Rev. William Barber: Trump’s outreach is ‘hypocrisy’ after he cheered violent white supporters

SARAH K. BURRIS/Raw Story

North Carolina NAACP chair and civil rights activist Rev. William Barber noted on MSNBC’s “Hardball” Thursday that Trump delivers one message to white communities about African-Americans and an entirely different one to communities of color.

In a discussion about the recent shootings of Terence Crutcher in Tulsa, Oklahoma and Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte, North Carolina, fill-in host Steve Kornacki remarked that Trump received backlash from the police community after endorsing him for president. “Was she choking?” Trump asked of the female officer who shot and killed Crutcher.

When asked what his reaction was to hearing from Trump this week, Barber outright called Trump hypocritical.

“There’s so much hypocrisy and insult in what Donald Trump said,” Barber began. “He is a man who has inflamed racial tension, applauded members of his rallies, who have actually hit African-Americans. He has joined in this narrative that somehow, to be against racial injustice and against racism engaged by police is to, in fact, be anti-police, when, in fact, the black and the white community that is also marching with black lives matter and the NAACP and the latino are not anti-police, we’re anti-bad police.”

Barber went on to clarify that even good police are also against bad police officers who commit acts like we’ve seen this week and over the last several years. “Because it makes it bad for all good police,” he continued.

Recalling the way Trump began his campaign, Barber remarked that there has been a concerning thread of racism throughout the last year.

“Remember, his campaign started talking about overturning the 14th Amendment. When he reaches out to the black community, he doesn’t say the things in front of the black community he says in front of the white community. For instance, in front of the white community, he questioned the birth of the president. He didn’t do that in front of the black audience. In front of the white community, he talks about rolling back Obamacare, but in front of the black community, he doesn’t tell them that that means that 3 million black people will lose their health insurance. In front of the white community, he talks about public education and vouchers. In front of the black community, he doesn’t say that that will lead to more poverty schools and resegregated schools.

Barber went on to call Trump “exactly the wrong one” to deliver any message to the black community based on his track record. “And even today he floated frisking, when in fact, frisking has been found — not frisking, excuse me, profiling, and stop and frisk, has been found unconstitutional, and not effective. So, actually, his proposals alone — we need trust, we need transparency, we need better training, we need more than just discussion about racism, we need racial transformation.”

When it comes to the killings over the last few days, Barber said that the power given to racists so far too much. “We need to understand something, this is very simple, and that’s why you see black and white people together with these protests. A badge and a gun, the ability to serve a warrant and take a person’s family member out of their house. The ability to use lethal force is too much power for a bigot, for someone that is trigger happy, and for someone that does not understand that their first role is to protect and serve, not to shoot and kill.”

Barber made news at the Democratic National Convention in July, when he gave a powerful and rousing sermon-like speech where he demanded we “shock this nation with the power of love. We must shock this nation with the power of mercy. We must shock this nation and fight for justice for all. We can’t give up on the heart of our democracy.”

Check out the full interview with Rev. Barber below:

Yes Donald Trump supporters should be shamed

For people who lives outside of the state of Michigan, the Detroit News is probably known for two things 1. carrying the water for the state and national Republican party. and  2. their editorial board goes out its way to  justify or defend racism.

For their ironically titled section "Think" the second moron in charge behind resident grand wizard Nolan Finley Ingrid Jacques writes a piece about how hard it is for Donald Trump supporters and mean people are going to shame them. A couple of things the  people who are supporting Donald Trump were the same people eight years ago mocking then Senator Obama as only being a community organizer and citing he has no experience to become president. Yet Donald Trump has no history of being elected to anything and if you cite his business record as a reason then let's look at that record 1. his business owes millions of dollars in debt  and 2. the man lost money in the casino business.

She whines about Clinton's basket of deplorable, which is an incorrect statement it's not half most if not all of Donald Trump supporters are racist. Trump kicked off his campaign claiming Mexican immigrants were criminals and rapist, on social media Donald Trump and his sons have retweeted white nationalists and other white pride accounts. And he recycles myths about the black community in front of mostly white audiences. And just yesterday he wants to make stop and frisk a national thing and the only people that get stop by this program are black and latino men.  Before that Donnie jr decided to tweet an offensive meme comparing Syrian refugees as Skittles.

Let me go back further one of Trump's top campaign managers worked for the biggest right-wing website on the web today "Breitbart" and that site is home to people who don't care for people of color, women, people in the LGBT community and non-Christians.  And Jewish journalists are coming out and telling their stories of Trump supporters posting anti-semantic bullshit in their Twitter timelines and emails. All Ingrid has to do is go to Google and type Trump rallies and racism she'll see the New York Times video entitled "Voices from Donald Trump's rallies" where you hear Trump supporters scream dirty beaners, you see a guy wearing a shirt saying "Fuck Islam" and during a portion of Donald Trump's speech to the crowd he mentions President Obama and you could hear a person scream "Fuck that nigger". Even the Daily show ripped the white hood of Trump supporters by asking them simple questions and these morons fucking it up.

So in closing yes Donald Trump supporters should be ashamed because there is no logical reason case can be made for why Donald Trump should be president.

“Alt-Right” White Nationalist Richard Spencer On Donald Trump: “This Is What We Want In A Leader”

RICHARD SPENCER: What we see in Trump is to a degree about policy. The fact that Trump, from day one, defined his campaign in terms of immigration I think that was key, and extremely important but I don’t think our support of Trump is really about policy at the end of the day. I think it actually, you could say its about style over substance, because, policy, what does that really matter?

I think it’s really about Trump’s style, the fact that he doesn’t back down, the fact that he’s willing to confront his enemies, mostly on the left. There’s something about him, there’s something high energy, that is infectious, that you look at that and you think: this is what a leader looks like, this is what we want. Even in all his vulgarity and I would never deny him, this is what we want in a leader. This is someone who can make the future. So I think that is the way I would define our love of Trump, is that he seems to be willing to go there, he seems to be willing to confront people.  And that is very different from the cuckold.

CNN Anchor Doesn't See Racial Component To Brutal Police Response To Texas Pool Party

From the June 8 edition of CNN's Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield:

 

 

White McKinney resident: Cop ‘deserves a medal’ for pulling gun on black kids at pool party

DAVID EDWARDS/Raw Story

A Texas woman said on Monday that a McKinney police officer “deserves a medal” after he pulled his firearm on black teens who were having a pool party in her neighborhood.

In video that was recorded on Friday, Cpl. Eric Casebolt could be seen manhandling a young teen girl in a bathing suit and pulling his gun on other teens who approach him. Casebolt was placed on administrative leave over the weekend after the video went viral.

While many said that the the officer went overboard in responding to complaints about the pool party, at least one white resident of the neighborhood, who refused to be named because of alleged death threats, told CNN that the officer was a hero.

“I want everyone to know that that police officer, along with everyone else, they were completely in the right and protecting everyone,” the woman opined to CNN’s Nick Valencia. “He was not out of line. I completely support him drawing his weapon or a Taser or whatever it was that he did pull because he was being attacked from behind.”

“I believe that if your life is threatened, you have every right to pull a gun. He probably didn’t intend on using it. I feel horrible for McKinney PD and and the backlash they’re getting for this.”

The woman added that the officer “deserves a medal for what he did.”

“I don’t believe he was out of line one bit,” she insisted. “Those kids were taunting them and cursing them out, have no respect for authority and as soon as their parents got here, they didn’t even care one bit about how they were treating the officers and why they got into that situation.”

Watch the video below from CNN, broadcast June 8, 2015.

Ex-McKinney cop: Police force has a race problem and they need to ‘get it under control’

TOM BOGGIONI/Raw Story

Appearing on Fox4, a former McKinney police officer blasted the conduct of Officer Eric Casebolt, who threw an unarmed teenage girl to the ground, before saying local police authorities need to nip their race problem in the bud before it grows.

According to former officer Pete Schulte, Casebolt was over the line when he roughly pulled 15-year-old Dajerria Becton to the ground, saying, “I don’t care what she was yelling at that officer. Anything would not have justified throwing her to the ground and pushing her down and throwing her face into the concrete like he did.”

Commenting on Casebolt drawing his service weapon as spectators came to help the screaming girl, Schulte called it “crazy,” before noting that one of the fellow officers who came to Casebolt’s aid grabbed his arm as if pulling the weapon down.

Schulte, who is now an attorney, had advice to the McKinney Police Department, saying they needed to get the fallout from the viral video “under control,” due to the racial implications.

“There is an indication based on watching the video that the white people who were around the officers weren’t talked to, they weren’t pushed away, they weren’t told to get on the ground, they weren’t put in handcuffs. The only individuals McKinney police were doing that to were those that were African-American,” he said.

“McKinney police have got to get this under control before tomorrow,” he stated “At this point in America, in policing, There’s too much out there right now with Ferguson. They got to get out there in front of this and make sure that citizens, even outside of the city of McKinney, understand that they’re going to do the right thing and take corrective action and that this was not racially motivated.”

Watch the video below from Fox4:

Fox4News.com | Dallas-Fort Worth News, Weather, Sports

White Woman Used Racial Slurs, Slapped Her, Texas Pool Party Host Says

BY CARIMAH TOWNES/Think Progress

After a viral video of police brutalizing black teenagers in swimsuits in Texas sparked national outrage, a second video has surfaced of a party host detailing a violent encounter before the cops arrived at the scene.

According to 19-year-old community member Tatiana, who put together the event to celebrate the end of the school year, several white people at the pool hurled racial slurs at her friends, calling one a “black f-er” and talking about Section 8 public housing. When 14-year-old friend Grace Stone stood up for the group, saying the comments were racist, the man and woman started berating her. Tatiana alleges she stepped in to tell the white couple that they shouldn’t verbally attack a young girl, at which point they told her to “go back to [her] Section 8 home.” One woman, identified as Kate, allegedly slapped Tatiana in the face, before attacking the teenager with the help of another woman.

Tatiana’s mother, who was also featured in the YouTube video, responded, “I’m just upset that we couldn’t have a peaceful event. [If] it was any issue that they truly had, they should’ve came to me, the adult that was here at the event…and not go to that extreme.”

Watch the video of Tatiana:

Brandon Brooks, a white teenager who filmed first video of the police encounter, explained to Buzzfeed News that many of the black kids had special passes to swim in the community pool, although some did jump the fence. “I think a bunch of white parents were angry that a bunch of black kids who don’t live in the neighborhood were in the pool,” he said. However, he maintains, many of the kids who were handcuffed and told to get on the ground were ‘innocent bystanders.’

Having seen the original video on YouTube, Tom Fuentes, a former assistant director for the FBI told CNN that the officer’s actions were unjustified, and that the main officer was “running around and escalating” the situation. “He’s out of control. He clearly has no self-discipline. He lost control of his temper. Nothing good can happen at that point. Thankfully he didn’t shoot somebody,” he concluded.

But local homeowners defended the officers’ actions, arguing the officers’ safety was threatened. “I feel absolutely horrible for the police and what’s going on… they were completely outnumbered and they were just doing the right thing when these kids were fleeing and using profanity and threatening security guards,” an anonymous woman told Fox4. Notes thanking the officers were also hung on the pool fence.

All-white N.J. wrestling team says lynching photo of black dummy was meant ‘innocently

By Scott Kaufman/Raw Story

Eight members of a Phillipsburgh, New Jersey high school wrestling team were banned from the state tournament and suspended for three days each after a photograph of them “lynching” a black wrestling dummy wearing a rival school’s t-shirt.

The students, who are white, surrounded the black wrestling dummy dressed in a Paulsboro High School t-shirt. According to the 2010 census, 36.7 percent of residents of Paulsboro, New Jersey are African-American, compared to only 7.5 percent of Phillipsburgh.

Attorney Scott Wilhelm, speaking on behalf of the students, said that “[w]hen we spontaneously set the scene and posed for the photograph, our sole purpose was to promote school spirit and portray our wrestling team as victor over two of our archrivals — Paulsboro High School and Kittatinny High School, and not for any other purpose.”

Wilhelm insisted that the dummy was not meant to represent a person of any particular race: “The inanimate figure in the photograph is a wrestling dummy, which is owned by the Phillipsburg High School, and is used in our daily practices, and is used by most high school wrestling teams.”

“It is our understanding,” Wilhelm said, “that the dummies are manufactured in only dark leather. In outfitting the wrestling dummy, we did not give any thought to the physical appearance of the dummy as anything other than an unidentified, generic wrestler – clothed in a Paulsboro T-shirt over a Kittatinny [High School] singlet. Likewise, our dress was standard wrestling uniforms, and our poses were not premeditated, but rather, spontaneous gestures without any forethought.”

According to Wilhelm, the students’ minds were “clouded” by their recent success in a tournament, but now understand that others may have found their celebration offensive, “however innocently intended.”

One Paulsboro wrestler, Zach Richard, told a CBS 2 reporter that there was nothing “innocent” about it, saying “I think they knew what they was doing.”

The Executive Director of the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA), Steven Timko, said that the photograph “violates the principles of good sportsmanship and is a flagrant violation of the NJSIAA Sportsmanship Rule.” It demonstrated a “fundamental disrespect” for opponents and used “violent imagery that has no place in high school sports.”

Watch a report on the incident from CBS 2 below.

This Bizarre Racial Profiling Lawsuit Will Do Nothing To Restore Your Faith In Mississippi

BY IAN MILLHISER/Think Progress

Cathryn Stout is a doctoral student at Saint Louis University researching a paper on how residents of Mississippi are working to combat negative stereotypes about their state. She may want to reconsider that paper topic, however, after her alleged encounter with three Mississippi police officers.

According to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on Friday, Stout was traveling through Mississippi with a man named Raymond Montgomery to conduct interviews for her academic research when they were stopped by a highway patrol officer. Both Stout and Montgomery are African American.

The trooper allegedly told them they were stopped because Stout’s license plate was framed by an Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority tag holder that obscured part of her plate. He issued no ticket for this supposed violation, however, and her attorney claims that her tag holder broke no Mississippi law. Alpha Kappa Alpha is an historically black sorority.

After Montgomery denied a request by the trooper to search the vehicle, the lawsuit alleges that things escalated very quickly. Over the course of the next hour, two more police officers arrived on the scene, including a police staff sergeant and an officer with a police dog. The officers interrogated Stout about the purpose of her trip to Mississippi. They asked if anyone had asked them to “transport anything” or if they were carrying weapons. When Stout began to video record the encounter with her cell phone, one of the officers allegedly ordered her to put her phone away. By the time the police finally let Stout and Montgomery go, the lawsuit alleges, the officers had rummaged through their luggage and Stout’s purse. They’d searched every compartment of the vehicle, and they’d used a wrench and a crowbar to remove the panels on the sides of Stout’s car.

They found nothing incriminating.

The Supreme Court has made these kinds of lawsuits very difficult to win. Among other things, the Court held in Whren v. United States that police who witness a driver committing a minor traffic offense can use that offense as a pretext to stop the vehicle and potentially escalate the stop into a search for evidence of a much more serious crime. Nevertheless, there are factors in Stout and Montgomery’s case — the possibility of racial profiling, the fact that police may has escalated the search without any valid justification for doing so, the fact that Stout’s license plate holder may not have violated any actual laws — that could enable them to prevail.

In the meantime, however, both Stout and Montgomery sought counseling to deal with the emotional toll exacted by this alleged incident. Stout also has not returned to central Mississippi, despite the fact that these trips are a useful component of her academic research, “due to emotional wounds and fear of a similar incident.”

GOP Official Resigns After Saying Purpose Of Voter ID Is To Suppress Votes Of Democrats, ‘Lazy Blacks’

BY IAN MILLHISER/Think Progress

Until Thursday, Don Yelton was a precinct chair in the Buncombe County, North Carolina Republican Party. That ended after a Daily Show interview riddled with racism and candid admissions about the purpose of a voter suppression bill enacted by Republican lawmakers in his state. Over the course of the interview Yelton admitted that he supports requiring voters to show ID, in addition to the other, many voter suppression provisions included in the North Carolina law, because “the law is going to kick the Democrats in the butt.” He also denied that the law is racist during the course of an interview where he both used a particular racial slur that begins with the letter “n” and claimed that he is not racist because he “one my best friends is black.” Watch it:

Yelton also offered several other reasons why he supports the voter suppression law. Among them, “[i]f it hurts a bunch of college kids that’s too lazy to get up off their bohunkus [sic] and get a photo ID, so be it,” and “if it hurts a bunch of lazy blacks that wants the government to give them everything, so be it.”

In the wake of Yelton’s confession that a Republican voter suppression law will suppress Democratic votes, the Buncombe County Republican Party asked him to resign his position within the party, and the country GOP chair says Yelton did so. The party also claims that Yelton was “recently reprimanded and removed from his position as a precinct chair in Buncombe County for a period of time in 2012 through 2013,” though he was reelected at a very sparsely attended party convention.

Black recruit with ‘perfect score’ denied entry into segregated University of Alabama sororitie

By Scott Kaufman/Raw Story

Fifty years after Gov. George Wallace “stood in the schoolhouse door” in an effort to prevent Vivian Malone Jones, Dave McGlathery and James Hood from enrolling in classes at the University of Alabama, The Crimson White reports that the school’s Greek system remains rigidly segregated.

“Are we really not going to talk about the black girl?” asked Melanie Gotz, an Alpha Gamma Delta member. She was speaking in reference to an anonymous black recruit with who didn’t receive a bid from any of the Panhellenic sororities, despite having graduated as salutatorian of her class with a 4.3 GPA, and having deep roots in the University of Alabama community.

The recruit was denied, Gotz told The Crimson White, by the chapter’s alumnae on account of a technicality: she failed to provide the exact number of letters of recommendations required. Active members in the sorority protested the denial, but were shot down by alumnae.

“It was just so cool to see everyone willing to take this next step and be the sorority that took a black girl and not care,” Gotz said. “The entire house wanted this girl to be in Alpha Gam. We were just powerless over the alums.”

Alpha Gamma Delta alumnae defended their decision to eliminate this near-perfect candidate in the first round by defending the sanctity of rush procedures: “It wasn’t anything to do with someone. It was policy procedure, and if anything, we have to follow policy and procedure with our nationals,” said Karen Keene. “That’s all I can say.”

However, there has still only been one black woman to formally pledge a Panhellic sorority at Alabama, and she did so in 2003. Raw Storycontacted Gamma Phi Beta, the sorority that allowed that black student to pledge, but was told that it would not comment “for fear it might embarrass some of the other Greek organizations.”

Why White People Don't See Racism

By Keith Boykin/BET.Com

Next week I will participate in a racial discrimination hearing against a Manhattan night club that frisked and searched me when I attended on a "Black night" but does not search patrons on mostly white nights.

Last week, I was accused of stealing an iPhone by a white woman in Miami who came up to me and asked if she could search my pockets to find it. It was not a joke or a pickup line.

And just last month, I had to pull out my own iPhone to photograph and report the license plate and medallion number of a taxicab driver in New York's Union Square who refused to pick me up and then drove across the street to pick up a white customer seconds later.

For many African-Americans, I suspect these stories aren't entirely surprising. As President Obama said last week, racism is a daily part of our lives. Like air and water, it's part of the environment in which we live. Yet far too many white Americans still live in denial about its persistence.

That's the conclusion to be drawn not just from anecdotal experience but from a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll out Wednesday that showed a vast disparity between white and Black perceptions on race relations. The poll, conducted after George Zimmerman was acquitted for shooting unarmed 17-year-oldTrayvon Martin, found that 52 percent of whites think race relations are "good" in America while 58 percent of Blacks describe race relations as "bad."

The new poll numbers follow similar results from a Washington Post-ABC News poll two days earlier. In that poll, 86 percent of Blacks disapproved of the Zimmerman verdict while only 31 percent of whites felt that way. Even more disappointing is that 86 percent of African-Americans say Blacks and other minorities do not get equal treatment under the law, while only 41 percent of whites think that's true.

So what explains the disconnect?

Years ago, I heard a law professor explain what I call the "magnet analogy." Remember those big red and silver horseshoe magnets from high school? Now imagine you had to walk around the world with a huge horseshoe magnet on your neck. Aside from the heavy burden of carrying the extra weight, you'd quickly see the world a lot differently from those without the magnet.

The first thing you'd notice – there's a lot of metal in the world. Keys, coins, cell phones, even appliances would suddenly get a lot more of your attention. Why? Because the magnet attracts them. But those without the magnet would continue to remain oblivious to the metal assault on your body.

That's the experience for African-Americans every day. We're surrounding and inundated by the metal of racism while those who do not carry the magnet of Blackness remain oblivious to our experience. To them, racism is a thing of the past.

The problem is we need to recognize how new and subtle forms of race bias have replaced the old overt acts of racial discrimination. Maya Wiley of the Center for Social Inclusion explains how brain science has identified subconscious racial bias taking place in "nanoseconds" at subliminal levels. "There's something that police officers and college students and George Zimmerman all have in common," she told MSNBC's Melissa Harris Perry recently. "And that is that they're more likely to shoot a black man with a wallet than they are to shoot a white man with a gun." They call it "shooter bias."

Unfortunately, our laws and our public discourse haven't kept up with the changes in racism. Many whites are still stuck in the 1960s image of overt bigotry, of Klansmen burning crosses and segregationist governors blocking schoolhouse doors. They may know a parent or a grandparent who still uses the N-word, but as long as they refrain from using it themselves then they can't possibly be racist, they think.

But Paula Deen aside, modern racism isn't really about the N-word. New code words like Detroit, Chicago, "Stand Your Ground," voter ID, food stamps and welfare now carry the same impact with dog whistle messages too subtle to be reported by many in the media. This seemingly race-neutral language allows the majority to engage in public discourse under the mantle of innocence and thus dismiss the vestiges and effects of hundreds of years of legally sanctioned white supremacy. The only racists in this vision are the people who complain about racism.

That's why the U.S. Supreme Court eviscerated the Voting Rights Act last month and argued it had outlived its utility. And that's why George Zimmerman's defense attorney Mark O'Mara last week told Fox News's Sean Hannity that his client, a known killer with a long arrest record, was just a "meek, mild guy without a racist bone in his body."

If you kill an unarmed Black boy or fan the flames of white resentment on talk radio, you're a "patriot." But if you help the family of the young Black boy who was killed, you're a "race hustler." To be white in America allows you the freedom to remain oblivious to these distinctions.

Yes, this dialogue must be a two-way conversation. But until white Americans examine their own racial privilege and open their eyes to the experience of Black Americans, they'll never notice the magnet we carry every day.