Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AP) — Eric Holder talks about the nation's civil rights struggles in a way no previous U.S. attorney general could — by telling his own family story. As he increasingly pushes his Justice Department to protect voting rights and end unfair prison sentences and police brutality, Holder has drawn on personal history to make the case that the nation has much work to do to achieve justice for all. It's a legacy he'll likely draw on when he travels Wednesday to Ferguson, Missouri, to supervise the federal investigation of the fatal shooting of a black 18-year-old by a white...

The White House has weighed sending President Obama to Ferguson, Mo., and has not ruled out a visit in upcoming weeks, according to sources familiar with the internal decisionmaking. For now, the White House believes a trip by Obama to Ferguson would do more harm than good, by diverting resources on the ground at a pivotal time for law enforcement. One senior administration official familiar with the talks said Obama didn’t rule a trip in or out at this point, but added that there are no immediate plans for the president to go to the St. Louis suburb. A presidential...

The National Guard rolled in to protect a status quo. But racism set a status quo of inequality long before Michael Brown died.The National Guard will essentially protect the legal looting of black people – much as it was protected when Missouri became the last slave state admitted to the union. The symptoms of structural racism stain America everywhere, but its execution is particularly perverse in places like Ferguson. It’s not just that black drivers are stopped more often for alleged crimes than white drivers, despite the Missouri attorney general’s report that white people break the law more often. It’s...

The American understanding of riots and racial violence was shaped a half-century ago, during the insurrections of the 1960s. To judge by the responses to the current rioting in Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, little has changed since then. After riots have wrought their physical and psychic damage, some invariably declare that the unrest was constructive. Patricia Bynes, a Democratic committeewoman for Ferguson, rationalized that the events in Ferguson would benefit the entire metropolitan area because, she said, “St. Louis never has had its true race moment, where they had to confront this.” She was topped by Missouri...

The protests and riots in Ferguson, Missouri are providing proof the U.S. government sanctions racial injustice in this country while denouncing it abroad. The federal government spends trillions of dollars so we can be the world's peacekeepers. We start wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the name of freedom. We help rebel groups oust dictators and oppressors like Muammar Gaddafi and the Taliban. We send drones and warplanes to bomb rebels from Islamic rebels in Iraq and Syria who are killing Christians. And we put sanctions on Iran for putting protesters in jail. Yet here in America, the federal government...

In Ferguson and many towns like it, majority African-American communities most grapple with mostly white county governments. How this leads to dysfunction, racial tension, and a skewed justice system. As we watch Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson bumble his way through press conferences, let’s take a couple steps back and think about how this two-thirds African-American town has retained such a nearly complete all-white power structure. It is partly, as Slate noted, a question of voting power, as whites are more entrenched and vote in greater numbers. But there’s a larger story here about race in America that involves the...

As we noted before, we can’t help but to contrast law enforcement’s reaction to protesters in Ferguson, Missouri versus law enforcement’s reaction during the Bundy Ranch fiasco. 1) The Bundy Ranch: On one hand, a large group of armed white men marched in a line of battle while at least one civilian rifleman in a sniper’s perch trained his weapon at Bureau of Land Management officials. In reaction, the government didn’t fire a single round or canister of tear gas, and eventually retreated, conceding the disputed ground to the Bundy militias. It’s important to note that the protesters turned out...

Ferguson is not just about systemic racism—it's about class warfare, and how America's poor are held back Will the recent rioting in Ferguson, Missouri, be a tipping point in the struggle against racial injustice . . . By focusing on just the racial aspect, the discussion becomes about whether Michael Brown’s death—or that of the other three unarmed black men who were killed by police in the U.S. within that month—is about discrimination or about police justification. Then we’ll argue about whether there isn’t just as much black-against-white racism in the U.S. as there is white-against-black. (Yes, there is. But,...

FERGUSON, Mo. (AP) — Attorney General Eric Holder on Sunday ordered a federal medical examiner to perform another autopsy on a black Missouri teenager whose fatal shooting by a white police officer has spurred a week of rancorous and sometimes-violent protests in suburban St. Louis. The "extraordinary circumstances" surrounding the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown and a request by Brown's family members prompted the order, Department of Justice spokesman Brian Fallon said in a statement.

The Obama administration has done little to calm racial tensions as they spread from Manhattan to St. Louis to Los Angeles. Quite the opposite, some top officials have fueled African-American fears of racism with false accusations of anti-black discrimination. Attorney General Eric Holder’s race-baiting is no secret. Justice Department documents show the nation’s top cop gave thousands of dollars to help the Rev. Al Sharpton organize marches protesting the death of Trayvon Martin. Now he’s sent the civil-rights unit to St. Louis to do the same thing in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown. Less known, however, is the role...

The events in Missouri spring from America's deeply embedded segregation and black economic deprivation. I spent my very early years in New York, living a very multiracial Sesame Street life, a big swinging bellbottom of a childhood. And then our family moved to Baltimore and the iron curtain of the "colour line" fell. I felt that I had moved from the 1970s through a time warp where black and white were the only two colours and never the twain shall socially meet. I grew to understand what the 50s were actually like in Baltimore, when my mother, for example, was...

An online friend “Miss Marple” notes the similarities between the thuggery in Ferguson, Missouri and the depredations of the Middle East’s jihadi wild packs: I read a book by the historian Barbara Tuchman [A Distant Mirror. The Calmitous 14th Century] which theorized that the Hundred Years War was caused by a culture that was adolescent, because so many older people had died during the Black Plague. All of the nobles and rulers at that time were in their late teens and had not much guidance from older, calmer heads. That idea has remained with me ever since I read the...

US policing is steeped racism, and its brutality, misconduct and abuse of authority is a national epidemic, President of Communities United Against Police Brutality Michelle Gross told RIA Novosti Saturday. "Policing, like much of the rest of American society, is steeped in racism," Gross stated. "Our organization's data on complaints received on our hotline indicate that Blacks are the victims in 60 percent of police brutality incidents. Further, anecdotal evidence shows that Blacks are more likely than any other group to die at the hands of law enforcement." The protests have been ongoing in Ferguson, Missouri since last Saturday, when...

Racial disparities tend to exist where one doesn't expect them. Situations provoke them to appear, and — if we're willing — we take notice and act. For decades, social justice advocates have referenced the racial disparity in citations and arrests for marijuana. liberal blah, blah . . Ending the war on marijuana won't end racial disparity in Oregon, but it would diminish it. Criminalizing marijuana allows racial inequality to fester. We can't reduce racial disparity where we don't know it exists, nor when we lack practical solutions. In the case of marijuana arrests, we have both. Isn't it responsible and...

Racism is the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, and the principle behind racism in America is to distinguish the white race as superior to all other races. Sadly, Despite Thomas Jefferson’s “immortal statement” that “all men are created equal,” America was founded on racism and it is beyond refute it is still a country steeped in white supremacy. It is true the nation has made progress from its beginnings when African Americans were considered 3/5ths of a human being, Native Americans were slaughtered, Christianized, and herded on to reservations, and...

If liberals truly cared about the plight of today’s black community, they wouldn’t be “standing in solidarity” with a bunch of outraged looters in Ferguson, Missouri… They would be denouncing the party of the KKK, Jim Crow, and segregation. They would be burning the homes of gang members. They would be fighting for the single black mother who is facing up to three years in prison for deciding to defend her life with a firearm. In short… They would be rampaging against the morally bankrupt hustlers of victimhood and dependency. Or, to put it another way, they would be voting...

A woman who tipped flour over her black neighbour and told her: 'You are now white British' in an unprovoked racist attack has been jailed. South African-born Pamela Bower was sitting in her garden having a cup of tea in Gillingham, Kent when Kellie Wells climbed over her six foot garden fence and began abusing her. Maidstone Crown Court heard how 42-year-old Wells told Miss Bower, who has lived in the UK for 15 years: 'Go back to your country you gorilla creature.' Miss Bower, 38, said: 'She had an ice cream container. She threw it at me. It hit...

Everyone is aware by now of another Trayvon Martin situation, this time in Ferguson, Missouri. An unarmed black teenager was shot and killed by a white police officer. The result has been disturbing on both ends. Blacks in this St. Louis suburb have rioted. They’re looting and destroying their own neighborhoods. The police response, using military equipment, has been equally as disturbing. Every American should be bothered by the unnecessary militarization of local police forces. Black anger is misplaced in this situation, just like it was in the Trayvon Martin situation. Over 90% of black people who are murdered are...

Maine Gov. Paul LePage is not thrilled with the way the NFL has handled the suspension of Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice, and said today on a radio show that he intends on boycotting the NFL and will be sending NFL Commissioner Roger Gooddell a letter criticizing the relatively light punishment Rice received for beating his fiancé unconscious. "They care so little about our women and our children that they’re going to hire these barbarians who go and hit their wives and their kids and they’re gonna get a slap on the hand? And some guy got a year...

The fifth night of demonstrations in support of gunned down Ferguson, Missouri teen Michael Brown saw scores of protesters marching through the streets of New York in a vigil that culminated in Times Square Thursday night. Tensions flared as some protestors attempted to shove their way through a police barricade set up in their path toward the beating heart of the city. Police held their own and tempers soon calmed, but as night gripped New York, the already congested Times Square ground to a halt as thousands flowed into the streets to demand an end to police brutality and militarization...