Pretend Heroes
I read the Letters section in this week’s Creative Loafing (Sept. 19) with sad resignation. It seems a small minority of our citizens worships authority so highly that they feel frightened and angered when reality intrudes on their cherished beliefs.
One writer demands that Billy Graham be held above reproach, while the next blames “liberals” who irrationally hate our president for tearing our nation apart.
What they really seem to be saying is, please don’t shine the light of reason upon their idols. Pretend heroes are all conservatives have left.
— Michael Clark, Charlotte
Pot, meet kettle
While I agree that placing nooses on a tree is of extremely bad taste, I have a hard time calling it a crime (The N Word: A Culture of Hate by Nsenga Burton, Sept. 19). To even try and equate placing a noose on a tree with nearly beating the life out of someone shows a lack of judgement. The person(s) who placed the nooses on the tree did a bad thing, but it doesn’t come anywhere near practically killing someone. If you had done some research on this situation, you would have realized that there was no connection between the tree incident and the beating. But, to even try to rationalize this beating as vigilantism is horrendous. You should be ashamed for even thinking that. Are you trying to suggest that vigilantism is OK? Does that mean anytime some black person does something wrong to a white person, that it is OK for any white person anywhere in America to nearly beat to death some random black person? Bringing up the tree incident is just the black community’s way of trying to justify what those six black boys did to that one white boy. Justifying the crime these boys did to the white boy shows how much the black community does not have their senses about them. In your article you try to make the tree incident seem like a horrendous hate crime. But, you don’t even touch on the fact that six black boys beating a white boy is an even more horrendous hate crime. You mention that the tree incident should be investigated and those found guilty should be charged with a hate crime. Yet, you don’t mention that the six black boys aren’t even charged with a hate crime, never mind rallying for it. In fact you don’t even mention that it is a hate crime. Isn’t a hate crime a hate crime regardless of who is being prosecuted? Or can hate crimes only pertain when they are against blacks? Rather than condemning these boys for what they did, you are standing up for them. What kind of message are you trying to send out? That beating the crap out of somebody is OK because the black community will rally for you no matter what? You are a hypocrite for condemning the tree incident as a hate crime and not condemning the black boys for almost killing someone. But, what should we expect from someone from the black community. After all, I never heard Sharpton, Jackson or the NAACP publicly apologize to the Duke boys for convicting them in public before the case was tried. You talk about love, but it has to go both ways, just like hate crimes.
— Andrew Zapisocki, Charlotte
This article appears in Oct 3-9, 2007.
Until you walked a mile in a Black man’s shoes you should just shut your trap Mr. Zapisocki. It always intrigues me how white privilege warps the already deficient judgment of white people to where they only hear what they want to hear. The noose incident was a federal hate crime. Black students were attacked after the noose incident on three separate occasions before the six Black youth retaliated. How much abuse were they supposed to take? Turning the other cheek died with MLK.
This entire escapade should’ve been handled within the jurisdiction of the school system but because white people are so scared of the wild, oversexed, violent Black male, the criminal justice system had to get involved. Why do white people refuse to recognize the facts as they exist in objective reality? Perhaps whites just don’t care about the facts. You continue to create your own false reality just like the one that says you are superior to other races because of your skin color. I’ve said it before and I’ll continue to say it. Black people need to permanently and physically separate from white people on our own land we obtain from slavery reparations. White people will never embrace justice and equality as long as white privilege exists to give them the advantage they need to maintain this socioeconomic caste system. Black people are still in the midst of the African Holocaust of our fallen ancestors. Whites should ask themselves: If you are superior to everyone then why do you need unfair advantages all the time? When it comes down to it this is all white fear and mostly fear of Black male sexuality.
1. There is no relevant Federal “hate crime” law.
2. The six black attacked someone who by all accounts was in no way involved in the noose incidents nor in attacks on black youth. That is not retaliatin, since he did nothing agsint which to retaliate. By all accounts and indications he was attacked because of the color of his skin. No one, least of all a black man, should be exxcusing racial violence.
Thompson, if you are indeed black, you really ought to silence yourself before you feed the racist clowns who believe all black men think as you appear to. But I imagine that you are not black, but rather a white racist trying to paint a caricature of dull witted, racist blacks.
Maybe the first place you can go to for reparations is the African tribes who rounded up and sold or traded away your ancestors. A practice that continues today.
You don’t know what you’re talking about Fark. Look it up. There is a federal hate crime law that applies to this very incident. Since you want to excuse the violence perpetrated on the Black students then it’s obvious you are an out and out racist so further dialogue with you is pointless. When you are dead you beliefs will die with you hopefully.
And as for Amber two wrongs don’t make a right. Blacks never would’ve been sold by Africans into slavery if whites had not created the demand for it with your own laziness and fallacious ideology of white supremacy. You are both scum of the earth and your time will come. In fact it is near with all the Mexicans and others coming here and your population numbers dwindling all over the planet, including Europe. Better soak up some sun and try to look as Black as you can in the near future.