Race Baiters Gather in North Charleston

I have never really liked Jessie Jackson at all, period. I haven’t cared for Al Sharpton since the Twana Bates fiasco in New York years ago. They are extremist that cannot report on a story without it sounding like “oh poor me”. On the other hand, anyone who thinks that racism is not alive and well in this country is deluding themselves, and I don’t mean racism in the sense of someone not wanting to be around a certain group because of their race. I mean racism in action where people get hurting, injured, and even killed. It isn’t as open and out front as it once was, but it is there and it continues to fester like a pot of boiling oil just waiting to overflow. While it is more apparent in the conservative groups do not be fooled because there are racism hiding among those who claim, “I am not a racist.” If you listen long enough and pay attention to people you can hear and see the boiling just below the surface. Every once in a while it pops up. This is true for the whites, blacks, Hispanics, and other races and ethnic groups. What will happen in the future, who knows? We have historical references to look back on that tells us that if people get too much oppression they will eventually rise up in some form. If ones goes back in history they will find that most so called great societies have followed a similar pattern to ours. They start out with an ideal system where every person has some hope of living a decent life. As time goes on there becomes a stark separation between the haves and have nots to the point where only a few hold the money and power. They use their military and police powers to keep the underclass in check and under control. They usually find a way to create competitions between various factions of the under class peoples which breeds hostility and hatred. Then at some point the people get tired of struggling just to line the pockets of the rich and powerful and those great societies begin to slowly crumble from the inside out. America has already started this process and it may be irreversible. The political far right has managed to dupe a sufficient number of people to keep the government virtually powerless. A number of state governments are being run by the same methods and the poorer people are going without. America is no longer the power player it once was and its influence in the world is waning. Will history tell our future citizens how we too became a great society of the past and have since fallen? Don’t laugh, it could really happen.

I really do not the Reverend Al nor do care Jesse Jackson. Not because they bring the issue of race up and try to keep it in the forefront of the conversation of this country but because of how they do it. Whether the publisher of this Blog wishes to acknowledge that racism exists in the justice system today or not, it it does exist. Were it not for the luck that the young man happened to be there to video the shooting of the man in South Carolina by the police officer it is reasonable to assume that the officer would have walked away unscathed. According the various news reports he called the shooting in as a self defense shooting and that the victim had taken his Taser from him. His police report had the same statements on it and that he was in fear for his life. This is the reason that the video shows the officer shows the officer jogging back to where his Taser was and bring it back to where the victims body was and throwing it to the ground beside his lifeless, handcuffed body. In other words, staging the scene to fit the facts.
Yes, according to reports he and the victim had struggled before and the officer had Tased Mr. Scott and Mr. Scott ran. Many people do struggle with police and many people run from police but that does not make it open season on them. The differential treat of the way case are reported here does bother me a bit. A persons life is a persons life. No one expects an officer to truly give his/her life in pursuit of their job. At the same time, police need to measure the weight of taking someone’s life against the importance of stopping whatever action it is that they are doing. Officers must understand that they have been entrusted with an enormous amount of authority in order to meet their responsibilities. At the same time they must accept accountability for their misuse of that authority. It is up to the police to show that they are honest enough and care enough about their constituency uphold the law even when their own are the violators.