oww oyinbo defend racism?

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The Thirteenth Amendment

Passed by Congress January 31, 1865. Ratified December 6, 1865.

Section 1.

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.


da criminalization aff blakks fe defend oyinbo supremacee


wat oonnoo tink bout dat?

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8 Disappointing Responses From America After The Michael Brown Killing That Should Never Happen Again








Blame the Victim

A recurring pattern in media coverage of police brutality cases is to focus on the how the victim’s past, mode of dress, choice of music, friendships, behavior when confronted, etc., somehow legitimized the officer’s response.

The Black community is all too familiar with the racially coded victim-blaming rhetoric, headlines and sound bytes:

“Unarmed Black Man Shot in Area Known for Drug Activity”

” …had several run-ins with the law”

“…known gang-member”

“… moved toward the officer’s weapon”

Many media reports have a similar template: Teenager Trayvon Martin, gunned down in a Florida street in 2012, was wearing a “hoodie,” had been suspended from school, and pummeled his killer George Zimmerman as he went for Zimmerman’s gun.

Reports this month say that Michael Brown, 18, who was fatally shot six times on Aug. 9, by Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson, was a violent thief. And yep, Brown also went for Wilson’s gun.

The character assassination of the victims, who oftentimes are young, unarmed Black men, raises the same old persistent racial stereotypes and is used to drive home the inevitable conclusion that the police victim ”got what he deserved.”

What’s scary is this strategy usually works.

Fairfield University history professor Yohuru Williams says, “Ferguson police were successful in shifting the discourse from an unarmed teen to a strong-arm thug killed by police.”

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Respond to Outrage by Painting Cop as Hero

The flip side to blaming the Black victim is painting the white cop as a hero. These two actions work in tandem on the American psyche. Just as intrenched racism inflates the threat posed by young Black young males, the public is primed by images from movies and TV of the brave heroic cop who puts his life on the line in the name of justice.

Sunil Dutta, an adjunct instructor at Colorado Technical University and police officer with the Los Angeles Police Department, discusses his version of this narrative in a Washington Post Op-ed titled, “I’m a Cop. If You Don’t Want to Get Hurt, Don’t Challenge Me.”

Dutta writes, ”Officers are rarely at fault. When they use force, they are defending their, or the public’s, safety.”

“Here is the bottom line,” he continues, “if you don’t want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you. Don’t argue with me, don’t call me names, don’t tell me that I can’t stop you, don’t say I’m a racist pig, don’t threaten that you’ll sue me and take away my badge.

“Don’t scream at me that you pay my salary, and don’t even think of aggressively walking toward me. Most field stops are complete in minutes. How difficult is it to cooperate for that long?”

What is so outrageous about Dutta’s viewpoint is that it implies that Brown and other victims of police brutality had to have wronged the offending officers in some way. They must have, because cops are so impeccably trained, would never stray from protocol and most certainly would not murder people, according to Dutta.

However, this view is contradicted by the video released last month of the Staten Island police officer using the prohibited chokehold maneuver that lead to the death of 44-year-old Eric Garner.

Garner, an asthmatic, was pinned to the ground – not arguing, screaming or threatening – just pleading to be allowed to breathe.

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Remove Offending Officer (Paid Administrative Leave)

Police officers are routinely placed on administrative leave after a shooting incident, while an investigation is conducted.

While there are many reasons why it makes sense to do this, the offending officer can take advantage of this time to get his story straight before facing the public.

Wannabe cop Zimmerman went into hiding after he was released on bail before his trial.

After Brown’s shooting, the officer was not only put on administrative leave but his name was withheld from the public for six days after the incident, a move that further outraged the community.

Then Ferguson police released simultaneously the officer’s name and security-camera footage of a strong-arm robbery, allegedly involving Brown, even though they admitted the two incidents were unrelated.

Brown had no prior criminal record.

Marc H. Morial, president of the civil rights group, National Urban League, said, “Ferguson police withheld naming the officer until such time as they could develop a counter-narrative – that [Brown] was involved in a shoving match that they defined as robbery.”

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Discredit Witnesses

Dorin Johnson, the friend of Michael Brown, has been extremely consistent in detailing the encounter that he and Brown had with Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson on Aug. 9.

Critics have denounced the release of a videotape of Brown allegedly engaging in a robbery just minutes before he was shot dead by Wilson as unfair, irrelevant, and even racist. But this evidence will be used to discredit Johnson, the closest eye-witness in the case.

The Ferguson police have yet to interview Johnson, but they have reportedly claim to have several witnesses with different versions of the events that will neutralize his testimony.

Wilson has already claimed that Brown attacked him and tried to take his gun – a version unlikely to be believed if Brown is seen as an innocent teenager walking down the street.

Two of Wilson’s friends have come forth to corroborate his version of the story, but neither actually witnessed the shooting. Both advanced the scenario that Wilson, the man with the gun, was the quiet, nonviolent good guy, and it was Brown who was supposedly the big, scary, “drug-filled” teen attacker on that fateful afternoon.

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Slow Down the Process With ‘Internal Investigations’

Dr. Maruice Mangum, associate professor at Texas Southern University predicted in an Aug. 13, Atlanta Blackstar story, that the Ferguson Police Department will collect all the evidence from the incident and monopolize it. It will take court orders for them to share the evidence. Then, they will create a narrative that conforms to that evidence and “analyze that narrative six ways to Sunday to ensure that it is airtight.”

Wilson has been put on administrative leave, pending an internal investigation, but what should we expect from these self-policing efforts?

“Cops don’t tell on cops,” explained New York police officer Bernard Cawley in his 1993 testimony before the Mollen Commission, which investigated various cases involving police corruption. “And if they did tell on them, just say, if a cop decided to tell on me, his career’s ruined. He’s going to be labeled as a rat. So if he’s got 15 more years to go on the job, he’s going to be miserable because it follows you wherever you go.”

This famous “Blue Wall of Silence” makes it very hard to investigate and prosecute cases of police misconduct. It may even encourage misconduct.

Officers in the New York City Police Department’s 70th precinct did not protest when they saw Abner Louima being marched around the station house with his pants down to his ankles. Louima, from Haiti, was assaulted and sexually brutalized by NYC officers in the station house in 1997.

What’s even more troubling is that Internal Affairs, the section responsible for policing the police, seems to also abide by the “Blue Wall of Silence.”

In 2013, an eight-month Texas Observer investigation found that during the six years prior, Houston civilians reported officers for brutality 588 times. The Internal Affairs division investigated each complaint and dismissed all but four.

Apparently even when a Houston police officer decided to break the “Blue Wall,” his voice fell on deaf ears. The Observer reported that in the same period, Houston cops reported other officers for excessive force 118 times. Internal Affairs dismissed all but 11.

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Sensationalize/Discredit Parents’ Grief and Community Protest

Despite the overwhelming evidence of racial inequality in the U.S. criminal justice system, there are many Americans who feel the frustration expressed by people in the Black community, particularly the people of Ferguson, is unwarranted. Some even deny there is a problem at all.

Using misconstrued numbers from a limited study, Fox News host, Bill O’Reilly argued in a recent episode of his show that FBI statistics from 2012 refutes charges that police unfairly target the Black community.

“This is an infinitesimal situation,” O’Reilly said. “It doesn’t happen, and those people who run into Ferguson or any other city and say that the police are hunting down young Black men are lying. And they’re grossly insulting law enforcement across the country. Because this stat shows it all.”

The need to dismiss the plight of the people in Ferguson by depicting mostly peaceful protesters as menacing, greedy goons prompted National Review editor Rich Lowry to write a column, titled “Overly Aggressive Police Are Being Provoked.”

“We are supposed to believe that the rioters were so deeply hurt by the Brown shooting that they felt compelled to go steal and destroy innocent people’s property and, judging by video of the looting, apparently have a grand time doing it,” Lowry wrote.

To add insult to injury, Columbia Daily Tribune featured the syndicated cartoon (shown above) by conservative illustrator Gary McCoy. With all eyes on Ferguson, the backlash forced managing editor Jim Robertson to send out letters in response to complaints.

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Raise Funds For Shooter

Just as George Zimmerman was able to attract over $200,000 in support after he shot to death unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin, an online fund has been created to raise money for the Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson, who killed Michael Brown.

The GoFundMe.com account for Wilson reached $156,276 in just three days, according to the website. About 3,900 people donated the funds, which outpaced a similar account for Brown’s family, which has raised $133,783 in eight days from more than 4,900 people, also on GoFundMe.com.

The comments left by Wilson’s donors speak for themselves:

“Ofc. Wilson did his duty. Michael Brown was just a common street thug.”

“Waste of good ammo. It’s my privilege to buy you a replacement box.”

“Black people can be their own enemy and I am not white…He was shot 6 times cause the giant wouldn’t stop or die. Evil people don’t die quick.”

“All self-respecting whites have a moral responsibility to support our growing number of martyrs to the failed experiment called diversity.”

“I am so sick of the blacks using every excuse in the book to loot and riot.”

“I support officer Wilson and he did a great job removing an unnecessary thing from the public!”

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Seat All-White or Nearly All-White Jury

The Sixth Amendment right to a trial by an impartial jury is the bedrock of the United State’s criminal justice system. However, the low percentage of Black people in the U.S. population, less than 13 percent, and in some cases, their historic systematic exclusion from juries, means that Black defendants routinely face all-white juries in many states and counties.

The Supreme Court has ruled that an all-white jury was not in itself proof that a defendant’s rights had been violated, yet research has shown that the promise of impartiality is called into question when defendants face juries that include few, if any, members of their race.

This is because as several studies have shown there are major discrepancies between how whites and Blacks view the justice system, and therefore the facts in the case. A 2012 Carnegie Mellon study found that many whites (about 60 percent) believed that Black Americans deserve to be imprisoned more frequently and they often based their explanations of racial discrepancies in the prisons on racial stereotypes: Blacks, they believe, are more inclined to commit crimes or just less likely to respect authority.

The grand jury for the Michael Brown case consists of six white men, three white women, two Black women and one Black man. Nine votes are needed to indict. It will remain to be seen if the verdict on whether to indict Wilson falls along racial lines.