HERE YOU GO AGAIN 
Raise Your Hand If You Believe It’s Race-Based

Let’s talk. It’s 2013 and we could be back in 1992, when the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) denied that race was a factor in the beating of Rodney King – a brutal event that was caught on tape. Last weekend, the LAPD too quickly dismissed race as a factor when it shut down a party of black University of Southern California students.

After neighbors complained about noise, the investigating officers felt it necessary to call in the riot squad, and 71 officers arrived in riot gear with a helicopter hovering above.  They arrested several students and handcuffed and detained others, even though there were no weapons at the party and no violence was reported. It was a noise complaint.

Now ask yourself this: would the LAPD have handled a noise complaint at the white students’ party across the street in such an aggressive way? I don’t think so, and neither did the more than 1,200 black, brown and white students who showed up at a meeting with the LAPD following a student protest of this incident. After refusing to be silenced by the LAPD’s pronouncement that it had investigated the incident and did not believe

Congratulations to the students of USC for speaking out against racial profiling and facing the Black Shadow!

it was race-based, nearly every black, brown and white hand in the audience shot up when the police chief asked, “Who believes this incident is based on race?”
Check with your physician about the unwanted results of medicines you take and lowest cost viagra avoid the condition that lead to ED one should eat healthy, reduce the intake of alcohol and nicotine, lead an active life and should look for ways to reduce the symptoms of ED and give a rock hard-on in bed. The Endocrinology treatment in France includes complete care, 24/7 monitoring viagra buy australia the patient, complete check-up, diagnosis, tests and treatment, the hospitals offers excellent facilities and completely trained and professional doctors for treatment. The greatest advantage of levitra 40 mg and caulis online in the form of an online discussion from any licensed online center or source. MOST IMPOTANT SAFETY STEPS AND WARNINGS Preventive measure is one definite necessity of Lovegra and if regencygrandenursing.com viagra without prescription free women s follows it with full caution, it always works better.
For more details about the story, go to http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/05/09/182175917/L-A-s-Police-Department-Faces-Allegations-Of-Racism.

The year 2013 may not look much differently from 1992 for the LAPD. However, the shared belief by black, brown and white members of the audience that race was indeed a significant factor was strikingly different. In fact, a white USC student who was partying across the street that same night was courageous and honest enough to tell the audience that her house of white partygoers had been treated with respect by the LAPD and she was outraged that her black neighbors had been treated differently. To her, I say, “Thank you for being an ally.”

Race does matter. Black and brown citizens are often criminalized simply because of their skin color. This is the Black Shadow in action: the belief that dark is inferior, suspect, dangerous. We saw that when distinguished author and Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., was apprehended going into his own house. The police could not imagine that this black man belonged in the upscale neighborhood where he resided, and they viewed him as a criminal. When the truth came out that he’d merely been having trouble with his keys, the police were embarrassed and eventually apologized for the misunderstanding.

Racial profiling is not an isolated incident. Across the United States, black parents fear for their children’s safety when it comes to the police — particularly their sons.  Trayvon Martin was killed at the tender age of 17 because he looked suspicious to a white man – because he was wearing black skin and a hoodie. President Obama was criticized by some for saying that Trayvon could have been his son, but we know it’s true: Trayvon could have been any parent’s black or brown son.

When officers tried to explain how the USC incident escalated by saying they felt “threatened” by a group of black college students, they failed to face the Black Shadow. What I want to say to LAPD Chief Charlie Beck, a white man, is that the Black Shadow is riding along with his officers in the backs of their cruisers.  They need to have the courage and awareness to face the fact that their fear of black men and their racial profiling is a symptom of that same old lie from slavery that says blacks are inferior, dangerous and less than fully human.

I do take heart from all those students, faculty and staff at USC – people of all colors – who raised their hands and answered the LAPD with a strong message that their treatment of black students was absolutely wrong and is not to be tolerated. The Black Shadow loses its power over all of us when we expose it and face it and see it for what it really is.