Of course everybody knows a black person with a gun is problematic; hell, just look at what happened in Chicago last weekend — 46 people shot, of which 8 were killed. So here’s the thing, with crime being down in New York, clearly the racist “stop and frisk” policy is working. I mean, rarely do we hear news stories about weekend shooting sprees in the Big Apple. So yeah, maybe Bloomberg is right; as racist the practice may be, it works.

This from the New York Times:

Some former officers who worked the area say the stops seem less geared to bringing down crime than feeding the department’s appetite for numbers — a charge police officials steadfastly deny. Though none said they were ever given quotas to hit, all but two said that certain performance measures were implicitly expected in their monthly activity reports. Lots of stop-and-frisk reports suggested a vigilant officer.

“When I was there the floor number was 10 a month,” one officer said. Like many of the officers interviewed for this article, he asked not to be identified because he was still in law enforcement and worried that being seen as critical of the New York department could hurt his future employment opportunities.

He said if you produced 10 stops — known as a UF-250 for the standardized departmental reports the stops generate — you were not likely to draw the attention of a supervisor. “And in all fairness,” he said, “if you’re working in that area, 10 a month is very low. All you have to do is open your eyes.”

According to him, the program should be “mended not ended.” Obviously it’s an effective policing tool; so yes, maybe mending the policy is in order. Hell, as effective as it has been by getting guns and suspicious looking melanin afflicted criminals off the streets, if the program were expanded to not only include supposed high-crime areas, one could expect to see zero crime, and or guns on the streets of New York. I mean just think, if the NYPD starts groping random white people (just like they do people of color) New York City would be the safest place on the planet. No really, just look at the following results of in communities of color via Think Progress:

1. In 2011, NYC officers made 685,724 stops as part of the “stop-and-frisk” policy. Of that group, 605,328 people were determined not to have engaged in any unlawful behavior. [NYCLU]

2. Only 5.37% of all stops in a recent five-year period resulted in an arrest. In short, many people stopped did nothing wrong. [NYT, 5/17/12]

3. In 2009, 36% of the time officer failed to list an acceptable “suspected crime.” Reasonable suspicion of a crime is required to make a stop. [NYT,5/17/12]

4. More than half of all stops last year were conducted “because the individual displayed ‘furtive movement’ — which is so vague as to be meaningless.”[NYT, 5/14/12]

5. Of those frisked in 2011, a weapon was found just 1.9% of the time. Frisks are supposed to be conducted “only when an officer reasonably suspects the person has a weapon.” [NYCLU]

6. 85% of those stopped were black or Hispanic even though those groups make up about half of NYC’s population. [NYT, 5/17/12]

7. Young black and Latino men account for 4.7% of NYC’s population but 41.6% of the stops in 2011. [NYCLU]

8. The number of stops involving young black men in 2011 (168,124) exceed the city’s population of young black men (158,406).[NYT, 5/15/12]

9. Even in overwhelmingly white neighborhoods, police stopped more blacks than whites.[NYT, 5/15/12]

10. In 2012, police are on pace to make more than 800,000 stops, more than twice the population of Miami. [NYT, 5/15/12]

Yeah, in the interest of public safety, I propose that “stop and frisk” be expanded to cover the greater tri-state area; yes, be sure cops in all five boroughs are doing their jobs. Yes I live in Memphis, but my mother lives in New York. So let’s just say that I’ll be able to sleep better at night knowing that NYC cops are shaking down white folks with impunity, so she can be safe as she walks the streets.

The post Wouldn’t NYC be Safer if the NYPD Started Randomly Feeling-Up White People with “Stop and Frisk”? appeared first on THE INTERSECTION | MADNESS & REALITY.

Listen to what his mother says:

Rudy Eugene: Naked Face-Eating Man Shot By Miami Police

But that aside, I figured black folk would be raising all kinds of hell and protesting in Miami by now; I mean, now that we know it was a brotha shot and killed by the police. OK, so he was eating another man’s face while growling like a wild animal; not normal, I get that. But damn, he was naked and unarmed. Hell, I know he wasn’t wearing a hoodie or nothing, but did they really have to shoot him? I’m only asking because you know how that hoodie thing plays out in Florida. But yet ain’t nobody marching or nothing, so I guess it doesn’t matter; yep, maybe he should’ve had Skittles.

To hear his friends tell it, he never used hard drugs:

I mean seriously, is this what’s hot out in the streets?

C’mon y’all, Harriet Tubman didn’t take a front seat on the bus for this type of foolishness:

JOPPA, Md. — A Maryland college student has admitted murdering and dismembering a man and then eating his heart and part of his brain, police said Thursday.

Kenyan-born Alexander Kinyua, who has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of Nigerian national Kujoe Bonsafo Agyei-Kodie, allegedly carried out the gruesome deed after ranting online about human sacrifices and death cults.

The 37-year-old victim had been living at the Kinyua family home in Joppa, Md., for the past six months, the Baltimore Sun reported.

His severed head and hands were found in the home and more of his remains were dumped in a trash container outside a church, police said.

Kinyua, 21, allegedly confessed to killing Agyei-Kodie with a knife then eating his heart and portions of his brain. 

Alexander Kinyua (L), has confessed to killing his roomate, Kujoe Bonsafo Agyei-Kodie (R), and eating his heart and part of his brain.

Harford County Sheriff Jesse Bane said the crime was among the most brutal and bizarre he had seen in his 40 years with the force — and he had never come across a case of cannibalism.

“I’ve not encountered that in this county, and I hope we never encounter it again,” Bane said.

Kinyua’s father, Antony, reported Agyei-Kodie missing last Friday after going for a jog.

Then Tuesday night, Antony called police to say his other son, Jarrod, had found a human head and two human hands inside metal tins under a blanket in the laundry room, according to charging documents.

Kinyua told his father they were instead animal remains but when interviewed by police he allegedly admitted to killing Agyei-Kodie.

Kinyua faced a court Thursday via live video feed from Harford County Detention Center. The judge ruled he be held without bail.

Kinyua is a third-year electrical engineering major at Morgan State University and fellow students said his behavior had become increasingly troubled in recent months, the Baltimore Sun reported.

He was charged with first-degree assault and reckless endangerment for allegedly fracturing the skull of a classmate with a baseball bat on May 20, in what police described as a random attack.

Kinyua, who was born in Kenya but has lived in Maryland with his family for the past nine years, had also began making threatening online posts, including recent Facebook messages about “mass human sacrifices.”

I don’t know what’s really going on in Black America; and, it’s a damn shame I can’t even blame it on crack. I don’t know, but black folks eating  other people here in America, sounds a little bit like Negroes taking this post-racial thing too seriously. Sure we might be all “equal” now, but does that mean we gotta do what “other people” do? I tell you one thing that hasn’t changed, cannibal or not, police will still buss a cap in a nigga’s ass. I know assimilation can be a bitch; but, being post-racial doesn’t give black folks creative license to start eating people and having shootouts over Kool-Aid.

The post Post-Racial Update: Rudy Eugene, the Maryland Cannibal, & the Detroit Kool-Aid Shootout appeared first on THE INTERSECTION | MADNESS & REALITY.

You see, incidents or news stories like these, are what we aptly title as fuckery. Take the story of 40-year-old Johnny Media in downtown St. Louis, for example. Little Johnny had a run-in with the law, for one of the most unbelievable and albeit avoidable incidents ever:

ST. LOUIS (KMOV) — Police have arrested a man they say attacked the driver of a horse-drawn carriage then took the reins in downtown St. Louis Tuesday night.

Police said the victim was steering a horse-drawn carriage southbound on 8th Street between Chestnut and Market around 8:25 p.m. when he saw the suspect running toward him.

Johnnie Medina: Horse Abuser & Thief

Authorities said Johnny Medina, 40, jumped into the side of the carriage and hit the victim in the head with a cane. Medina then took control of the reins and the victim jumped out of the carriage, according to police.

A witness in the area called police, who responded to the scene and followed the carriage.

Police said the horse, whose name is Harry, continued pulling the carriage and ran back to his barn at the St. Louis Carriage Company stables, located at 1000 Cerre Street. The carriage then crashed into and damaged a trolley bus on the parking lot.

Police said another employee of the carriage company ran out and started to remove the horse from the carriage to get it back inside the stable.

Medina then jumped down from the carriage and started punching and kicking the horse.

Police said the employee and witnesses pushed Medina to the ground and detained him until police arrived.

Now I’ve written about some twisted stories before here at TIOMAR; you know, like the guy who had sex with a horse, and the other guy who had sex with his neighbor’s dog. However, as sick and perverted as those were, to me, this one takes the cake. I mean, where exactly was this guy gong with the horse and carriage? Who does he think he is, Cam’ron? I don’t know much about St. Louis; however, I doubt there are chop shops in need of a freshly stolen horse and carriage. What, did he run out of bus fare? No really, where was this idiot going, and did he really think he could actually get away with it? Oh well, I guess that explains punching and kicking the horse once he realized he didn’t exactly hop into a cab. Hell, maybe he thought he had a flat tire or something?

The post Pure F%@kery: St. Louis Man Arrested For “Car Jacking” Horse-Drawn Carriage, & Punching Horse appeared first on THE INTERSECTION | MADNESS & REALITY.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – A major NewsChannel 5 investigation has uncovered serious questions about Tennessee’s war on drugs. Among the questions: are some police agencies more concerned about making money off the drugs, than stopping them?

At the center of this months-long investigation are laws that let officers pull driver over looking for cash.  Those officers do not even have to file criminal charges against a person to take his/her money.

It turns out, those kind of stops are now happening almost every day in Middle Tennessee.

Speaking to then District Attorney General Kim Helper about these stops and seizures in her jurisdiction, when  asked if it was a way to make money, she responded, “Well, you know, when you say ‘make money,’ I guess it is a way for us to continue to fund our operations so that we can put an end to drug trafficking and the drug trade within this district.” So how are police officers able to trample one’s 4th Amendment right as it relates to search and seizures? Easy. Under the guise of the “war on drugs,” the state allows police to seize money simply based on the suspicion that it’s linked to drug trafficking. The troubling part about the application of said practice, is that even without an arrest, an individuals money can be seized.

I guess this gives credence to the notion that money has no owners, just spenders.

In 2010 report, Tennessee received a D-minus from the Washington-based Institute for Justice, on the state’s “civil forfeiture laws,” which makes the practice all legal. As pervasive as the practice, per the law, money can be seized just on reasonable and unreasonable suspicion of money “found” in traffic stops being linked to drug trafficking. As you can imagine, this has given police officers on patrol the incentive to become state sanctioned pirates as they target out-of-town tagged vehicles along the I-40 east-west corridor, in what’s iknown as “Policing For Profit“.

According to the the Tennessee Trial Lawyers Blog:

In Tennessee, the police can seize your car, take your money, take your personal property, take your home, sell these items and use the proceeds of that sale for their benefit without the person being found guilty of a crime. In fact, the police can seize and sell these items without even charging the owner with a crime. And worst of all, the laws in Tennessee promote this activity.

[...] So why do the police do this? Money, Money, Money. The State of Tennessee receives millions and millions of dollars each year from civil asset forfeiture. They are among the highest in the country on the percentage of proceeds that go to law enforcement. And while some states use this money for education and public works, Tennessee allows local law enforcement to spend this money on drug enforcement. If the local police did not need any more incentive, the local law enforcement agencies receive 100% of proceeds for their respective agency. They cannot spend it on their salaries, but they do spend it on their agency which continues to operate in large part due to the millions of dollars they bring in each year.

[...] Further proof that the police activity is based on the money, sources reveal that the police on Interstate 40 are pulling over vehicles on the westbound lane of the interstate at a much higher rate than on the eastbound lanes. This is because they believe that drugs go east and money goes west. So they are clearly following the money and not the drugs. Again, the police agency that seized the property keeps 100% of the proceeds!

It’s too bad that unsuspecting drivers from out-of-state like New Jersey’s George Reby, aren’t aware of this practice. As a matter of fact, up until I read Reby’s story, I myself as a state resident, was not aware of the practice; heck, and to think I’ve been living here for the past six years. However, I’d like to think that if Reby were in the know, he would not have been as trusting of Monteray PD Officer Larry Bates, with whom he had a chance meeting last January when stopped for speeding en route to Nashville on I-40, on a business trip.

Check out the following via, Nashville’s NewsChannel 5:

But then again, maybe that’s just my “Liberal bias” creeping out as always. As pervasive and egregious this practice may sound, it is perfectly legal. aside from that, the main thing that keeps the practice alive and successful, is the ignorance of everyday citizens to their legal rights as afforded by the constitution. Police officers like Larry Bates above, count on us being ignorant about our 4th Amendment & 5th Amendment protections per the U.S. Constitution. I suggest you become aware of the fact that you do have the right to refuse to talk to the police without an attorney present, as well as the right to refuse or consent to a search of your property and person by the police without a proper warrant. Too often, not knowing your rights can become a hassle, and quite costly; but, like the old saying: knowing is half the battle.

QUESTION: Should law enforcement be allowed to carry out this practice?

The post Tennessee Cop “Robs” Out-Of-State Driver Of $22,000 After Traffic Stop appeared first on THE INTERSECTION | MADNESS & REALITY.

But, politicians want to sit around and debate the issue. They want to request a whole bunch of statistical analysis to prove what every Black person over the age of 2 years old understands: police profile racially. Why do politicians play this game? To pretend they are actually attempting to address the scourge of law enforcement bigotry without actually doing a goddamn thing about the problem.

If all these folks are going to do is sit around in a little room and say, “profiling is bad…. we should do something about it…” and then move onto the next topic, they need to get the fuck out of office, because they do not care about what happens to real people in the real world.

Who are the people compiling the statistics and where are they coming from? Most of the time, they work FOR the people in power, who are invested in maintaining the status quo. So, not only can they manipulate the facts to make them fit the narrative of the white dominators, but they rely on information given to them by the oppressive law enforcement community. Somehow, the word of a cop is seen as more reliable than that of his victim, so he can lie about absolutely anything and be seen as the “good guy” in the story. What is to stop a white police officer from incorrectly listing the race of his victims in order to “prove” that he is not engaging in racially biased behavior on the job? (In fact, it was proven that in East Haven, Connecticut, police officers did exactly this for many years)

If a victim of police oppression reports the crimes that officers commit against him, it is usually written off as unfounded, or uncorroborated. Yet the word of a single pig is enough to land a man behind bars. Why are police given more credibility than an ordinary community member, especially if that community member is Black?

There is also nothing stopping police officers from harassing and endangering anyone who reports profiling or brutish behavior. Everyone knows about the “blue wall of silence”. If a Black person walks into a police station to report to an officer that one of his fellow “boys in blue” has committed criminal acts against him, he is putting his safety in the hands of people who are invested only in defending and protecting the man carrying the badge.

Combating racial profiling is not about crunching numbers, compiling reports and making recommendations that the police look at as optional. In order to fight racist police practices, there needs to be serious consequences for officers who are caught profiling. They should be kicked off the police force and charged with a felony. They need to be held accountable. As it stands today, police officers can commit even most egregious offenses, like the murder of unarmed people, with little to no chance of repercussions. ANYTIME a police officer shoots an unarmed person, they should be charged and convicted for murder (or attempted murder if the person is lucky enough to survive.) Police officers complain that they do not want to have to stop to think before they act, that it could put their lives in danger… well… tough shit. Shouldn’t you HAVE TO take a second to think before you take the life of another human being?

Police officers also should not be foreign invaders. If there is a need for law enforcement presence in a given community, the officers should be recruited from among local residents only. No more white “good ole boys” rolling into a Black community and running roughshod over the rights of the people who actually live there. Let the white boys stay in their little suburban communities and arrest the folks with the meth labs in their garage.

I understand the desire for activist groups to enforce racial profiling laws. There is this belief that compiling statistics to “prove” that racial profiling exists will somehow force police departments to change their ways. That the threat of removing funding sources to police departments who are non-compliant will help alleviate the insidiousness of racial profiling. However, I think that until a police officer has to worry about facing VERY REAL CONSEQUENCES, like PRISON TIME for engaging in such practices, there is really no incentive for an individual officer to change his behavior.

Recently, there was an amendment passed for Connecticut’s racial profiling law, the Penn Act. A huge production was made about the “much needed changes” to the Penn Act that were added. Basically, the legislators decided that the Penn Act provisions would be enforced more stringently if they added a “traffic stop receipt” concept to the legislation, so that motorists who have been pulled over can be sure that their race was listed correctly. They also included a provision that allowed people to anonymously launch complaints about profiling, and appointed a committee to investigate the claims, as well as to examine the statistics compiled for evidence of profiling. Honestly, I do not see the efficacy of this sort of approach. Why do people need “proof” that profiling happens? We all know it does! How do statistics protect motorists from police officers? Where is the incentive for officers to stop this behavior?

And what about pedestrians? How many anti-profiling laws include people on foot? We all know that “stop and frisk” policies are steeped in racial profiling. Why not include people who are walking through the community under the umbrella of these profiling laws? One proponent of the Penn Act Amendment here in Hartford actually became angry when another activists mentioned that the Act did not go far enough because it only “protected” motorists! He said that the Penn Act was not intended to protect people on foot, therefore the amendment did not include them. Well, if you are “amending” a piss poor law, why not make the logical choice to extend the legislation to cover ALL people who are profiled, not just those in cars?

Compiling statistics is not the solution. SERIOUS consequences for INDIVIDUAL officers as well as departments who violate the rights of community members MUST BE INCLUDED in order for an anti-profiling law to offer any serious protection for the public. It is one thing to “work within the system”, it is quite another to ignore what REALLY needs to be done to address police profiling and brutality simply to get a piece of legislation passed.

The post Does Anti-Profiling Legislation Really Work? appeared first on THE INTERSECTION | MADNESS & REALITY.

This via The Real News Network:

We are here to say that incarceration has nothing to do with solving the problems of American society it has everything to do with putting people in their place repressing people and it’s time for this to end, we want jobs, education, health care, we do not want jails…right now the United States represents 5 percent of the world’s population but we incarcerate 25 percent of the world’s prisoners, this in a nation that’s obsessed with the idea of freedom, the question is why, why do we incarcerate so many people than other places in the world, we clearly don’t have the answers so we are here to say we have to stand up for people like Mumia Abu Jamal. - JOHANNA FERNANDEZ, PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, BARUCH COLLEGE, CUNY

It is imperative that we continue to bare witness to the many injustices suffered particular by people of color and poor people in general, all across these United States of America – a country where as you know, said people are over-represented within the criminal justice system, by no accident.

The post “Occupy the Department of Justice”: Trayvon Martin, Mumia Abu Jamal, & Mass Incarceration appeared first on THE INTERSECTION | MADNESS & REALITY.

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. – South Carolina Police say Wayne Joshua Mitchell, 20,died after he ate an ounce of cocaine that was hidden in his brother’s buttocks according to a WCIV report.

Authorities  plan to charge the victim’s brother 23-year-old Deangelo Rashard Mitchell, with involuntary manslaughter.

The incident happened when both brothers were in the back of a police car on November 30. The two had been arrested for trafficking.

Video from inside the police car captured a conversation between the brothers, where Deangelo pleads with his younger brother to take the cocaine in his bottom and eat it to get rid of it.

“One of us gotta do it, you the only one that don’t have any strikes. …You my little brother… I’m gonna get life,” Deangelo said to Wayne.

His bother complied and ate the drugs.

When officers saw the cocaine residue on the seat where Wayne sat, Deangelo told officers that his brother swallowed cocaine. Within the hour, Dwayne struggled to breathe, bled from his mouth and died.

Deangelo was charged with trafficking drugs and bonded out of jail December 1.

Once toxicology results confirmed that Wayne died directly from consuming the cocaine, police decided to pursue more serious charges. Authorities are now looking for Deangelo to charge him. (source)

I never wonder about what’s going to happen or what people will say about me after I die. The way I see it, at that point, what does it matter. However, I can’t help but to think that at my funeral, people would be questioning what the hell I was thinking when I swallowed a bag of cocaine from another man’s butt. I guess it could be worse. I guess swallowing cocaine and dying isn’t as bad as having a transgender woman injecting some chemical in my penis in an attempt to enlarge it, and dying as a result. Yeah, try explaining that to family and friends. Check out the following video:

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The recent mug shot of your favorite ‘whatever happened to’ rapper Soldier Boy Tellum is currently being displayed across web browsers all across the world.

In it, he looks slightly nauseated But I’m Rich By-otch! with just a hint of Oh, Shit! confusion. And since being picked up last night in GA with a shit load of drugs, guns and stacks of cash he has good reason to.

Maybe he is puzzled at his current state of denainment, after all, imagine how inconvenient it must be for the 21 year old multimillionaire to be locked up? D’Andre Way would have been released into parental custody for this same feat only three short years ago and now he’s just gonna sit, like an average Knee-Grow would, waiting to ‘make bail’.

Having his Lamborghini, diamond encrusted jewels, Black Card and entourage removed from him has to be stressful.

Maybe he’s trying to walk in the big shoes of rapper, TI, who is fresh home from jail and making his way around the freestyle circuit. All the major Hip Hop players are talking about how TI’s time away has made his skill sharper and his delivery reminiscent of his early career days.

Accolades.

Notoriety can’t be purchased these days, no, in order for one to please the fans, one must ‘be real’ and ‘do real things’ including riding around in car full of goons with drugs and cash.

Seems silly when our beloved neighborhood assholes do it, but what about a man who does have a BLACK CARD and the money to back up that unlimited line of credit.

The post Soldier Boy and TI: Black Men With Drugs, Guns and Black Cards appeared first on THE INTERSECTION | MADNESS & REALITY.

Most people hope that if and when they need to stand before a court of law that there will be, to some degree, a system of ‘due process’. The term is a phrase used to describe the system of checks and balances or rather steps that each side must adhere to in order for the court to establish the accused as having received a fair trial.

Due process can also be looked at as a set of beliefs; one belief is that in order to be punished for breaking the law a citizen must KNOW that he or she is breaking the law. Now that doesn’t mean you can simply deny knowledge of how that dead body got in your trunk. And “No, Officer, I didn’t know the car was stolen either’, won’t get you any less jail time. Some crimes would not be possible without staunch intent; there’s planning, conversations, coordination and a goal to accomplish.

Other crimes aren’t that simple. Say, for example, you give your classmates a ride to gather supplies for a college group project. Like most young mobile people, most of these girls and guys carry backpacks with them. Some of them enter your car, and keep their bags with them, or maybe some of them put bags in the of your car trunk. Or maybe someone bought along supplies that you agreed to keep in your trunk until your group meets again. Your driving  out and about in your every day life and you get pulled over and you consent to a search or your vehicle, or the dogs are called, either way….

A POUND OF MARIJUANA!!

Should you be facing 18 years in prison because someone’s bag had something in it and you didn’t know? What if you are a postal employee for the UPSP and someone sends a package that later turns out to be a big shipment of steroids. You’ve been doing hand to hand drug sales for months by the time the DEA runs down on them, you and the dog that chases you every day.

You would think that had nothing to do with the postal employee whose merely doing their job. You ask, “How was he/she to know what is in each package he/she delivers?’

That’s a relevent question in the other 49 states. The only problem is that Florida has no such requirement.

In 2002, Florida legislators amended the state’s drug law, eliminating the requirement that prosecutors prove mens rea, or criminal intent, as part of obtaining a convict

However, that’s recently changed through a ruling by US District Court Judge Mary Scriven who threw out the “Florida Drug Abuse Prevention and Control” law saying that it violated due process because the state did not need to prove that a person charged with a possession also exhibit intent. In Florida there was no room for accidents, or ignorance  which removed the option of innocence for some convictions that were more ‘wrong place, wrong time’, then drug cartel related.

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACD) who wrote an amicus brief on behalf of Mackle Vincent Shelton who was convicted in 2005 of drug charges are very pleased. Shelton who received an 18-years sentence for cocaine delivery fought to have his conviction overturned. The Florida court decided their own law was unconstitutional, Shelton’s conviction was challenged based on the grounds that the jury wasn’t required to consider intent as a requirement in order to convict him of distribution.

This ruling by Judge Scriven has opened the doors for thousands of drug convictions to be reviewed and possibly reversed. Florida defense attorneys are already preparing to file motions to dismiss numerous pending drug cases. Moves like these make me a little bit optimistic that the country is moving toward compassion in the courts and making adjustments to the perverse way we feed innocent bodies to the prison industry that’s the bloated, spoiled love child of our nation’s failed drug policy.

The post How a Florida Federal Judge Changed the Game By Demanding Due Process of the Law appeared first on THE INTERSECTION | MADNESS & REALITY.

I don’t know how much of a stir Michelle Alexander’s statements have created throughout the blogosphere. But, as it has been seen throughout the Obama era, any critique of president Obama that links his race or cultural upbringing is a no-no. Let’s be honest, “certain people” aren’t too happy whenever his “blackness” is questioned. However, in the context of the War On Drugs and its obvious attack on people of color over the last 40yrs, Michelle is right in her commentary. Unfortunately, the central message will be missed in defense of Barack Obama as it always is; and, it’s a damn shame.

On Facebook, Michelle Alexander said:

I was on MSNBC last night talking about the failed drug war. I called out Obama as a bit of a hypocrite, given that he, himself, has admitted to using cocaine and marijuana. If he had been raised in the ‘hood rather than in Hawaii by white grandparents, the odds are good that he would have been arrested. Far from being president of the United States, he might not even have the right to vote today.

As I pointed out in a recent post, Obama has flip flopped on his position regarding the war on drugs. In 2006 he clearly stated that said war has been ineffective, and questioned its method of application in the criminalization of certain illegal substances. Back then, he also recognized the egregious targeting of communities of color. But today, his stance is different; he has asked for more federal funds for the upcoming fiscal year 2012 to further increase enforcement of a now 40-year0old failed policy.

Of course some of you may see nothing wrong with this much like the guy I had a conversation with last week. In his opinion, there is no racial bias associated with the war on drugs. According to him, Black folks should be like white folks and not walk around with drugs in their possession. Which is bullshit because there is no empirical evidence to support the idea that people of color are genetically predisposed to drug use or sales. If anything, studies have shown that unlike white folks, people of color are more likely to face time in prison for drug convictions relative to white people.

Of course these facts don’t matter; as long as Blacks and other poor minorities retain the stereotype, all is well with America. I refuse to get into any debates over this today with anyone, especially a person of color as was the guy I spoke with last week. I’ll  however say this: If you think nothing is wrong with the War On Drugs targeting communities of color? Or that white folks are more just as likely to use drugs but get less time in prison? That’s fine! Don’t say shit when you get stopped by the cops and they go up your rectum with a Roto-Rooter without any probable cause other than your stupid ass being Black.

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