“There is no defense, no ratio­nal­iza­tion, no suit­able expla­na­tion for what my father said on that taped phone con­ver­sa­tion,” Patti Davis wrote in The Washington Post. 

The daugh­ter of for­mer President Ronald Reagan pub­lished an op-ed in The Washington Post on Thursday con­demn­ing her late father’s recent­ly uncov­ered racist remarks and ask­ing the pub­lic to for­give him. “There is no defense, no ratio­nal­iza­tion, no suit­able expla­na­tion for what my father said on that taped phone con­ver­sa­tion,” Patti Davis wrote about the new­ly released record­ing pub­lished Tuesday by The Atlantic.

The National Archives recent­ly released audio of a pri­vate phone call from 1971 between Reagan, then the Republican gov­er­nor of California, and then-President Richard Nixon. Reagan called United Nations del­e­gates from African coun­tries “mon­keys” in the record­ing, report­ed­ly refer­ring to Tanzanian del­e­gates danc­ing after the U.N. vot­ed to rec­og­nize the People’s Republic of China, which Reagan opposed.

“To see those, those mon­keys from those African coun­tries,” he told Nixon in the audio. “Damn them, they’re still uncom­fort­able wear­ing shoes.” Davis, who has crit­i­cized the Republican Party under the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, wrote Thursday about moments in her child­hood when she said her father pushed back against instances of racism and big­otry, claim­ing that he always taught his fam­i­ly to call out tox­ic beliefs. “But the words he used in his con­ver­sa­tion with Nixon can­not be inter­pret­ed as any­thing but ugli­ness. That’s what makes this so painful,” she wrote. “Legacies are com­pli­cat­ed, though, and for peo­ple to be judged fair­ly, the land­scape of a life­time has to be looked at.”

Though Davis said Reagan’s racist com­ment was an “aber­ra­tion,” the for­mer pres­i­dent, who died in 2004, has been crit­i­cized before for poli­cies and promis­es root­ed in racism. During his guber­na­to­r­i­al cam­paign in 1966, Reagan said, “If an indi­vid­ual wants to dis­crim­i­nate against Negroes or oth­ers in sell­ing or rent­ing his house, it is his right to do so.” Reagan is also cred­it­ed with pro­mot­ing the “wel­fare queen” stereo­type, which paints black women as peo­ple who abuse tax­pay­er mon­ey for lazy lifestyles.

Legislation that dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly hurt mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties also laid the ground­work for Reagan’s “War on Drugs.” The for­mer pres­i­dent also blocked an anti-apartheid bill to impose sanc­tions on South Africa; the House vot­ed to over­ride his veto. Still, Davis wrote that while she tries to for­give her father for his racist remarks, her hope is that “oth­ers will for­give my father for words that should nev­er have been uttered in any conversation.”

By Sarah Mervosh and Niraj Chokshi

A new­ly released record­ing of a con­ver­sa­tion from 1971 was the lat­est reminder of the long his­to­ry of racism by American presidents. 

Ronald Reagan was the gov­er­nor of California in 1971 when he phoned the White House to vent his polit­i­cal frus­tra­tion to President Richard M. Nixon and, accord­ing to a new­ly released audio record­ing, called African peo­ple “mon­keys” in a slur that sparked laugh­ter from the pres­i­dent of the United States. The pre­vi­ous­ly undis­closed exchange took place after the United Nations vot­ed to expel Taiwan in order to seat rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Beijing, a move that the United States opposed. Delegates from Tanzania cel­e­brat­ed with a vic­to­ry dance in the General Assembly hall. “To see those mon­keys from those African coun­tries, damn them,” Reagan said, to laugh­ter from Nixon. “They are still uncom­fort­able wear­ing shoes.” In oth­er record­ings, Nixon went on to recount his con­ver­sa­tion with Reagan to oth­ers, describ­ing the African del­e­gates as “can­ni­bals” as he sought to blame them for the United Nations vote.

“Reagan opens the door and Nixon runs with the racist tropes,” said Timothy Naftali, the for­mer direc­tor of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum who request­ed the record­ing and wrote the arti­cle in The Atlantic. “This is not just a sto­ry about Reagan’s racism,” he said in an inter­view. “It’s also a reminder about how in the Oval Office, racism can beget racism” and “reveal latent racism in oth­ers.” The National Archives orig­i­nal­ly with­held part of the record­ing to pro­tect Reagan’s pri­va­cy, said Mr. Naftali, who request­ed a full ver­sion last year. He said the tim­ing of the release this month was a coin­ci­dence that offered impor­tant his­tor­i­cal con­text. con­tin­ue read­ing the sto­ry here:
https://​www​.nytimes​.com/​2​0​1​9​/​0​7​/​3​1​/​u​s​/​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​r​o​n​a​l​d​-​r​e​a​g​a​n​-​r​i​c​h​a​r​d​-​n​i​x​o​n​-​r​a​c​i​s​t​.​h​tml

By Michael Harriot 

Authorities ush­ered a man out of a Vermont court­room after he bold­ly inter­rupt­ed court pro­ceed­ings to con­demn a judge for releas­ing an avowed white suprema­cist who keeps defy­ing court orders ban­ning him from buy­ing guns. On July 22, self-pro­claimed white nation­al­ist Max Misch plead­ed not guilty in a Bennington, Vt., Superior Court for vio­lat­ing the con­di­tions of his release on pre­vi­ous gun-pos­ses­sion charges, accord­ing to the Brattleboro Reformer. Sworn state­ments from Misch’s wife and a local gun store allege that Misch pur­chased a hand­gun for $350 on March 30, less than two months after a judge banned Misch from buy­ing firearms fol­low­ing Misch’s February arrest for pos­sess­ing ille­gal, large-capac­i­ty ammu­ni­tion devices.

“My nephew was in jail a whole year, your hon­or,” Pratt con­tin­ued as Vermont state troop­ers escort him out of the court­room. “Keep up these racial dis­par­i­ties, guys…we’re watch­ing all of you!” “I was in there specif­i­cal­ly to find out what was going to hap­pen with this guy,” Pratt told The Root. “My nephew was held with­out any evi­dence, with­out any wit­ness­es, with­out any weapon for a whole year await­ing tri­al. Meanwhile, this guy is a known vio­lent per­son. My thing is, why can’t we get the same kind of treat­ment? “I’m into social jus­tice and I can see all of these dis­par­i­ties going on, but I want­ed to see it in the flesh,” explained Pratt. “If it was me or any­body else, they would have let us sit there, even if we didn’t have a vio­lent crime…espe­cial­ly if we kept vio­lat­ing court orders.”

Frederick Bragdon, the pub­lic defend­er rep­re­sent­ing Misch, argued that the white nation­al­ist was not a flight risk because he liked the atten­tion, explain­ing: “I’m sure as long as the press keeps com­ing, he’ll also be here.” The 36-year-old Misch describes him­self as a “white nation­al­ist” and “the man who be rep­re­sent­ing dem white muh­fuck­az of Bennington,” and admit­ted to “trolling” for­mer Vermont State Rep. Ruqaiyah “Kiah” Morris, who decid­ed not to run for re-elec­tion in 2018, in part because of Misch’s online and in-per­son harass­ment. In a 10-page report, Vermont Attorney General T.J Donovan acknowl­edged that Misch’s harass­ment of Morris was “clear­ly racist and offen­sive,” but declined to pros­e­cute Misch “because of the free speech pro­tec­tions afford­ed under the First Amendment.” When Donavan held the press con­fer­ence with Morris to announce this deci­sion, Misch showed up……and harassed Kiah Morris.

Days after that press con­fer­ence, Vermont law enforce­ment offi­cers began inves­ti­gat­ing alle­ga­tions that Misch had trav­eled to near­by New Hampshire to pur­chase large-capac­i­ty gun mag­a­zines, which are banned in Vermont. A coali­tion of gun-rights orga­ni­za­tions is chal­leng­ing the ban, which is why the judge claims he freed Misch with no bail. However, the state has already denied Misch’s claim that his arrest vio­lat­ed his right to bear arms. Morris notes that Misch is a proud mem­ber of a local white suprema­cist group and has con­tin­ued his three-year cam­paign of harass­ment against her, despite a restrain­ing order against him. “This just reaf­firms that it’s not safe for me or my fam­i­ly,” Morris told The Root on Monday. “[It shows] that we aren’t grant­ed and afford­ed the same pro­tec­tions that oth­er peo­ple have and that the jus­tice sys­tem is deeply flawed.

“He’s not going to feel any reper­cus­sions for any­thing that he did regard­ing me and my fam­i­ly, at all,” said Morris. “This has become an entire debate around guns and firearms. It has been deter­mined by the attor­ney general’s office that pur­su­ing jus­tice with regards to racial harass­ment, intim­i­da­tion and threats is not wor­thy of tak­ing to the Supreme Court and forc­ing them to re-exam­ine this. But firearms are. “One of those gets you elect­ed into office,” added Morris. “The oth­er one does not.”

This story originated at the root​.com.

In recent times being Speaker of the United States House of Representatives has not been an easy job. Several Speakers in the not too dis­tant past have found that out rather quick­ly, not the least of whom was Newt Gingrich.
The Polarization of American pol­i­tics led by the Republicans, has made that job a lot hard­er, just ask John Boehner who bolt­ed from it and Paul Ryan who said he did not want it when he was being court­ed.
In the end, Ryan one of the least effec­tive Speakers in mod­ern times, seem all too hap­py to fol­low John Boehner’s lead and he too bolt­ed for the doors.
That is where Speaker Nancy Pelosi Democrat Speaker from the bas­tion of California lib­er­al­ism finds her­self today.
Throughout her career, Nancy Pelosi a San Francisco lib­er­al has had to deal with being vil­i­fied as far too lib­er­al in her pol­i­tics. Today as Pelosi tries to pro­tect vul­ner­a­ble first term house mem­bers who won in pre­vi­ous­ly red dis­tricts, she is find­ing that she is now a cen­trist as the left as moved dras­ti­cal­ly away to her left.
As the Republicans have moved en-block to the right, pro­gres­sive vot­ers are demand­ing that the Democrat par­ty artic­u­late and embrace more pro­gres­sive poli­cies as a coun­ter­weight to the dam­ag­ing right-wing poli­cies of the Republicans.

Historically, American Politics have always been frac­tious, the coun­try at one time was emersed in a war against itself.
Power and the desire to attain pow­er has been the dri­ving edge of the frac­tious nature of America’s polit­i­cal real­i­ty.
More and more the two polit­i­cal par­ties have been mov­ing fur­ther away from the cen­ter leav­ing an ever-dwin­dling num­ber of vot­ers in the mid­dle who think of them­selves a non-aligned or Independents.
Over the years the Republican Party has solid­i­fied itself into an uncom­pro­mis­ing par­ty of white Anglo-Saxon nativists, which makes Conservative Presidents like Ronald Reagan and GW Bush seem like out­siders on issues like Immigration and Race.
In the same breath, it has paved the way for an oppor­tunis­tic racist dem­a­gogue like Donald Trump to waltz right in and claim the party. 

Using the Primary process to flush out those they con­sid­ered not true patri­ots to the cause, and label­ing them (RINO’s), Republicans In Name Only, the mod­ern Republican par­ty has all but removed any dis­sent from its mod­ern ortho­doxy. This hard­en­ing and solid­i­fi­ca­tion of its core nativist beliefs, as enshrined in the views of Steve King Republican Representative from Iowa, quote: “We can’t restore our civ­i­liza­tion with some­body else’s babies.” When pressed to clar­i­fy his com­ments King shot back, “I meant exact­ly what I said.”
The post earned the endorse­ment of for­mer Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, who wrote “GOD BLESS STEVE KING!!!” on his own Twitter account.
America is a coun­try designed and run by white men.
President Barack Obama found that out when he tried to bring hope and change to that estab­lished order.
The Republican par­ty’s agen­da is the sta­b­lished order in America, because the ideals of America was premised on white major­i­ty rule.
When Democrats and cen­trists bemoan the fact that white women who vote Republican are vot­ing against their own self-inter­est, they are miss­ing the point that white con­trol and white suprema­cy [trumps] all oth­er con­sid­er­a­tions which would apply to those women. 

Which is why, though the right’s assault on a wom­an’s right to choose, affects white women just as it does women of col­or, and though that issue is a crit­i­cal right, which women have fought for and won, white women would rather vote Republican to advance white entitlement,and squan­der those hard-won gains, that do what’s right.
The Immigration Fever which has gripped the polit­i­cal right, and the Abortion fights, are all about push­ing back against the brown­ing of America.
If the right can pre­vent white women from hav­ing abor­tions, by acced­ing to Steve King’s the­o­ry of restor­ing white civ­i­liza­tion, and Donald Trump can reverse the brown­ing through the process of depor­ta­tions and caging, what seemed like an inevitable brown­ing of America may be stalled if not total­ly halted.

The Democrat Party is a col­lec­tion of African-Americans oth­er eth­nic groups and the not-so-Republican whites, those whites would rather not be as acer­bic or caus­tic against Blacks and oth­er minori­ties as their Republican coun­ter­parts, but that does not mean they are any less racist or pro­tec­tive of white suprema­cy.
That is why, on issues like the sem­i­nal issue of police vio­lence against Black peo­ple, white Democrats are as eeri­ly silent as Republicans are as sup­port­ive of it.
Somewhere in the mix, Hispanic and Latino votes and loy­al­ties are split between the two par­ties.
Regardless of what the Republican par­ty does to Hispanics and Latinos, the desire to be accept­ed as the next pseu­do-whites, seems to [trump] those mistreatments.

The direc­tion­al strug­gle with­in the Democrat par­ty is a symp­tom of the fore­gone. On the one hand, there are the pro­gres­sives like Ilhan Omar, Iyana Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, young bright and for­ward-lean­ing and an old guard which believes it can win elec­tions by not mak­ing waves. One would think that if no one else steps up in sup­port of these brave young women, the con­gres­sion­al black cau­cus would.
Not so, that group has cho­sen to con­sis­tent­ly hitch it’s wag­on to the old guard of the par­ty which only uses Blacks to win elec­tions then dumps them until elec­tion time comes around again.
Unfortunately for the par­ty, it does not seem to be where young pro­gres­sives are. The rise of the so-called squad of four pro­gres­sive con­gress­women, is a sign that there is a hunger for a repo­si­tion­ing of the par­ty.
The insur­gency can­di­da­cy of Vermont’s Senator Bernie Sanders in 2016 was anoth­er indi­ca­tor that pro­gres­sive vot­ers do not see the present Democrat par­ty as rep­re­sent­ing their ideals.

There is the old adage that Democrats always find ways to throw away what seems to be sure elec­tion wins.
This time may be no dif­fer­ent if the old guard con­tin­ues in its wishy-washy ways of tread­ing care­ful­ly as if on eggshells.
Even with an open racist igno­ra­mus occu­py­ing the white house, a Democratic win is not assured if the white peo­ple who sup­port that par­ty con­tin­ue to cling to the perks of white major­i­ty rule.
On the issues of income inequal­i­ty, the envi­ron­ment, race rela­tions, police abuse, hous­ing, education/​student debt, health care and a raft of oth­er press­ing issues, white lib­er­als have the pow­er to stop Trump and his minor­i­ty of igno­ra­mus­es, who sees noth­ing wrong no mat­ter what he does.
If they fail Donald Trump will be reelect­ed by a minor­i­ty of une­d­u­cat­ed whites who have no idea where their rear ends are from a broomstick. 

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, a busi­ness own­er, avid researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He also writes occa­sion­al­ly for the web­site Medium​.com.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

In my 38 years of life, I’ve owned Tonka Trucks, col­lege degrees and poor cred­it, but a golf cart sounds like an unex­pect­ed headache wait­ing to hap­pen. To that end, Yahoo reports that ATLiens Allison and Zeke Brown got the sur­prise of their lives when a con­trac­tor they hired to fix the brakes on their golf cart pulled into their dri­ve­way, all smiles, with a big ass Confederate flag wav­ing at them.

“General con­trac­tor came to my uncles [sic] house to do a project,” Ryan Spann cap­tioned the now viral video. “When he arrived my aunt caught his huge con­fed­er­ate flag hang­ing on the back of his truck. Trust no work was done that day.….. she cor­dial­ly thanked him for mak­ing the trip but we’re good love enjoy.”
And he ain’t lying.
In the video, Allison is cool as a fan as she informs their would-be mechan­ic Michael that his Robert E. Lee-endorsed ser­vices are no longer needed.

“You know what? I do apol­o­gize,” she begins. “I know you’ve come from a very long way, but we’re going to use some­body else.”
That’s when Zeke — the most use­less hus­band since M’Baku in Us—inter­rupts.
“She’s upset with the flag,” he says, obliv­i­ous to the fact that he’ll be sleep­ing on the couch in approx­i­mate­ly six hours.
“No, I’m beyond upset with the flag,” she sneers.
Astonished that his white priv­i­lege had seem­ing­ly waned, Michael offers to con­ceal his big­otry by remov­ing the flag, but Allison ain’t going for it.“Continue to believe what you need to believe, sir. But no, I can­not pay you for your ser­vices,” she says. “Thank you, have a good day.”

For black folks who are accus­tomed to going out of our way not to be dis­missed as impul­sive or bel­liger­ent, Allison’s deco­rum comes as no sur­prise. As she told Yahoo, even stand­ing on her own porch it was some­thing she was mind­ful of.
“I didn’t want to be the ‘angry black woman’ but I want­ed him to learn and feel that bot­tom-line loss,” she said. “You don’t go to Germany and wave the Nazi flag. It’s the same thing.”
She also not­ed that when she learned about the flag and demand­ed to con­front the con­trac­tor her­self, her son fled the house know­ing his mom was about to tear some­body a new ass­hole.
Zeke told Yahoo that after Michael left, he received a mes­sage that amount­ed to a Kanye shrug: “I didn’t know the flag offend­ed, y’all.”

“I under­stand it is part of American his­to­ry, but that flag stood for a time in his­to­ry where peo­ple such as myself had a very bad way of life,” Zeke told Yahoo. “Michael, I hope this small inter­ac­tion caus­es you to do a lit­tle research on how sev­er­al Americans feel about the Confederacy. I know it’s part of his­to­ry, so is Nazi Germany…”
But as expect­ed, Michael — a self-described “red­neck” — doesn’t see what the big deal is.
“My lit­tle sib­lings bought it from a flea mar­ket. I don’t sup­port slav­ery and nei­ther do my sib­lings,” he told Yahoo. “But I am not going to take it down when my sib­lings asked me to fly it. If [the fam­i­ly] wants to take offense, they can.”
America, ladies, and gen­tle­men.
Story first appeared here:
https://​www​.the​root​.com/​c​o​n​t​r​a​c​t​o​r​-​s​h​o​w​s​-​u​p​-​a​t​-​b​l​a​c​k​-​c​o​u​p​l​e​-​s​-​h​o​u​s​e​-​w​i​t​h​-​c​o​n​f​e​d​-​1​8​3​6​0​8​0​028

As a for­mer Law-Enforcement offi­cer I am more than pissed at the peo­ple who indulge and engage in lives of crime, then blame police offi­cers when they are arrest­ed for their crimes.
As a con­se­quence, I spend a lot of my time writ­ing about the rule of law and its impor­tance in free soci­eties.
But I am also equal­ly as con­cerned about the Police offi­cers who con­tin­ue to act con­trary to the laws and their oaths.
Policing is not about being com­mon bul­lies and punks when chal­lenged.
But we are wit­ness­ing case after case in which police in America are resort­ing to dan­ger­ous vio­lence, even when they are wrong on the rea­sons they approach citizens.

Whether we are talk­ing about my native Jamaica or the United States, igno­rance, racism and sheer stu­pid­i­ty by police offi­cers have been fea­tures and not bugs.
Far too many police offi­cers do not use com­mon sense in car­ry­ing out their duties but rather default to vio­lence than apply de-esca­la­tion strate­gies when in the wrong.
In instance, after instance, we see cas­es of American police using vio­lence against peo­ple of col­or in sit­u­a­tions in which they would absolute­ly not have done so had the sub­ject being white.
The Racism of American police offi­cers has been a sore issue for as long as America has had police depart­ments, par­tic­u­lar­ly as it relates to African-Americans.
The prob­lem has been mag­ni­fied expo­nen­tial­ly since the FBI warned that white Supremacists have been infil­trat­ing police depart­ments across America.
The ele­va­tion of Donald Trump to the Presidency has only served to embold­en Racism across America and the police depart­ments are cer­tain­ly not immune from that influ­ence.
When police dis­play bla­tant racism and stu­pid­i­ty and engage in lying, esca­lat­ing sim­ple sit­u­a­tions, cre­ate fraud­u­lent charges in order to crim­i­nal­ize inno­cent cit­i­zens those of us with a con­science are forced to speak out against it.
This is the racist idio­cy which occurred in the case below.

Detroit artist Sheefy McFly has been mak­ing a name for him­self, so much so that the city recent­ly com­mis­sioned him to paint a series of murals hon­or­ing the Motor City as part of its City Walls ini­tia­tive. But on Wednesday, as McFly was work­ing on the piece, he was con­front­ed by Detroit police, who thought McFly was van­dal­iz­ing a viaduct. McFly — born Tashif Turner — tried to explain that he was hired by the city to do the mur­al. But since he didn’t have his city-issued per­mit in hand, police arrest­ed him, reports the Detroit Free Press. The artist was arrest­ed for resist­ing and obstruct­ing police, accord­ing to Detroit Police Department spokesper­son Sgt. Nicole Kirkwood. During the con­fronta­tion, McFly was also found to have a 10-year-old out­stand­ing traf­fic war­rant.
McFly spoke to the Free Press about the experience:

As McFly tried to explain the sit­u­a­tion to the police, he said more offi­cers arrived with “four or five police cars” on site. And even as a city offi­cial showed up to vouch for the artist and spoke with a DPD super­vi­sor, McFly said the sit­u­a­tion esca­lat­ed. …McFly said when he walked away to check his bag for his per­mit, offi­cers tried to detain him, with one of the offi­cers putting her hand on his neck.“They treat­ed me like a felon even though I was com­mis­sioned by the city to do this,” said McFly, who added that he felt “depressed” after being arrest­ed for the first time. “I felt threat­ened for my life,” said McFly. “I felt like if I real­ly didn’t keep my com­po­sure, they would’ve beat my (exple­tive).”

According to the Detroit Metro Times, McFly had already shown his paper­work once before to Detroit police, on the first day he began the mur­al. McFly end­ed up spend­ing a night in jail, where he says he slept on a mat on the floor of an unclean cell. “It felt like ani­mals in a cage,” he said. The city is chalk­ing up the arrest to a mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion between city offi­cials and police. “When we’re doing murals, we have a police lieu­tenant we work with to make sure sur­round­ing precincts are aware that it’s a city-spon­sored pro­gram and the artists have per­mits,” said Brad Dick, who over­sees the City Walls pro­gram. “Unfortunately, some ran­dom offi­cers who weren’t asso­ci­at­ed with the near­by precincts drove by and saw him and thought it was an unau­tho­rized action. They stopped him and he didn’t have his per­mit with him.”

City Walls is intend­ed to be a deter­rent to van­dal­ism: The idea is that com­mis­sioned artists beau­ti­fy­ing Detroit with gov­ern­ment-approved art­work can help dri­ve down ille­gal graf­fi­ti. McFly, who is is also a musi­cian, was work­ing on his first mur­al of 10 con­tract­ed by the city. He’s one of 25 artists select­ed as part of the mul­ti-year project. The mur­al he was work­ing on before police arrest­ed him was “an homage to local pop cul­ture fea­tur­ing Cartier glass­es and a quote from the late Detroit rap­per Blade Icewood,” accord­ing to the Free Press. “It’s crazy to be paint­ing some­thing for the city and get arrest­ed for it,” McFly told radio sta­tion WWJ fol­low­ing the arrest. “If the police didn’t know me then, they know me now.”Police dropped the charges against McFly on Thursday, though he still has to appear in court on July 3 on the traf­fic charge.
Author Anne Branigin
This sto­ry appeared in the https://www.theroot.com/a‑detroit-artist-was-commissioned-by-the-city-to-paint-1835972906

A few Blacks have cozied up to Donald Trump and have made a com­plete ass of them­selves by wear­ing his cheap Chinese-made (MAGA) caps, which of course are just anoth­er sym­bol of hatred as the Confederate flag is.
Some have even gone as far as to con­front anti-Trump demon­stra­tors in the streets mak­ing an even more ridicu­lous spec­ta­cle of them­selves.
Then, of course, there are the Black Pastors, how could we ever for­get those imposters?
Donald Trump encour­aged his man­ic sup­port­ers to beat up peo­ple who demon­strat­ed at his ral­lies, Black demon­stra­tors were assault­ed in the process.
At the time he was telling Africa-Americans how bad­ly their schools and com­mu­ni­ty sucked, how poor they are, how hor­ri­ble their neigh­bor­hoods are, he was ask­ing “what do you have to lose”?
He was telling police simul­ta­ne­ous­ly not to be gen­tle with sus­pects, they are arrest­ing.“When you arrest them and put your hand o top of their heads while putting them in the car, you can pull that hand away”, Trump tells cops.
What Trump did not know was that those hands nev­er exist­ed for Black sus­pects in the first place. So while he was goad­ing cops into abus­ing peo­ple, (wink, wink, black peo­ple) he was open­ing a Pandora-box of police abuse which would not be con­fined to black sus­pects but whites as well, gen­der would not be a fac­tor either.

My per­son­al dis­dain is reserved for the pas­tors, how­ev­er. Not because of any per­son­al pow­er they pos­sess to influ­ence intel­li­gent mem­bers of the Black com­mu­ni­ty. But because of the inno­cent naïveté‘ of poor reli­gious folk who put their faith in these pseu­do- men­di­cants, believ­ing they are tru­ly sent by God Almighty, when they are agents of the Devil.
After using them to cre­ate a façade of inclu­sion before steal­ing the 2016 elec­tions, the con artiste Trump pre­dictably dumped them like the garbage trucks dump New York City’s garbage over there on the west side of Manhattan.
There may yet be a resur­gence of this recy­cled garbage as the 2020 elec­tion cycle rolls around. After all, get­ting a hand­shake or a pat on the back is more than enough for some of these house slaves.

Despite my aver­sion to these pas­tors, what I real­ly want­ed to bring to your atten­tion was real­ly an answer to Trump’s ques­tion of “what do you have to lose”?
In addi­tion to the fact that the lives of African-Americans have got­ten worse under Trump’s poli­cies, a‑la increased police abuse, stag­nant wages, etc.
There is much more that does not read­i­ly meet the eyes.
And so we will intro­duce an awe­some Article writ­ten by Isaac Arnsdorf of ProPublica, titled How a Top Chicken Company Cut Off Black Farmers, One by One.

After years of work­ing as a sheriff’s deputy and a car deal­er­ship man­ag­er, John Ingrum used his sav­ings to buy a farm some 50 miles east of Jackson, Mississippi. He planned to raise hors­es on the land and leave the prop­er­ty to his son. The farm, named Lovin’ Acres, came with a few chick­en hous­es, which didn’t real­ly inter­est Ingrum. But then a man showed up from Koch Foods, the country’s fifth-largest poul­try proces­sor and one of the main chick­en com­pa­nies in Mississippi. Koch Foods would deliv­er flocks and feed — all Ingrum would have to do is house the chicks for a few weeks while they grew big enough to slaugh­ter. The com­pa­ny rep­re­sen­ta­tive wowed Ingrum with pro­jec­tions for the stream of income he could earn, Ingrum recalled in an interview.

What Ingrum didn’t know was that those finan­cial pro­jec­tions over­looked many real­i­ties of mod­ern farm­ing in the U.S., where much of the country’s agri­cul­tur­al out­put is con­trolled by a hand­ful of giant com­pa­nies. The num­bers didn’t reflect the debt he might have to incur to con­fig­ure his chick­en hous­es to the company’s spec­i­fi­ca­tions. Nor did they reflect the risk that the chicks could show up sick or dead, or that the com­pa­ny could sim­ply stop deliv­er­ing flocks. And that grow­ing con­cen­tra­tion of cor­po­rate pow­er in agri­cul­ture would only add to the long odds Ingrum, as a black farmer, faced in the United States, where just 1.3% of the country’s farm­ers are black. The shad­ow of slav­ery, share­crop­ping, and Jim Crow has left black farm­ers in an, espe­cial­ly pre­car­i­ous posi­tion. Their farms tend to be small­er and their sales low­er than the nation­al aver­age, accord­ing to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. While white farm­ers ben­e­fit­ed from gov­ern­ment assis­tance such as the Homestead Act and land-grant uni­ver­si­ties, black farm­ers were large­ly exclud­ed from own­ing land and accu­mu­lat­ing wealth. In recent decades, black farm­ers accused the USDA of dis­crim­i­nat­ing against them by deny­ing them loans or forc­ing them to wait longer, result­ing in a class-action law­suit that set­tled for more than $1 bil­lion. Along with these his­tor­i­cal dis­ad­van­tages, black farm­ers say they have also encoun­tered bias in deal­ing with some of the cor­po­rate giants that con­trol their liveli­hood. In com­plaints filed with the USDA between 2010 and 2015, Ingrum and anoth­er black farmer in Mississippi said Koch Foods dis­crim­i­nat­ed against them and used its mar­ket con­trol to dri­ve them out of business.

After the com­plaints by the farm­ers, an inves­ti­ga­tor for the USDA, which is respon­si­ble for reg­u­lat­ing the indus­try, looked into Koch Foods’ deal­ings with those farm­ers and found “evi­dence of unjust dis­crim­i­na­tion,” accord­ing to a 700-page case file obtained by ProPublica. The inves­ti­ga­tor con­clud­ed that Koch Foods vio­lat­ed a law gov­ern­ing meat com­pa­nies’ busi­ness prac­tices. The Trump admin­is­tra­tion has cut back on enforc­ing this law, with the USDA now con­duct­ing few­er inves­ti­ga­tions and impos­ing few­er fines, as ProPublica has report­ed. Koch Foods hasn’t faced any penal­ty. Koch Foods declined to pro­vide an inter­view with any of its exec­u­tives or to answer detailed ques­tions about its deal­ings with black farm­ers in Mississippi. A lawyer for the com­pa­ny said it denies wrong­do­ing. The five largest chick­en com­pa­nies now make up 61% of the mar­ket, com­pared with 34% in the hands of the top four firms in 1986. As the biggest com­pa­nies expand­ed their con­trol, they raised farm­ers’ aver­age pay by a mere 2.5 cents a pound from 1988 to 2016, while the whole­sale price of chick­en rose by 17.4 cents a pound, accord­ing to data from the USDA and the National Chicken Council.

Mississippi is the fifth-largest poul­try-pro­duc­ing state, with more than 1,300 chick­en farms. In a state where the pop­u­la­tion is 38% black, only 96 of those farms were oper­at­ed by African Americans in 2012, the most recent USDA data avail­able. From 2009 to 2017, Koch Foods went from hav­ing con­tracts with four black farm­ers in Mississippi to zero. Koch (pro­nounced “cook”) Foods is based out­side Chicago and sup­plies chick­en, often sold under oth­er brands, to major restau­rants and retail­ers such as Burger King, Kroger, and Walmart. The com­pa­ny, which is pri­vate­ly held, is not part of the busi­ness empire of the con­ser­v­a­tive bil­lion­aires Charles Koch and David Koch. The own­er of Koch Foods, Joseph Grendys, has a for­tune that Forbes esti­mates at $3.1 billion 

After Ingrum signed his con­tract to grow chick­ens for Koch Foods, in 2002, dif­fer­ent com­pa­ny rep­re­sen­ta­tives kept com­ing with lists of expen­sive mod­i­fi­ca­tions they want­ed Ingrum to make, accord­ing to an affi­davit he pro­vid­ed to the USDA inves­ti­ga­tor. After Ingrum met all the spec­i­fi­ca­tions, the next rep­re­sen­ta­tive went back on what the pre­vi­ous one said and want­ed things done a dif­fer­ent way, Ingrum said in the affi­davit. Chicken com­pa­nies usu­al­ly say they update their spec­i­fi­ca­tions to improve ani­mal wel­fare or respond to con­sumer pref­er­ences like avoid­ing antibi­otics. But Ingrum couldn’t find much log­ic in the changes Koch Foods want­ed him to make. One ser­vice tech­ni­cian direct­ed Ingrum to install lights in one place, the next one some­place else. Another time, the com­pa­ny want­ed Ingrum to move a pow­er line, even though it was out of the way of the feed trucks and bins. That cost him $6,000.

According to Ingrum’s affi­davit, when he met with a man­ag­er about the shift­ing demands, the man­ag­er said, deri­sive­ly, “I had a cou­ple of y’all when I was at Sanderson,” anoth­er big chick­en com­pa­ny. Ingrum asked the man­ag­er, who was white, what he meant by that. The man­ag­er didn’t answer Ingrum. Reached by ProPublica on his cell­phone, the man­ag­er hung up. Ingrum sus­pect­ed that the truck dri­vers who deliv­ered feed were short­chang­ing him, so he installed sen­sors to alert him when the dri­vers arrived. In 2007, accord­ing to his affi­davit, Ingrum caught a dri­ver fail­ing to fill a whole feed bin. The com­pa­ny brushed it off as an hon­est mis­take. But Ingrum had heard of dri­vers ask­ing farm­ers for pay­offs to get more feed, accord­ing to the affi­davit.
Read more here;
https://​www​.prop​ub​li​ca​.org/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​h​o​w​-​a​-​t​o​p​-​c​h​i​c​k​e​n​-​c​o​m​p​a​n​y​-​c​u​t​-​o​f​f​-​b​l​a​c​k​-​f​a​r​m​e​r​s​-​o​n​e​-​b​y​-​one

In the Video above Paul Robeson a Civil Rights Activist, Lawyer, Singer and much more tes­ti­fies before the House Un-American com­mit­tee.
Many young peo­ple liv­ing today may not have an under­stand­ing or even the knowl­edge of the para­noia which was per­va­sive across America as it relates to Communism.
Today Presidential Candidate Vermont Senator can run for the pres­i­den­cy as a Democratic Socialist and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez can win a seat in the Congress as a social­ist but it was­n’t always so.
In fact, just two decades ago no Democrat want­ed to be labeled a lib­er­al much less a social­ist.
It was in this tox­ic envi­ron­ment of fear and para­noia that Paul Robeson was answer­ing ques­tions from that house com­mit­tee of white men hos­tile to com­mu­nism and hos­tile to mis­ter Robeson based on the col­or of his skin.
It was in that envi­ron­ment that Joesph McCarthy became the tip of the spear of the com­mu­nist paranoia. 

According to [History​.com] dur­ing the late 1940s and ear­ly 1950s, the prospect of com­mu­nist sub­ver­sion at home and abroad seemed fright­en­ing­ly real to many peo­ple in the United States. These fears came to define – and, in some cas­es, cor­rode – the era’s polit­i­cal cul­ture. For many Americans, the most endur­ing sym­bol of this “Red Scare” was Republican Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin. Senator McCarthy spent almost five years try­ing in vain to expose com­mu­nists and oth­er left-wing “loy­al­ty risks” in the U.S. gov­ern­ment. In the hyper-sus­pi­cious atmos­phere of the Cold War, insin­u­a­tions of dis­loy­al­ty were enough to con­vince many Americans that their gov­ern­ment was packed with trai­tors and spies. McCarthy’s accu­sa­tions were so intim­i­dat­ing that few peo­ple dared to speak out against him. It was not until he attacked the Army in 1954 that his actions earned him the cen­sure of the U.S. Senate. 

We do not own the rights to any of these images.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police cor­po­ral, busi­ness own­er, avid researcher, and blog­ger. He is also a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge.

The teen called the deci­sion “deeply dis­turb­ing,” argu­ing that Harvard has hired “big­ots and anti­semites” historically. 

By Andy Campbell

Kyle Kashuv, a pro-gun sur­vivor of the mass shoot­ing in Parkland, Florida, says Harvard College rescind­ed his admis­sion after racist mes­sages he shared among his high school peers sur­faced last month. Kashuv, an 18-year-old high school senior who sur­vived the shoot­ing at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School ear­ly last year, post­ed a pho­to of a pur­port­ed let­ter from Harvard with­draw­ing his admis­sion. “After care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion, the [Admissions] Committee vot­ed to rescind your admis­sion to Harvard College,” the let­ter reads. “We are sor­ry about the cir­cum­stances that have led us to with­draw your admis­sion, and we wish you suc­cess in your future aca­d­e­m­ic endeav­ors and beyond.” The let­ter fol­lows HuffPost’s report of Kashuv’s text mes­sages, shared in a Google doc­u­ment for a class study guide, in which he made racist remarks. In the doc­u­ment, seen by class­mates and obtained by HuffPost, he repeat­ed­ly uses a racist slur:

Kashuv, who apol­o­gized last month for mak­ing the slurs, post­ed a series of tweets on Monday call­ing Harvard’s deci­sion “deeply dis­turb­ing.” “Throughout its his­to­ry, Harvard’s fac­ul­ty has includ­ed slave own­ers, seg­re­ga­tion­ists, big­ots and anti­semites,” he said. “If Harvard is sug­gest­ing that growth isn’t pos­si­ble and that our past defines our future, then Harvard is an inher­ent­ly racist insti­tu­tion. But I don’t believe that. I believe that insti­tu­tions and peo­ple can grow.” 

Kyle Kashuv✔@KyleKashuvReplying to @KyleKashuv

7/​Harvard decid­ed to rescind my admis­sion with the fol­low­ing letter.

Asked to con­firm the letter’s authen­tic­i­ty, a Harvard spokesper­son said the col­lege doesn’t com­ment on indi­vid­ual cas­es, but pro­vid­ed a list of rea­sons the school might rescind admis­sion, includ­ing “behav­ior that brings into ques­tion their hon­esty, matu­ri­ty or moral char­ac­ter.” Conservative pun­dits decried Harvard’s deci­sion on Twitter. “Harvard’s auto-da-fé sets up an insane, cru­el stan­dard no one can pos­si­bly meet,” wrote com­men­ta­tor Ben Shapiro. NRA spokes­woman Dana Loesch tweet­ed: “NEW RULE: Everyone will be retroac­tive­ly adju­di­cat­ed for their past child­hood sins and made to pay the price now.” Washington Examiner’s Salena Zito tweet­ed: “Shameful of Harvard. Kyle Kashuv’s bet­ter off not going there and instead of get­ting a mean­ing­ful and qual­i­ty edu­ca­tion elsewhere.”This sto­ry first appeared in the Huffingtonpost​.com.

Absolutely inter­est­ing read from our friends at HuffingtonPost​.com. With the strug­gles of the 60’s and the progress made includ­ing the elec­tion of An African-American to the pres­i­den­cy of the United States twice, it is easy to lose sight of the real facts.
But as Michael Hobbs wrote Sunday, in a 2018 sur­vey, the per­cent­age of younger whites self-report­ing that they had inter­ra­cial friend­ships was near­ly iden­ti­cal to that of old­er whites. Studies that exam­ine “close” friend­ships find even greater racial sep­a­ra­tion: In 2006, researchers reviewed pho­tos from more than a thou­sand mar­riage cel­e­bra­tions and found that only 3.7 per­cent of white cou­ples had a black per­son in their wed­ding par­ty. 
“Quality con­tact between whites and oth­er races isn’t hap­pen­ing very often,” Enos said. “Whites often with­draw when their neigh­bor­hood or school starts to become more diverse. Most of the exam­ples of con­tact with oth­er races result­ing in more pro­gres­sive atti­tudes come from sit­u­a­tions where peo­ple.
Read more here;
https://​www​.huff​post​.com/​e​n​t​r​y​/​t​u​r​n​s​-​o​u​t​-​w​h​i​t​e​-​m​i​l​l​e​n​n​i​a​l​s​-​a​r​e​-​j​u​s​t​-​a​s​-​c​o​n​s​e​r​v​a​t​i​v​e​-​a​s​-​t​h​e​i​r​-​p​a​r​e​n​t​s​_​n​_​5​c​e​8​5​6​f​e​e​4​b​0​5​1​2​1​5​6​f​1​6​939

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Candice Owens, the GOP dar­ling for the moment, has offi­cial­ly resigned as com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor for Turning Point USA, the right-lean­ing orga­ni­za­tion aimed at edu­cat­ing col­lege stu­dents about “free mar­kets and lim­it­ed gov­ern­ment.
By Ny Magee ‑May 7, 2019 

Candace Owens, the GOP dar­ling for the moment, has offi­cial­ly resigned as com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor for Turning Point USA, the right-lean­ing orga­ni­za­tion aimed at edu­cat­ing col­lege stu­dents about “free mar­kets and lim­it­ed gov­ern­ment,” accord­ing to its web­site.
Owens announced her exit plans in a lengthy Instagram post on May 1, and her depar­ture comes amid calls from sup­port­ers and mem­bers of the orga­ni­za­tion for her to step down fol­low­ing con­tro­ver­sial com­ments she made in February about Adolf Hitler. 

Click video for sound137,180 views

• real­can­dace­owensI am both excit­ed and sad to announce that I will be offi­cial­ly mov­ing on from my role as Communications Director for Turning Point USA. 
  Charlie and I nev­er could have pre­dict­ed how big things would get since that day I was sprint­ing around a con­fer­ence in Palm Beach try­ing to get any­one to give me a chance. 
  We couldn’t have pre­dict­ed the Kanye tweet. We couldn’t have pre­dict­ed our break­fast with Antifa. And we def­i­nite­ly couldn’t have pre­dict­ed Ted Lieu. 
  And yet here we are. 
  Turning Point is an amaz­ing orga­ni­za­tion that is fight­ing a cul­tur­al war on col­lege cam­pus­es. Watching the way in which this orga­ni­za­tion has grown has been one of the great­est hon­ors of my life. 
  We love our free­dom-fight­ing stu­dents. We love our cam­pus clash­es. I have loved every sin­gle minute of trav­el­ing the coun­try and learn­ing the real spir­it of this amaz­ing nation. 
  But the sad truth is that the major­i­ty of black Americans don’t nev­er make it to col­lege. 
  My dream has always been sim­ple— to wake up black America — To turn the lights on with­in a com­mu­ni­ty that has been used and abused by the Democrat par­ty for decades. 
  No one believed my dream was pos­si­ble. Charlie always knew it was. 
  Can we move the black vote 20 point by 2020? That is my vision and I want to pour every sin­gle minute into mak­ing my dream a real­i­ty. 
  With the #BLEXIT move­ment, the Candace Owens pod­cast, and my upcom­ing book— I no longer feel I can be a ded­i­cat­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor to an orga­ni­za­tion that is right­ful­ly grow­ing rapid­ly. 
  In many ways, today feels like a grad­u­a­tion! I have learned so much and want to thank all of our stu­dents, and espe­cial­ly Tyler Bowyer and Charlie Kirk for giv­ing me this amaz­ing plat­form and oppor­tu­ni­ty to do what I love most. 
  All that aside— I will of course still be speak­ing at all Turning Point con­fer­ences and will con­tin­ue to chair the annu­al Black Leadership Summit in the fall. 
  So sign up peo­ple! 
  Fittingly — on this week’s episode of the Candace Owens Show, Charlie and I will take a trip down mem­o­ry lane. Be sure to tune in! We couldn’t be more excit­ed to share this con­ver­sa­tion with the world. 

While speak­ing at a London event to launch a U.K. chap­ter of TPUSA, she argued that Hitler was an “OK” leader until he tried to take his mes­sage of geno­cide glob­al. “If Hitler just want­ed to make Germany great and have things run well, OK fine,” she saidin response to a ques­tion about nation­al­ism. “The prob­lem is he had dreams out­side of Germany. He want­ed to glob­al­ize … he want­ed every­one to be German.”After that com­ment, sev­er­al Turning Point cam­pus chap­ters fired off a let­ter call­ing for her to resign, accord­ing to The Daily Beast.“Turning Point USA is above this thought­less and divi­sive rhetoric, and as Chapters, Presidents, and Leaders of Turning Point USA, we will no longer stand idly by as they con­tin­ue,” they wrote in a state­ment. “We don’t believe Candace Owens to be the most effec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion for Turning Point USA, as Communications Director or oth­er­wise. Meanwhile, in her farewell post on Instagram, Owens describes TPUSA as an “amaz­ing” group that’s fight­ing a so-called “cul­tur­al war on col­lege campuses.”She also notes both her excite­ment and sor­row over “offi­cial­ly mov­ing on from my role as Communications Director for Turning Point USA.” In many ways, today feels like a grad­u­a­tion!” Owens added.

The FOX News con­trib­u­tor said she still plans to appear at future con­fer­ences for the con­ser­v­a­tive non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion and will con­tin­ue to chair the annu­al Black LeadershipSummit. But her focus will now be on push­ing her “Blexit” move­ment, a plat­form she uses to con­vince more Black vot­ers to join the Republican party.“My dream has always been sim­ple— to wake up black America — To turn the lights on with­in a com­mu­ni­ty that has been used and abused by the Democrat par­ty for decades,” she wrote in her Instagram post.
https://​the​grio​.com/​2​0​1​9​/​0​5​/​0​7​/​c​a​n​d​a​c​e​-​o​w​e​n​s​-​q​u​i​t​s​-​t​u​r​n​i​n​g​-​p​o​i​n​t​-​u​s​a​-​a​f​t​e​r​-​m​e​m​b​e​r​s​-​d​e​m​a​n​d​-​s​h​e​-​r​e​s​i​gn/

Kevin Sneed of Prince George’s County, Maryland was pulled over for a bro­ken tail­light. He end­ed up with an attempt­ed mur­der charge. But after a two-year bat­tle, and with help from advo­ca­cy groups Life After Release, and Black Lives Matter DC, Mr. Sneed can con­tin­ue being a free man. Sometimes the jus­tice sys­tem gets it right.
According to NBC Washington 4 the offi­cer on duty wrote in his report that there was a “rob­bery in the imme­di­ate vicin­i­ty the pre­vi­ous night.” The offi­cer claimed Sneed accel­er­at­ed when the offi­cer tried to pull him over for the bro­ken tail­light and feared Sneed might’ve had a gun on him because black man + attempt­ed rob­bery the night before = this black man must be the rob­ber from last night, armed, and dan­ger­ous. Of course, Sneed was sim­ply Driving While Black. While full details haven’t yet been report­ed, we know that the offi­cer jumped into the driver’s side win­dow imme­di­ate­ly after Sneed stopped his car.

After search­ing the vehi­cle, no guns or drugs were found in Sneed’s pos­ses­sion. Sneed was left bruised; beat­en by the arrest­ing cop. Yet Sneed was charged with attempt­ed mur­der of an offi­cer. “They told me no bond and they told me what I was actu­al­ly charged with,” Sneed told NBC. “I said, ‘Just let me go to my cell.’” Understandably, the two-year bat­tle that ensued took an emo­tion­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal toll on Sneed, who main­tained his inno­cence through­out the mat­ter. “He felt like he didn’t even want to live,” said his moth­er, Kema Harris. Prince George’s County State’s Attorney Aisha Braveboy said she inher­it­ed the case from the pre­vi­ous state’s attor­ney. Her office deter­mined the case had mer­it, and decid­ed to pros­e­cute, but with the reduced charges of sec­ond-degree assault and dis­or­der­ly con­duct rather than attempt­ed mur­der. Sneed was offered a tempt­ing plea deal: no jail time if he’d admit guilt to these less­er charges.
“At the end of the day,” Sneed said, “I would be a fool to take it and then they play with my life.” Sneed knew the his­to­ry of cor­rupt jus­tice sys­tems that loom over both the inno­cent and the guilty. Many times peo­ple who can’t afford to mount a prop­er legal defense end up tak­ing plea deals for crimes they’re inno­cent of, then face reper­cus­sions that fol­low them for a life­time. Sneed and his moth­er even­tu­al­ly got help from the activist group Life After Release, which in turn involved Black Lives Matter DC to assist in retain­ing a new legal defense team.
“We were able to get a Black Lives Matter sup­port fund for Kevin’s defense and get him away from pub­lic defend­ers who didn’t have his best inter­est,” Black Lives Matter Core Organizer Née Née Taylor said to NBC. After a two-day tri­al, a jury found Sneed not guilty on all charges Wednesday, a vic­to­ry that Kevin Sneed does not take light­ly. “If you did not do any­thing wrong, fight for your life,” Mr. Sneed declared.

Correction: 5/​5/​19, 1:37 p.m. ET:

Following ini­tial reports, one of Mr. Sneed’s lawyers, Brandon Burrell, con­tact­ed The Root to dis­pute claims quot­ed by Prince George’s County State’s Attorney Aisha Braveboy to NBC Washington 4. Burrell also gave addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion prov­ing the cor­rup­tion of the case itself, as a gun was plant­ed by police in attempt to fur­ther frame Mr. Sneed. Burrell clarifies:

It is inac­cu­rate that the pros­e­cu­tor “reduced” any of the charges. The grand jury didn’t find prob­a­ble cause of attempt­ed first-degree mur­der, so after the indict­ment, his charges were first-degree assault, sec­ond-degree assault, resist­ing arrest, dis­or­der­ly con­duct, gun charges, and var­i­ous traf­fic cita­tions. The appear­ance of a gun a week after his arrest, and after he was searched was incred­i­bly sus­pi­cious. The gun was also found in the back­seat of the cruis­er, but Sneed was placed in the front seat of the cruis­er. The pros­e­cu­tor had no choice but to dis­miss the charges relat­ed to the gun the first day of tri­al, because of the indi­cia that it was plant­ed by the police. When the tri­al began Sneed was then tried on first-degree assault, sec­ond-degree assault, resist­ing arrest, and dis­or­der­ly con­duct. It was clear dur­ing the tes­ti­mo­ny of the ini­tial offi­cer that Sneed was racial­ly pro­filed. One of the rea­sons for the stop was because of a rob­bery the night before in that loca­tion, but there was absolute­ly no cor­re­la­tion to that and Mr. Sneed. The offi­cer wasn’t even involved in the rob­bery investigation.

This sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed @ the root​.com

Rape is a crime of deprav­i­ty which not only destroys the vic­tim’s body, it touch­es the soul. There should be no sup­port for those who know­ing­ly and will­ful­ly force them­selves sex­u­al­ly on anoth­er human being against that per­son­’s will.
At the same time, police, pros­e­cu­tors and the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem should do the utmost in due dili­gence, to ensure that those arrest­ed, pros­e­cut­ed and jailed are indeed guilty of the crimes they are alleged to have com­mit­ted.
It does soci­ety no good, if men are sent to prison because of vin­dic­tive women who had hurt feel­ings and cry rape to pun­ish the man

I recent­ly wrote that Legislation will not fix the insti­tu­tion­al­ized racism in America because those who are enforc­ing the laws are hell-bent on main­tain­ing the insti­tu­tion of white suprema­cy and white priv­i­lege to ben­e­fit them­selves.
Legislation will not fix how police enforce laws, when the offi­cers have no respect for a cer­tain seg­ment of the soci­ety and see them as dis­pos­able.
Legislation will not fix the prob­lem of Prosecutors who refuse to hon­or their oaths and pros­e­cute killer cops who vicious­ly exter­mi­nate peo­ple they hate under the col­or of law.
The laws are
As impor­tant as it is to have good laws, is if judges dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly send Black and Brown peo­ple to prison for long stretch­es then give whites tiny taps of the wrist for the very same offense how can there be respect for the rule of law or the admin­is­tra­tors of that system?

Bill Cosby an eighty-some­thing-year-old Black man is in prison for alleged sex­u­al assaults com­mit­ted years ago, out­side the stip­u­lat­ed statute of lim­i­ta­tions.
R&B singer Robert Kelly (R Kelly), is on a mil­lion dol­lar bond for sex­u­al assault, yet a white Shane Piche, 25, white male, was sen­tenced to 10 years pro­ba­tion and must reg­is­ter as a sex offend­er — but escaped time behind bars due to the fact that he had no pre­vi­ous arrests, accord­ing to the Watertown Daily Times.
Judge James P. McClusky said pro­ba­tion was an appro­pri­ate sen­tence because Piche had no pri­or arrests and only had one vic­tim.
Police said that Piche met the girl while on the job as a bus dri­ver and had sex with her at his apart­ment in Jefferson County.
So accord­ing to this retard­ed Judge rape and its atten­dant pun­ish­ment, is premised on the num­ber of vic­tims the rapist destroys, not on the das­tard­ly act itself.

This is in the sup­posed lib­er­al state of New York though upstate in the sticks of the Watertown region.
While these atro­cious dis­par­i­ties are hap­pen­ing in enforce­ment, pros­e­cu­tion, con­vic­tion and sen­tenc­ing, Black peo­ple are going to prison for a year for smok­ing mar­i­jua­na and or dri­ving under the influ­ence and hav­ing their dri­ving priv­i­leges yanked.
The bla­tant dis­re­gard for any sem­blance of pros­per­i­ty as it relates to how the nation’s laws are applied is evi­denced in plain sight.
The rich and pow­er­ful and even those who are not rich and pow­er­ful but have white skin, are exempt from the puni­tive com­po­nent of the laws and in some case aren’t even pros­e­cut­ed for their crimes. 

Wait just a minute here, Black peo­ple con­tin­ue to be in a stu­por even as these bla­tant dis­par­i­ties in the jus­tice sys­tem are hap­pen­ing in front their eyes and they are doing noth­ing about it.
A white cop who mur­ders a Black per­son can­not get con­vict­ed in any court in America.
A Hispanic cop who mur­ders a black per­son in America is very like­ly to get away with it. A Black cop who mur­ders a Black cit­i­zen should expect no pro­tec­tion from those who pro­tect cops, he will face the full force of the sys­tem and his con­vic­tion will be used to make the argu­ment that cops are not above the laws.
But if a Black cop kills a white per­son even under the best of cir­cum­stance he should ensure that he puts his house in order because he is going to prison. They won’t even allow you to go home to get ready for sen­tenc­ing you will be in cus­tody the very day of the ver­dict.
There is no pro­tec­tion for a black police offi­cer who takes the life of a white American.

A black for­mer Minneapolis police offi­cer who gunned down an unarmed white woman was con­vict­ed of third-degree mur­der Tuesday (April 30), spark­ing debate over racial injus­tice involv­ing police shoot­ings. Mohamed Noor became the first police offi­cer in Minnesota to be con­vict­ed of an on-duty mur­der.
According to the Associated Press, a diverse jury con­vict­ed Noor of third-degree mur­der and manslaugh­ter, but acquit­ted him of inten­tion­al sec­ond-degree mur­der, for the 2017 fatal shoot­ing of Justine Ruszczyk Damond.
Damond, a 40-year-old dual cit­i­zen of the U.S. and Australia, was shot to death after she called 911 to report a rape in the alley behind her house. Noor, a 33-year-old Muslim immi­grant from Somalia, was a two-year vet­er­an of the force at the time of the shoot­ing. He was fired from the Minneapolis Police Department after being charged for killing Damond.
Of the night in ques­tion, Noor tes­ti­fied that he and his part­ner, Matthew Harrity, were in their squad car when they heard a loud noise in the alley. Damond lat­er appeared and banged on Harrity’s win­dow. Noor alleged that he heard Harrity yell “Oh Jesus!” as he attempt­ed to pull out his firearm.
Noor went on to claim that he shot and killed Damond to “stop the threat and save my partner’s life.” Both offi­cers had their body cam­eras turned off dur­ing the shoot­ing but turned them on after the fact.
The jury ver­dict, hand­ed down after two days of delib­er­a­tions, rais­es ques­tions about Philando Castile’s mur­der dur­ing a 2016 traf­fic stop. Castile, a 32-year-old Minnesota school cafe­te­ria work­er, was shot and killed by St. Anthony police offi­cer, Jeronimo Yanez, while reach­ing for his license and reg­is­tra­tion as the offi­cer request­ed.
Castile was licensed to car­ry a weapon and informed the offi­cer that he had a firearm. Yanez then pulled out his gun and began shoot­ing Castile, as his girl­friend and her 4‑year-old daugh­ter sat in the car. Yanez claimed he feared for his life and was acquit­ted of two counts of sec­ond-degree manslaugh­ter. A dozen peo­ple were killed by Minnesota cops in 2018, per the Washington Post’s nation­al data­base. The state has also come under fire for its lack of trans­paren­cy in police-involved shoot­ings.
Noor was tak­en into cus­tody imme­di­ate­ly after the ver­dict, despite his attor­ney request­ing that he remain free until sen­tenc­ing on June 7. He could spend up to 16 years in prison for both con­vic­tions.
After express­ing con­do­lences to the vic­tim’s fam­i­ly, the Somali American Police Association released a state­ment not­ing that the “aggres­sive” pros­e­cu­tion proves under­ly­ing motives.
“The dev­as­tat­ing cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing this case have made a sub­stan­tial impact on both Ruszczyk’s and Officer Mohamed Noor’s fam­i­lies,” the state­ment reads.
“Officer Noor is the first police offi­cer in Minnesota’s his­to­ry to be con­vict­ed of mur­der while in the line of duty. SAPA believes the insti­tu­tion­al prej­u­dices against peo­ple of col­or, includ­ing offi­cers of col­or, have heav­i­ly influ­enced the ver­dict of this case. The aggres­sive man­ner in which the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office went after Officer Noor reveals that there were oth­er motives at play oth­er than serv­ing jus­tice.”
https://​www​.vibe​.com/​2​0​1​9​/​0​4​/​m​i​n​n​e​s​o​t​a​-​c​o​p​-​m​o​h​a​m​e​d​-​n​o​o​r​-​c​o​n​v​i​c​t​e​d​-​m​u​r​der

“Jews, will not, replace us, Jews will not replace us.“
They chant­ed as they marched, what seemed like hun­dreds of them. To many, this seemed sur­re­al; where did they come from.
They chant­ed anti-Black invec­tive as well. They came to make a state­ment because of the removal of Confederate stat­ues, which remind­ed African-Americans and decent peo­ple of con­science of a peri­od the nation should soon want to for­get.
Before it was all over, a white suprema­cist rammed his car into a group of anti-hate demon­stra­tors, and Heather Heyer, a young white woman, was dead, and sev­er­al oth­ers were injured.

Where, you ask, do these hate­mon­gers come from? Their faces seemed fresh but con­tort­ed in hatred. They were young, and they seemed like the boy next door.
They are the boy next door. Most black peo­ple are not inner-city dwellers; in fact, most African Americans live above the pover­ty line and out­side of the inner cities.
So yes, they are the boys next door, and they are filled with the hate their par­ents taught them.
According to the Atlantic, Elizabeth Kneebone, a fel­low at the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, looked at num­bers from the 2010 to 2014 American Community Survey and found that 39 per­cent of African Americans live in the sub­urbs, 36 per­cent live in cities, 15 per­cent live in small met­ro­pol­i­tan areas.

So for African-Americans, these hate­ful crea­tures are not from some­place far away; they live right next door. And so you won­der to your­self, “I thought we were past this?
The rise of Barack Obama to the pres­i­den­cy cre­at­ed a back­lash of epic pro­por­tion. We wit­nessed a dra­mat­ic increase in white right-wing mili­tias, and a steady rise in anti­semitism. We also wit­nessed an unprece­dent­ed increase in threats made against President Obama, the likes of which had nev­er been seen before for any oth­er pres­i­dent.
Police depart­ments have been infil­trat­ed by white suprema­cists groups as report­ed by the Federal Bureau of Investigations, and a gen­er­al across the board sense of hos­til­i­ty com­ing from the polit­i­cal right.
There has been a mad rush to pur­chase weapons in unprece­dent­ed amounts in addi­tion to all of that. Today there are more guns in the hands of Americans who love them than there are people.

According to CNN, there is no coun­try­wide data­base where peo­ple reg­is­ter whether they own guns (the law does­n’t allow it). High-qual­i­ty tele­phone polls from Gallup and the Pew Research Center in 2017 found that 42% of peo­ple in the US live in house­holds with guns. According to the General Social Survey, which has a much high­er response rate than tele­phone polls and inter­views peo­ple in per­son, a rel­a­tive­ly low­er 32% of Americans said in 2016 that they lived in a house­hold with guns.
The Washington Post said, dif­fer­ent nation­al polls tend to show slight­ly dif­fer­ent rates of gun own­er­ship. The lat­est house­hold gun own­er­ship rate in the General Social Survey, in 2014, was 32 per­cent. The October 2015 Gallup sur­vey showed a high­er rate of 43 per­cent, includ­ing guns kept on prop­er­ty out­side the home.
We can extrap­o­late from the report­ing of those two orga­ni­za­tions that gun own­er­ship seems to be cen­tered between a third to forty-three per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion.
This means, there are over (320, 000,000.00 ) guns in the hands of rough­ly one hun­dred and sev­en mil­lion peo­ple.
Those peo­ple are gen­er­al­ly white, and con­ser­v­a­tive, make no mis­take about it.

With all of the fore­gone, we haven’t even begun to scratch the sur­face of the threat while nation­al­ism pos­es to Americans of all col­or.
It is impor­tant to remem­ber that when they kill those opposed to them, they do not dis­tin­guish between black, brown, or white. Heather Heyer was a young white woman. The Jewish peo­ple who were attacked in their California place of wor­ship two days ago are white. The Jewish wor­shipers in Pennsylvania were white.
Most schools shoot­ing vic­tims are white, even as the per­pe­tra­tors are over­whelm­ing­ly white and influ­enced by white nation­al­ism.
Americans are not safe even in wor­ship places, be they Blacks as in Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina or Jews In California, and the threat can­not be ignored.
In recent weeks there Black Churches were burned with­in quick suc­ces­sion of each oth­er in Louisiana.
I wrote at the time, that as author­i­ties quib­ble over whether the cas­es were linked, those of us who are pay­ing atten­tion rec­og­nized that the rea­son hard­ly any­one is ever held account­able for these heinous crimes, is that some law enforce­ment offi­cers are either respon­si­ble, or they know who the cul­prits are.
In the fifties and six­ties, the kid­nap­pings and mur­der of blacks in the south were large­ly done with the full knowl­edge and coöper­a­tion of cops.
Two days lat­er, we learned that the son of a local Sheriff was arrest­ed for the crimes.

Authorities appre­hend­ed Holden Matthews, 21, in St. Landry Parrish, Louisiana, after they iden­ti­fied him as the sus­pect in alleged­ly set­ting the fires over a span of 10 days. 
Now, to deflect from the seri­ous­ness of the crimes and the hate­ful nature of his actions that pre­cip­i­tat­ed the fires, Matthews was quick­ly charged with sim­ple Arson, and they began cir­cu­lat­ing a nar­ra­tive that he was asso­ci­at­ed with Black met­al, a dis­tant genre of dev­il-wor­ship­ping death met­al music. Black met­al has roots in the Norwegian heavy met­al scene that report­ed­ly was the inspi­ra­tion for sev­er­al church burn­ings in the ear­ly 1990s.
A clever though trans­par­ent attempt to ensure that this mon­ster is not giv­en the full extent of the law as he should for a hate crime of this nature. 

In many cas­es, law enforce­ment and crim­i­nal arson­ists are indis­tin­guish­able.
None of the fore­gone begun on Donald Trump’s watch, but it has darn sure thrived and grown under his nur­tur­ing, except of course, if it is a case in which a Muslim per­son is a per­pe­tra­tor of a vio­lent, vio­lent act. Then every­one gets to talk­ing about ter­ror­ism.
Donald Trump’s wrath is reserved sole­ly for those who com­mit acts of vio­lence against white peo­ple, worse if they are immi­grants.
Otherwise, they are won­der­ful people.

The sleigh of hand which allows the con­tin­u­a­tion and growth of white suprema­cy in America are so insti­tu­tion­al­ized that leg­is­la­tion can­not remove it.
That is not to say that leg­is­la­tion and vig­i­lance will not reduce inci­dences of bla­tant racism, and increase the con­se­quences of it. There will have to be a com­plete and total uproot­ing of the sys­tem which feeds this can­cer­ous enig­ma, which keeps a seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion in per­pet­u­al stress.

What do I mean?
Well, let us take the seat-belt law for exam­ple. A good law which saves lives in instances of auto crash­es. Or Cell-phone laws which makes it an offense to use a cell­phone while oper­at­ing an auto­mo­bile.
Seems rea­son­able that those laws would be enforced by police right?
If you have a dis­cus­sion with white peo­ple about this they would tell you “Oh, of course, the laws are there for a pur­pose, peo­ple must learn to obey the laws.“
Sure we know they are sanc­ti­mo­nious and hyp­o­crit­i­cal in their self-right­eous­ness, and they can afford to be, white priv­i­lege gives them that latitude. 

So if you take a clos­er look at the real aspect of it, which is the enforce­ment, you will walk away with a knot in your stom­ach from the anger you devel­op as a result of their hypocrisy.
If enforce­ment is con­cen­trat­ed in high-den­si­ty areas in which peo­ple of col­or, large­ly black peo­ple live, who do you think will be impact­ed by that enforce­ment?
Now, do you under­stand why white peo­ple are so arro­gant when it comes to law enforce­ment?
The fact is that by and large, enforce­ment is done in black neigh­bor­hoods by white police, while white men and women dri­ve around with­out seat­belt on and on their cell phones.
They sit at traf­fic lights tex­ting on their devices caus­ing our time spent at traf­fic lights to be on the increase.
Enforcement of American laws is done around American cities. American cities are heav­i­ly pop­u­lat­ed with Black and brown peo­ple.
So when they talk about mar­i­jua­na arrests the faces you see are going to be black faces.
When you talk about drunk dri­ving, you will see black faces. Not that blacks con­sume more alco­hol or pot than their white coun­ter­parts, in fact, they actu­al­ly con­sume less accord­ing to research after research.
Blacks have sim­ply borne the brunt of enforce­ment of all kinds in America since Reconstruction. These enforce­ment strate­gies are not acci­den­tal they are intentional.

Police pull over or even stop a black man in the streets and imme­di­ate­ly they go to the go-to ques­tion, “Do you have ID on you”?
In most cas­es, they have no author­i­ty to demand Identification from the per­son with whom they are inter­act­ing.
Some states do have laws which make it manda­to­ry to pro­duce Identification on demand to police. Other states, like New York and some oth­ers, make pro­duc­ing Identification to law enforce­ment manda­to­ry, only if one is oper­at­ing a motor vehi­cle.
Again, to the white pop­u­la­tion, this is noth­ing out of the ordi­nary, to them, it’s sim­ple, “if you have noth­ing to hide why not just show ID?
Never mind that the request may have come from law enforce­ment in a state in which they are not enti­tled to see ID on demand.
Or that they would make no such demand of a white male in those states.

In order to under­stand the per­spec­tive of the black expe­ri­ences in these sit­u­a­tions, one has to under­stand the gen­e­sis of polic­ing in America.
According to [www​.snopes​.com] In 1704, the colony of Carolina devel­oped the fledg­ling United States’ first slave patrol. The patrol con­sist­ed of rov­ing bands of armed white cit­i­zens who would stop, ques­tion, and pun­ish slaves caught with­out a per­mit to trav­el. They were civ­il orga­ni­za­tions, con­trolled and main­tained by coun­ty courts. The way the patrols were orga­nized and main­tained pro­vid­ed a lat­er frame­work for pre­ven­tive (rather than reac­tive) com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the South: 
It is in that con­text that African-Americans con­tin­ue to see police today.
It is in the same con­text that police con­tin­ue to oper­ate and treat peo­ple of col­or today as if the slave patrol days are not over.
And so, that begs the ques­tion, “are the days of the slave patrols over in American law enforce­ment?
If so why have American police con­tin­ue to vio­late the rights of black and brown cit­i­zens with impuni­ty?
If the days of slave patrols are over why do munic­i­pal­i­ties still con­tin­ue to pass ordi­nances which empow­er police to fur­ther vio­late the rights of black cit­i­zens, know­ing full well that white cit­i­zens are not going to be sub­ject to the same enforce­ment tech­niques as blacks are?
Nevertheless, it gives white peo­ple the abil­i­ty to pompous­ly posit as if they are law-abid­ing cit­i­zens, when in fact they are large­ly exempt from many enforce­ment to which blacks are subjected. 

In the New York city in which my busi­ness-place is sit­u­at­ed, I am smack dab on the bor­der between the town in which I live and the city in which I do busi­ness.
The city cops are pret­ty laid back and get along with the cit­i­zens who are large­ly Black and Mexicans despite some com­plaints here and there.
On the oth­er hand, the town cops which are almost 100% white pret­ty much [uses the main Artery which runs through parts of the town into the heart of the city as birds view a feed­ing tree]..
Black and Brown’s peo­ple are tar­get­ed and pulled over by town cops as they tra­verse the lit­tle strip of road­way through the town into the city.
The Town’s traf­fic court is a ver­i­ta­ble mon­ey pit, filled with large­ly black peo­ple, even though the Town is large­ly white.
That kind of dis­pro­por­tion­ate and tar­get­ed enforce­ment lit­er­al­ly holds up and rob black cit­i­zens and give the pro­ceeds to white cops in the form of lucra­tive salaries and ben­e­fits.
White Americans are silent to these insti­tu­tion­al­ized trav­es­ties because it not only excludes them it empow­ers and enrich­es them.
They make the laws and even though you may think the laws are there for every­one if you aren’t pay­ing atten­tion, it real­ly isn’t about the laws them­selves.
It is always about the dis­pro­por­tion­ate enforce­ment and over-polic­ing of black cit­i­zens than it is about the laws them­selves.
That has been the way America does busi­ness from its incep­tion that is how it does busi­ness today.