Black Republicanism is a real apho­rism, how­ev­er, in some ways, it seems as log­i­cal as walk­ing in an East-Westerly direc­tion, such is the inher­ent con­tra­dic­tion of it.

The strug­gle to under­stand the idea of Blacks align­ing them­selves with the Republican par­ty or sup­port­ing the par­ty’s agen­da is a real phe­nom­e­non. Nevertheless, it also begs the ques­tion why have some Blacks in oth­er parts of the world still see the Republican par­ty as an enti­ty wor­thy of their sup­port?

If some­one was to ask me what is it that most black peo­ple who sup­port the Republican par­ty have missed?.….…. I would read­i­ly respond that they missed the fact that the two polit­i­cal par­ties switched roles in the ear­ly 1960’s.
Conversely, If I was asked what is it which caus­es any black per­son to still sup­port the Republican Party, I would read­i­ly opine that the eman­ci­pa­tion procla­ma­tion signed by the then Republican pres­i­dent Abraham Lincoln still have some star­ry-eyed about the par­ty to this very day.

The Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, may be looked at in its most sim­plis­tic form a‑la the unde­ni­able fact that 3.5 mil­lion enslaved African Americans in the des­ig­nat­ed areas of the South were moved from slave to a sense of pseu­do-free­dom.
Or we can scratch the sur­face and look at some hard facts as it relates to the mythol­o­gy sur­round­ing Lincoln’s valian­cy in sign­ing the Emancipation Proclamation. After three(3) years of a bloody civ­il war, Lincoln des­per­ate­ly need­ed bod­ies to fight his war.

The Emancipation Proclamation was lim­it­ed in many ways. It applied only to states that had seced­ed from the United States, leav­ing slav­ery untouched in the loy­al bor­der states. It also express­ly exempt­ed parts of the Confederacy (the Southern seces­sion­ist states) that had already come under Northern con­trol. Most impor­tant, the free­dom it promised depend­ed upon Union (United States) mil­i­tary vic­to­ry. Source[archives.gov]

Although the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slav­ery in the nation, it cap­tured the hearts and imag­i­na­tion of mil­lions of Americans and fun­da­men­tal­ly trans­formed the char­ac­ter of the war. After January 1, 1863, every advance of fed­er­al troops expand­ed the domain of free­dom. Moreover, the Proclamation announced the accep­tance of black men into the Union Army and Navy, enabling the lib­er­at­ed to become lib­er­a­tors. By the end of the war, almost 200,000 black sol­diers and sailors had fought for the Union and freedom.

According to [ Dr. Terry L. Jones of thep​iney​woods​.com] Lincoln became known as “The Great Emancipator,” but in real­i­ty, the Emancipation Proclamation’s promise of free­dom inten­tion­al­ly exclud­ed some 800,000 slaves-many of whom lived in Louisiana as well.
Some his­to­ri­ans have argued that Lincoln hat­ed Slavery, how­ev­er, in a pub­lic let­ter to the New York Tribune pub­lished just a month before he issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln declared “My para­mount objec­tive in this strug­gle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slav­ery. If I could save the Union with­out free­ing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by free­ing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by free­ing some and leav­ing oth­ers alone I would also do that.”
Yea, the Great Emancipator had no deep burn­ing desire in his gut to erad­i­cate the scourge of slav­ery, for him what­ev­er he would do about it had to jus­ti­fy his own end.

Emancipation, how­ev­er, was a com­pli­cat­ed mat­ter because most Northerners were fight­ing to restore the Union and had no inter­est in free­ing the slaves. To win the war, it was absolute­ly vital that Lincoln keep the slave-hold­ing Border States on his side, not to men­tion the thou­sands of slave-own­ing Southerners who had opposed seces­sion and were pro­vid­ing impor­tant sup­port to the Union.

Lincoln knew that if he attempt­ed to free all of the slaves, loy­al slave own­ers in Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware, and in the Union-con­trolled areas of the Confederacy, might well join the Rebels to pro­tect their valu­able slave prop­er­ty. To pre­vent that from hap­pen­ing, the Emancipation Proclamation care­ful­ly avoid­ed free­ing the slaves held by most Unionists.


Lincoln real­ized that slav­ery helped the Confederacy wage its war for inde­pen­dence. Slaves per­formed most of the labor in the South con­struct­ing Rebel mil­i­tary for­ti­fi­ca­tions, work­ing in muni­tions fac­to­ries, and har­vest­ing the food that fed the Confederate army. Every slave who worked in such a man­ner freed up a white man to serve in the army. Source [ Dr. Terry L. Jones]

Probably, the most impor­tant issue of the conun­drum Lincoln faced was the need to adopt­ing eman­ci­pa­tion as an offi­cial war goal also would make it less like­ly that the anti-slav­ery Europeans would inter­vene on the side of the Confederacy.
Lincoln was sin­gu­lar­ly focused on main­tain­ing the Union. If the French entered the war to pro­tect their ter­ri­to­ry of Louisana America as we know it today may well have been only a dream.

The cal­cu­lat­ed nature of the procla­ma­tion was not lost on peo­ple at the time, accord­ing to Professor Jones, one British news­pa­per not­ed, “The prin­ci­ple assert­ed is not that a human being can­not just­ly own anoth­er, but that he can­not own him unless he is loy­al to the United States.“


Even so, the {eman­ci­pa­tion procla­ma­tion} meant that the enslaved African-America pop­u­la­tion toil­ing end­less­ly in degrad­ing servi­tude could have some­thing to look for­ward to, a start­ing point on what would become a seem­ing­ly end­less sojourn to self-auton­o­my and cit­i­zen­ship.
Little did they know that even though the eman­ci­pa­tion procla­ma­tion would to some degree, remove the lit­er­al chains from their ankles, dark forces were already hard at work cre­at­ing an equal­ly brutish sys­tem known as [Jim Crow], which all but made the new­ly lib­er­at­ed blacks slaves again to the very mas­ters from whom they were just freed.

Like two trav­el­ers cross­ing paths in the dark the Republican par­ty which for what its worth, was the par­ty of eman­ci­pa­tion became the polit­i­cal par­ty to which white men ran after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the his­toric Civil Rights Act in a nation­al­ly tele­vised cer­e­mo­ny at the White House.
The Democratic Party was now the par­ty that looked out for the rights of blacks and whites were piss­ing mad.
For the aver­age white man, the negro had no right they should respect.

President Lyndon Johnson has been rumored to have said “We have lost the South for a gen­er­a­tion,” Johnson told an aide after he signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act. 
Dr. Steven J. Allen of cap​i​tal​re​search​.org push­es back against the asser­tion that Johnson ever made those com­ments.
Allen’s argu­ments are root­ed in the con­cept that if LBJ had made those com­ments, he would have been wrong. The Goldwater surge in the South„ he argues fad­ed quick­ly. With a hand­ful of excep­tions, Republican gains in the region in 1964 van­ished by 1966. Decades passed with Democrats still in firm con­trol of the South. 
In seek­ing to label those with whom he dis­agrees, like the Reverend Al Sharpton whom he tar­nish­es pejo­ra­tive­ly a ‘racist preach­er”, Allen for­got that President Johnson could have made the state­ment and be wrong, could have made the state­ment and be right even­tu­al­ly, and that there was no mutu­al exclu­siv­i­ty between com­pet­ing events.

Dr. Steven J. Allen, in seek­ing to estab­lish that the state­ment attrib­uted to President Johnson was a myth, inher­ent­ly failed to speak to the irrefutable fact that for decades after the sign­ing of the civ­il rights act, to the present day, the entire south has been a bas­tion of Republicanism.
An almost impen­e­tra­ble gar­ri­son which has hard­ly seen a Democrat car­ry a south­ern state, out­side Florida except for Carter who won his home state of Georgia, Bill Clinton who car­ried Arkansas and Al Gore win­ning Tennessee.

The laugh­able truth being ignored by Allen is that, whether Johnson said “we lost the south for gen­er­a­tions” or not is man­i­fest­ly unim­por­tant.
The Democratic par­ty even­tu­al­ly lost the south and parts beyond even­tu­al­ly. As a con­sol­i­da­tion of pur­pose devel­oped to re-lit­i­gate, if not retool for a new war under the mantra the south will rise again.

It prob­a­bly makes more sense to lay out the gross atroc­i­ties which the Republican Party has vis­it­ed on peo­ple of col­or since the par­ty took over the per­se­cu­tion of black peo­ple from the south­ern Democrats.
 Voter sup­pres­sion. Police bru­tal­i­ty. Blatant Racism and the list goes on and on. However, no Republican ini­tia­tive has been more detri­men­tal to African-Americans than the Nixon so-called war on drugs, con­tin­ued through Ford, Reagan and Bush.
In the peri­od since the war on drugs was launched the American prison pop­u­la­tion has sky­rock­et­ed to over two mil­lion. Many of those caught in the drag­net have been low-lev­el non­vi­o­lent drug offend­ers who just hap­pen to be black.

Even as Republican poli­cies have packed the pris­ons with non­vi­o­lent drug offend­ers, and result­ed in the depor­ta­tion of count­less oth­ers, state leg­is­la­tures con­trolled by Republicans have passed laws that make it impos­si­ble for offend­ers who have done time in prison to vote after they have paid their debt to soci­ety.
This has ren­dered a huge seg­ment of the male black pop­u­la­tion not just felons but made them unem­ploy­able and with­out the abil­i­ty to chose their lead­ers.
In many cas­es, they are denied basic ben­e­fits such as food stamps for the rest of their lives, that includes preg­nant women, peo­ple in drug treat­ment or recov­ery, and peo­ple suf­fer­ing from HIV/​AIDS sim­ply because they were once caught with drugs.
These racist dra­con­ian poli­cies ensure the recidi­vism of blacks and ensure that pris­ons remain filled with black bodies.

Speaking to this in her best sell­ing book [the new Jim Crow] Lawyer, Activist and Author Michelle Alexander said;” If shack­ling for­mer pris­on­ers with a life­time of debt and autho­riz­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion against them in employ­ment, hous­ing, edu­ca­tion, and pub­lic ben­e­fits is not enough to send the mes­sage that they are not want­ed and not even con­sid­ered full cit­i­zens, then strip­ping vot­ing rights from those labeled crim­i­nals sure­ly gets the point across.”

I will prob­a­bly not change a sin­gle mind of the black peo­ple who vote Republican.
That was not my inten­tion, what I set out to do in this piece was to estab­lish a fac­tu­al foun­da­tion that puts to rest the friv­o­lous argu­ments around black peo­ple’s sup­port for a polit­i­cal par­ty which lit­er­al­ly hates them and has sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly worked toward their destruc­tion.
Black Republicanism is an oxy­moron that only makes sense if you are trav­el­ing in an east-west­er­ly direction.

Patriot Prayer’s leader is half-Japanese. Black and brown faces march with the Proud Boys. Is the future of hate multicultural?

PORTLAND, Oregon — Outfitted in a flak jack­et and fight­ing gloves, Enrique Tarrio was one of dozens of black, Latino, and Asian men who marched along­side white suprema­cists in Portland on Aug. 4.

Tarrio, who iden­ti­fies as Afro-Cuban, is pres­i­dent of the Miami chap­ter of the Proud Boys, who call them­selves “Western chau­vin­ists,” and “reg­u­lar­ly spout white-nation­al­ist memes and main­tain affil­i­a­tions with known extrem­ists,” accord­ing to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Last month, pri­or to the Patriot Prayer ral­ly he attend­ed in Portland, Tarrio was pic­tured with oth­er far-right activists mak­ing a hand sign that start­ed as a hoax but has become an in-joke. Last year, Tarrio said trav­eled to Charlottesville, Virginia, for the Unite the Rightral­ly that end­ed with a neo-Nazi alleged­ly killing an anti-fas­cist pro­test­er. (The Proud Boys said any mem­bers who went to the event were kicked out.)

Patriot Prayer + Proud Boys in Vancouver night b4 Aug 4 Portland ral­ly many fear will end in vio­lence. Tusitala “Tiny” Toese and oth­ers make an appar­ent “White Power” hand ges­ture. T‑shirts read, “Pinochet Did Nothing Wrong.”

“A lot of these young guys, espe­cial­ly from the soft­ware world, who are being sucked into white nation­al­ism, start out being worked up about Ayn Rand in high school.”— David Neiwert 

Tarrio and oth­er peo­ple of col­or at the far-right ral­lies claim insti­tu­tion­al racism no longer exists in America. In their view, blacks are to blame for any lin­ger­ing inequal­i­ty because they are depen­dent on wel­fare, lack strong lead­er­ship, and believe Democrats who tell them “You’re always going to be broke. You’re not going to make it in soci­ety because of insti­tu­tion­al racism,” as one mixed-race man put it.

If racism doesn’t exist, I ask Tarrio, how would he explain the dis­pro­por­tion­ate killing of young black men by police? “Hip-hop cul­ture,” he says. It “glo­ri­fies that lifestyle… of sell­ing drugs, shoot­ing up.” Because of that, “Obviously you’re going to have high­er crime rates. Obviously you’re going to have more police pres­ence and more con­fronta­tions.” (Police kill black males aged 15 to 34 at nine times the rate of the gen­er­al population.)

Elysa Sanchez, who is black and Puerto Rican, attend­ed the “Liberty or Death Rally Against Left-Wing Violence” in Seattle on Aug. 18, join­ing about 20 mili­ti­a­men open-car­ry­ing hand­guns and semi-auto­mat­ic rifles.

Sanchez says, “If black peo­ple are com­mit­ting more mur­ders, more rob­beries, more thefts, more vio­lent crime, that’s why you would see more black men hav­ing encoun­ters with the police.”

Also in Seattle, Franky Price, who said he is “black and white,”wore a T‑shirt read­ing, “It’s okay to be white.” Read more here: https://​www​.thedai​ly​beast​.com/​w​h​y​-​y​o​u​n​g​-​m​e​n​-​o​f​-​c​o​l​o​r​-​a​r​e​-​j​o​i​n​i​n​g​-​w​h​i​t​e​-​s​u​p​r​e​m​a​c​i​s​t​-​g​r​o​ups

It took them a while to do it and one has to won­der why? Even, when the evi­dence is glar­ing, there are hes­i­ta­tions to treat attacks on Black Americans as hate crimes?
That “it”, is rec­og­niz­ing that the brazen mur­der of two elder­ly black peo­ple in a Kentucky super­mar­ket was a hate crime.
As the Nation grieves the dead­liest attack on Jews in America’s his­to­ry, a case in which a right-wing hate mon­ger mas­sa­cred peo­ple sole­ly on the basis of their faith, the mur­der of two inno­cent African-Americans in a Kentucky Kroger gets shoved to the side.


‘Whites Don’t Shoot Whites,’ Said Alleged Kroger Shooter  Gregory Alan Bush when con­front­ed by an armed white man. The man did not shoot at him and so he hus­tled away before being tak­en alive by police.
You ever noticed how lit­er­al­ly all of these mur­der­ous losers always have three names, think about it? 

Now the evi­dence was always there that this was a racial­ly moti­vat­ed shoot­ing, he killed two black peo­ple and no one else. He tried enter­ing an African-American church before opt­ing for the Kroger super­mar­ket. And then he told a white man who might have nailed his sor­ry ass, that “whites do not kill whites.” Obviously, his the­o­ry had some res­o­nance with his white con­tem­po­rary as well as with the police, he was not killed by that man and he was cer­tain­ly tak­en alive by the police.

Bush report­ed­ly has a black ex-wife who said in court records that he called her a “nig­ger bitch.” [Lie with Dogs you rise with flees](sorry Bud).
The larg­er take­away which gen­er­al­ly gets lost in the shuf­fle is the skillset of police depart­ments across the coun­try.
They have the incred­i­ble abil­i­ty to take the most despi­ca­ble white mur­der­ers into cus­tody with­out harm­ing them.
I’m actu­al­ly sur­prised they did not take him to Burger King and got him a super­sized whop­per with extra fries and a large Frosty.


Yet two cow­ards wear­ing police uni­forms in the state of Florida could­n’t restrain a 14-year-old black girl with­out pum­melling her kid­neys in order to arrest her for the very seri­ous crime of talk­ing back at police.
These are the Gestapo tac­tics play­ing out across the coun­try, yet vio­lent white right-wing extrem­ist kill who they hate and are almost always tak­en into cus­tody alive.

As for African-American men whose only crimes is that they are occu­py­ing their black skins, it is quite com­mon to receive mul­ti­ple gun­shots to the back for sim­ply exist­ing.
In a very brief moment of time since Donald Trump has esca­lat­ed his war of words on the media and has declared pub­licly that he is a white Nationalist much has hap­pened.
Here are a few of the events which have occurred.

• September 26: Rep. Kia Morris resigns as the only black elect­ed offi­cial in Vermont after sus­tained racist threats and harassment.
  
• October 23: Georgia Republican guber­na­to­r­i­al nom­i­nee Brian Kemp (who also over­sees the governor’s elec­tion as Secretary of State) is caught on tape com­plain­ing that minori­ties might “Exercise their right to vote” in the governor’s race.
  
• October 23: President Donald Trump declares him­self a white nation­al­ist on nation­al tele­vi­sion dur­ing a ral­ly in Houston for his new best friend Senator Ted Cruz.
  
• October 24: Barack and Michelle Obama, Cory Booker, Eric Holder and Maxine Waters all receive pipe bombs in the mail from a racist Trump sup­port­er (do we need to real­ly spec­i­fy that any­more?) Cesar Sayoc who is cap­tured just days lat­er. Unharmed.
  
• October 24: 51-year-old, white male Gregory Bush goes on a shoot­ing spree in a Kentucky gro­cery store, killing two African Americans, alleged­ly spar­ing white peo­ple by declar­ing “Whites don’t shoot whites.” He planned on tar­get­ing a near­by black church had he not been appre­hend­ed. Alive of course.
  
• October 27: At least 11 peo­ple are killed in a Pittsburgh syn­a­gogue and Robert D. Bowers, 46, the man charged with the killings, is revealed to have anti­se­mit­ic views, report­ed­ly shout­ing them dur­ing the shooting.

Harriet Tubman was quot­ed as hav­ing said “I saved a thou­sand slaves and could have saved thou­sands more, if only they knew they were slaves’.


We know that not every Black per­son act or think the same way, we are all dif­fer­ent human beings but lordy.

While you were divert­ed by the rash of bombs sent to two pre­vi­ous Democratic pres­i­dents and their fam­i­lies, Vice President Joe Biden a mem­ber of Congress and oth­er promi­nent Trump crit­ics a white wing domes­tic ter­ror­ist walked into a Kroger in Kentucky and killed two African-Americans.

The main­stream media in the mean­time is heav­i­ly invest­ed in chas­ing the lat­est shiny object Trump throws them while this egre­gious inci­dent has gone on with­out any report­ing to date.

The Kroger where Gregory Bush killed two black people he didn’t know appears to have been his plan B, after a failed attempt to replicate Dylann Roof.

A 51-year-old man who killed two peo­ple at a Kentucky gro­cery and was sub­dued by a civil­ian who told him that “whites don’t shoot whites” had ear­li­er tried to enter a church with a pre­dom­i­nant­ly black con­gre­ga­tion, police con­firmed late Thursday.

Though chief of police Sam Rogers refused to “spec­u­late on motive at this time” dur­ing an after­noon news con­fer­ence in Jeffersontown, Kentucky, the killer’s failed attempt to enter the town’s First Baptist church was caught on video. Though the church wel­comes all com­ers, it “is head­ed by a black pas­tor and has a large African-American mem­ber­ship” accord­ing to the Associated Press.

Predominantly black con­gre­ga­tions of Baptists have been close­ly linked to strug­gles for social, legal, and eco­nom­ic equal­i­ty for African American peo­ple in the U.S. for cen­turies. As such, they have repeat­ed­ly become tar­gets for racist vio­lence — includ­ing the mas­sacre of nine parish­ioners at a famed A.M.E. church in Charleston, South Carolina, dur­ing a mid-week bible study meet­ing by white suprema­cist Dylann Roof in 2015.

Jeffersontown’s First Baptist holds reg­u­lar Wednesday night ser­vices, as well as week­ly bible study groups and choir prac­tices. The killer tried to enter the church in the mid-after­noon, how­ev­er, and would like­ly not have found it crowd­ed had he been able to gain entry.

Rogers’ pro­fes­sion­al reluc­tance to spec­u­late on what moti­vat­ed Gregory Bush to kill two peo­ple in the large Louisville sub­urb on Wednesday is under­stand­able, but one detail from the son of the man who con­front­ed and sub­dued Bush before police had arrived sheds sub­stan­tial light on the killer’s brainwaves.

“He said, ‘Don’t shoot me, I won’t shoot you.’ He’s like, ‘Whites don’t kill whites,’” Steve Zinninger, son of the man who con­front­ed Bush out­side the store, told local WAVE‑3 News, explain­ing how his father had got­ten Bush to stop shoot­ing. Police seemed to con­tra­dict some details of Zinninger’s account, say­ing that the licensed firearm own­er who con­front­ed Bush had exchanged gun­fire with the man. They did not com­ment on the report­ed racial sol­i­dar­i­ty expressed between the two in the park­ing lot. 00:13 /​00:14SKIP AD

Both peo­ple Bush killed — a man inside the store, and a woman he pur­sued out of the store — were black.

Maurice Stallard, 69, was at the store buy­ing poster board for his grand­son, who the Courier-Journal reports was stand­ing next to him when he was killed. Friends described Stallard “as a warm, easy-going man who always greet­ed peo­ple with a hug” and “as a hard-work­ing fam­i­ly man,” the paper wrote.

Vickie Lee Jones, 67, lived a mile or so from the store and was in the park­ing lot when Bush shot and killed her. Family mem­bers told the Courier-Journal that Jones, a wid­ow since 2010, “had moved to Jeffersontown to be safe” and described her as “one of the sweet­est peo­ple you could know.”

Years before he attacked the two strangers — calm­ly hol­ster­ing his gun to walk out of the store between the two killings, accord­ing to local reports — Bush had showed signs of insta­bil­i­ty and vio­lence, fam­i­ly mem­bers told the Associated Press. He had attacked his elder­ly par­ents in 2009 and threat­ened his ex-wife dur­ing a court hear­ing the same year, the wire ser­vice report­ed.

Like Roof before him, Bush was brought in by police alive and unharmed. He has been charged with two counts of mur­der and sev­er­al less­er crimes relat­ed to dis­charg­ing a firearm in pub­lic.
https://​thinkprogress​.org/​r​a​c​i​s​t​-​s​h​o​o​t​e​r​-​b​l​a​c​k​-​c​h​u​r​c​h​-​k​e​n​t​u​c​k​y​-​4​4​d​1​c​b​5​9​3​a​75/

By Michael Harriot

This sto­ry is ridiculous.

This sto­ry is so ridicu­lous it will not dis­cuss library col­o­niza­tion, the trou­bling trend of peo­ple plan­ning book heists by con­ning their way into school facil­i­ties under the pre­tense of study­ing. The offend­ing par­ty in this tale does not require the req­ui­site nick­name. She shall not be called Laura the Librarian or Becky the Book Bouncer. We shall call ber Brittany McNerlin (or maybe “Brittni” with a heart over the i), because that is her name.

However, this sto­ry begs one question:

What’s the pur­pose of police?

Is their pur­pose to pro­tect and serve? Or are cops tools that can be weaponized at the behest of our white broth­ers and sis­ters who believe the world exists only to serve their desires, and there­fore, law enforce­ment is lit­tle more than a Caucasian cus­tomer com­plaint hotline?

This sto­ry begins on Oct. 10 when Juán-Pabló Gonźalez, a black stu­dent at the Catholic University of America, decid­ed he want­ed to study at the university’s law library. Gonźalez had been cor­rect­ly informed that as a Master of Library and Information Sciences stu­dent, he had access to the law library. He had stud­ied in the facil­i­ty on numer­ous occa­sions before and had no trou­ble in the past.

Although he was sup­posed to swipe his stu­dent iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card to gain entry, Gonźalez told The Root his ID nev­er worked at the building.

“I had just been ring­ing the buzzer, wait­ing for them to buzz me in and then show­ing them my ID to prove I was a library infor­ma­tion sci­ence stu­dent,” Gonźalez said. “And I was able to get in with­out any issues.”

But on this day, Gonźalez noticed the door was propped open when he arrived. Per his usu­al rou­tine, Gonzalez showed his ID and announced to McNerlin he would be study­ing in the law library.

“She was pret­ty rude,” Gonźalez recount­ed. “She said: ‘The law library is for law library stu­dents.’ So I told her that I real­ized that, but that we’d been giv­en per­mis­sion to use the library.”

When Gonźalez told her that he had spo­ken to the librar­i­an at the facil­i­ty, but couldn’t recall the name, McNerlin informed him he couldn’t come in; nei­ther would she offer a name to jog his memory.

“I tried to explain to her that, because we have a law librar­i­an pro­gram, we had access to the facil­i­ty,” Gonźalez said.

After a brief back and forth, the woman allowed Gonźalez o go study and told him she would leave a note say­ing she had benev­o­lent­ly grant­ed a black man access to the library with­out his free­dom papers.

“Because the entire trans­ac­tion was so neg­a­tive, I went back and said, ‘Can I have your supervisor’s infor­ma­tion?’ I didn’t say any­thing else,” Gonźalez said, to which she refused. “I said: ‘I’m ask­ing for the infor­ma­tion of the man­ag­ing librar­i­an of this facil­i­ty and you’re refus­ing? On what basis? Just because you don’t like the way I’m asking?’”

After McNerlin refused Gonźalez sec­ond request, she final­ly “snatched” a busi­ness card from the desk with the librarian’s information.

“I asked some more ques­tions about why she took so long to give me the infor­ma­tion … She said I was being argu­men­ta­tive and that she didn’t like my tone,” Gonźalez said, to which he replied: “I didn’t ask for your per­son­al opin­ion. I just asked for infor­ma­tion about this facil­i­ty so that I can use it.”

So McNerlin called the police.

When she informed Gonźalez she was alert­ing the author­i­ties, he asked her: “On what basis? Because you don’t like the ques­tions I’m asking?”

From there, Gonźalez began record­ing the inci­dent. The six-minute video shows that McNerlin does not appear to be in any immi­nent dan­ger and Gonźalez does not raise his voice above a calm half-whis­per. When the clip begins, McNerlin is on the phone telling the Catholic University Department of Public Safety about “an argu­men­ta­tive stu­dent,” which I didn’t even know was a legal­ly pun­ish­able offense.

That must make me a career crim­i­nal, then.

When Gonźalez specif­i­cal­ly asked McNerlin why their back-and-forth war­rant­ed a police call, she replied: “I’ve answered your ques­tions. You didn’t appre­ci­ate my answers …” She admits she has done this at least one oth­er time in a sit­u­a­tion “very sim­i­lar to this.”

Gonźalez offered to let the whole thing go if McNerlin called off the cops, ask­ing: “May I go into the library and you can­cel your call to the police?”

McNerlin wasn’t hav­ing it.

The most reveal­ing part of the video was when the when the Catholic University police offi­cers arrived. One would expect McNerlin to con­coct a har­row­ing sto­ry about how she felt threat­ened and how Gonźalez burst into the library and demand­ed that he stay.

Nah, bruh. She told them exact­ly what happened.

Summoning all of the aggriev­ed-white vic­tim­iza­tion her voice could muster, McNerlin calm­ly explained, with a straight face no less, that she called the police because Gonzalez ques­tioned her, made state­ments about the col­or of his skin, was “becom­ing argu­men­ta­tive,” and she “did not appre­ci­ate it.”

That was it. That was her entire expla­na­tion of why she called the police.

Gonźalez reports that at least sev­en offi­cers arrived before he was forced to leave. He explained to The Root that he filed a com­plaint against Mcnerlin, which the school said only war­rant­ed “addi­tion­al training.”

Gonźalez also met with human resource offi­cials from Catholic University who he says dis­missed his sto­ry until he showed them video evidence.

If you think Gonźalez was not in any immi­nent dan­ger, you should be remind­ed of Sam Dubose, who was shot and killed by University of Cincinnati Police offi­cer Ray Tensing in 2015.

Or maybe you’ve heard of Jason Washington, the Navy vet who was shot nine McNerlinMcNerlintimes by Portland State University offi­cers James Dewey and Shawn McKenzie way back in 2018.

Although they might look harm­less, Catholic University describes its police force this way:

Campus spe­cial police offi­cers are appoint­ed by the chief of police of the Metropolitan Police Department under the pro­vi­sions of the D.C. Official Code to pro­tect the cam­pus prop­er­ty of an aca­d­e­m­ic insti­tu­tion of high­er edu­ca­tion… Campus spe­cial police offi­cers have full police author­i­ty, includ­ing arrest pow­er, on the premis­es they are assigned to pro­tect or out­side of the premis­es in fresh pur­suit for offens­es com­mit­ted on the premises …

Persons arrest­ed by cam­pus spe­cial police offi­cers are trans­port­ed to a facil­i­ty of the Metropolitan Police Department for processing.

Gonźalez says he has encoun­tered pre­vi­ous inci­dents of racism as a stu­dent at Catholic, includ­ing notes with the n‑word being slipped under his dor­mi­to­ry room door and being ques­tioned by cam­pus police after some­one report­ed­ly called the cops on “two sus­pi­cious black males” stand­ing out­side their dorm.

“I’m not going to accept the racism that’s on this cam­pus. I’m not going to be qui­et, and I’m going to chal­lenge it,” he said.

Watch the entire inci­dent below: