Jason Whitlock on the murder of Washington Redskins safety Sean Taylor

Awesome-as-always sports columnist Jason Whitlock, who was a lion amongst sheep with his outspoken and candid commentary on phoney race hustlers and the real problems facing the black community during the Don Imus controversy has penned another great column on race in response to what he sees as misplaced blame being thrown about by the “black media” and prominent sports figures regarding the murder of Redskins safety Sean Taylor:

There’s a reason I call them the Black KKK. The pain, the fear and the destruction are all the same.

Someone who loved Sean Taylor is crying right now. The life they knew has been destroyed, an 18-month-old baby lost her father, and, if you’re a black man living in America, you’ve been reminded once again that your life is in constant jeopardy of violent death.

The Black KKK claimed another victim, a high-profile professional football player with a checkered past this time.

No, we don’t know for certain the circumstances surrounding Taylor’s death. I could very well be proven wrong for engaging in this sort of aggressive speculation. But it’s no different than if you saw a fat man fall to the ground clutching his chest. You’d assume a heart attack, and you’d know, no matter the cause, the man needed to lose weight.

Well, when shots are fired and a black man hits the pavement, there’s every statistical reason to believe another black man pulled the trigger. That’s not some negative, unfair stereotype. It’s a reality we’ve been living with, tolerating and rationalizing for far too long.

When the traditional, white KKK lynched, terrorized and intimidated black folks at a slower rate than its modern-day dark-skinned replacement, at least we had the good sense to be outraged and in no mood to contemplate rationalizations or be fooled by distractions.

Our new millennium strategy is to pray the Black KKK goes away or ignores us. How’s that working?

About as well as the attempt to shift attention away from this uniquely African-American crisis by focusing on an “injustice” the white media allegedly perpetrated against Sean Taylor.

Within hours of his death, there was a story circulating that members of the black press were complaining that news outlets were disrespecting Taylor’s victimhood by reporting on his troubled past

No disrespect to Taylor, but he controlled the way he would be remembered by the way he lived. His immature, undisciplined behavior with his employer, his run-ins with law enforcement, which included allegedly threatening a man with a loaded gun, and the fact a vehicle he owned was once sprayed with bullets are all pertinent details when you’ve been murdered.

Marcellus Wiley, a former NFL player, made the radio circuit Wednesday, singing the tune that athletes are targets. That was his explanation for the murders of Taylor and Broncos cornerback Darrent Williams and the armed robberies of NBA players Antoine Walker and Eddy Curry.

Really?

Read the whole thing.

In the meantime, a more “serious” racial issue is developing: A 9 year-old boy in Arizona was suspended from school earlier this month for three days for an alleged “hate crime” in which he is accused of using the term “brown people.” The Arizona Republic has the details:

Glendale elementary school principal has admitted to telling a 9-year old boy that it is OK to have racist feelings as long as you keep them to yourself.

“As we said to (the boy) when he was in here, in your heart you may have that feeling, and that is OK if that is your personal belief” Abraham Lincoln Traditional School Principal Virginia Voinovich said in a tape-recorded parent-teacher conference.

The boy was suspended for three days this month for allegedly committing a “hate crime” by using the expression “brown people.”

In an interview Monday, Voinovich would not address her comments, first saying she didn’t remember the incident, then demanding a copy of the recording and finally insisting that she could not talk about a student’s discipline.

The circumstances of the boy’s suspension itself raise troubling questions about student discipline, interrogation and oversight at Abraham Lincoln.

According to school officials, the boy made a statement about “brown people” to another elementary student with whom he was having a conflict. They maintain it was his second offense using the phrase.

But the tape recording indicates this only came out after another parent was allowed to question the boy and elicited from him the statement that he “doesn’t cooperate with brown people.”

After that was reported to the boy’s teacher, he was made to stand in front of his class and publicly confess what he’d said.

The boy maintains that he never said it; that the words were put in his mouth by the parent who questioned him. That parent happens to be the mother of the student with whom he is having a conflictβ€”and she happens to work for Abraham Lincoln as a detention-room officer.

The tape indicates that rather than just spouting off with racial invective, the boy was asked first why he didn’t want to cooperate with brown people by the parent/school official.

The mother of the accused child has pulled him out of the elementary school. Can’t say as I blame her.

Let’s assume for purposes of discussion that the boy did use the term “brown people” – what “crime” was committed? The “crime” of saying something offensive to someone else, or did this little boy’s words constitute a “racist threat”? Sounds to me like a prime example of the thought police in action. I also have to wonder if, had the situation been reversed and a black person or Hispanic called a white student a “cracker” or “white trash,” if his or her fate would have been the same.

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