutality in the Black community, the National Bar Association recently announced plans to file open records requests in 25 cities to study allegations of police misconduct. Pamela Meanes, president of the Black lawyers and judges group, said that the Association was already making plans for a nationwide campaign to fight police brutality when Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager was shot and killed by Darren Wilson, a White police officer following a controversial midday confrontation in a Ferguson, Mo. Meanes called police brutality the new civil rights issue of this era, an issue that...

We’ve now moved to a new stage of the racist reaction to the police killing of Michael Brown: the largely overt assertion that he deserved to be killed. In the immediate aftermath of Brown, though unarmed, being shot “multiple times” after being stopped while walking in the middle of the street, the “ballad” being played in some quarters went like this: we don’t know all the facts so we shouldn’t rush to judgment. But, once the Ferguson police released the video of Michael Brown purportedly snatching a box of cigars from the convenience store and intimidating its clerk, that advice...

By almost any standard, President Obama defies easy classification. He embodies the temperament and often the deliberative air of an ivory tower intellectual, and yet he clearly thrives amid the muddy fray of electoral politics. He, like many of the youth of Ferguson, Missouri, grew up without his father present. And yet his life experience could not be more distant than that of the typical inner-city teenager growing up in a single-parent household. Given his obviously otherworldly powers of persuasion, it is rare that one comes face to face with the stark reality that Mr. Obama does not know what...

This week’s Black Twitter brouhaha was over a new University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation study of Black Twitter itself. Like the world, the Internet has self-segregated into different communities, subcultures or as USC calls them, digital “neighborhoods.” And one of the largest — and some say one of the most powerful — of the social networking subcultures is Black Twitter. “Black Twitter is, loosely speaking, a group of thousands of Back Twitterers (though, to be accurate, not everyone within Black Twitter is Black, and not every Black person on Twitter is in Black Twitter) who a) are interested in...

You walk down the street, your whole life ahead of you, until a police car comes up behind you. Some will claim that you continued walking, others that you attempted to draw a gun. Either way, your life ends when that officer shoots you to death. For those of you who don’t know, Mike Brown, an African-American teenager from Ferguson, Missouri, died at the hands of a local police officer on Aug. 9. Unfortunately, racially charged incidents like this can and do happen even in Greensboro. “A Vietnamese woman (was) shot here,” said Director of the Bonner Center for Community...

…I'm tired of bein' poor and even worse I'm black. My stomach hurts, so I'm lookin' for a purse to snatch. Cops give a damn about a negro? Pull the trigger, kill a nigga, he's a hero. Give the crack to the kids who the hell cares? One less hungry mouth on the welfare… Changes – 2Pac It's been almost 20 years since 2Pac, arguably the greatest rapper in history along with Notorious BIG, sang about the difficulties of being born black in America, and at the same time about the racism of American society. Twenty years in which nothing...

Hip hop artist and activist Jasiri X (right) speaks during a town hall discussion on Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Mo., and police brutality as Ron Hampton, former executive director of the National Black Police Association looks on.WASHINGTON (NNPA) – During a rousing, standing-room only town hall discussion dedicated to the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and police killings of young, Black men across the nation, Ron Daniels, declared, “a state of emergency in Black America.” Daniels, president of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century (IBW), a group devoted to the social, political and economic...

Two years ago, the media reported that Trayvon Martin, a young, unarmed black man, had been gunned down by a white assailant named George Zimmerman, and racism was the reason. But then the facts started to dribble out, and many of the assumptions that drove the initial outrage turned out to be inaccurate. The Martin shooting wasn’t the first time the media has gotten it wrong. Many may not remember the case of Richard Jewell, the security guard who alerted police about pipe bombs left in a park during the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. He was wrongfully charged with the...

It's the time of year when hundreds of thousands of American parents are shipping their children off to college for the first time. For most, it's a time of celebration. But for the black parents of college-bound sons, the rite of passage has long come with a quiet, unique sense of dread. These parents grapple with a scary open secret: Young black males -- more than any other demographic group -- are haunted by cultural stereotypes that foster fear, discrimination and police harassment. Sending sons away to other parts of the country greatly magnifies those fears, particularly in the wake...

Attorney General Eric Holder said Thursday that the federal civil rights investigation into the 2012 killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin remains active, noting “recent developments” in the case. The Justice Department is weighing charges against George Zimmerman, a volunteer neighborhood watchman who shot and killed Martin in an incident that captured national interest. Zimmerman was acquitted of murder charges more than a year ago, but the Justice Department is still running down leads as part of its civil rights probe, Holder said. “That matter is ongoing,” said Holder, who was asked about the case during a news conference announcing the...