And it's not me.
Oscar Grant, a black man from Oakland, was shot by BART police on New Year's Day. And by "shot", I mean "executed". Video from the shooting is below the fold.
Robert Stacy McCain, who's quickly becoming one of my favorite terrible people on the internet, has this to say about the ensuing massive anger and rioting resulting from this act.
Exactly what political message is sent by smashing storefront windows? What does that have to do with the transit police? And, while we're at it, is it the policy of the transit police to gun down innocent civilians? Or do the rioters suppose that this shooting would be swept under the rug unless they smashed windows and burned cars?
BTW, why do they call them "protesters"? I've seen lots of protesters -- they march around carrying signs and shouting slogans. People who smash windows are vandals, not protesters. There is a difference.
Let me be the first to say: Robert Stacy McCain, you are a terrible, ignorant human being. We could assume that this should be dealt with as any other purported accident would be, because as we all know, the entirety of American racial history was wiped clean when Obama was elected. Or we could deal with it in the light of hundreds of years of unequal justice shining down on a handcuffed man, held down by two police officers, being shot execution-style by another police officer who "forgot" which side had his gun and which side had his taser (no offense, but you're carrying a fucking gun - you are always responsible for how and when you use it). There is an argument that this is an isolated incident, that the old era of people being systematically mistreated by the justice system is oh wait Alabama:
Morgan County Sheriff Greg Bartlett testified at a Wednesday court hearing that he made $212,000 over three years by cheaply feeding prisoners — every cent of it legal under a Depression-era state law and reported on his tax forms as income.But U.S. District Judge U.W. Clemon ordered federal marshals to arrest Bartlett after hearing a string of skinny prisoners testify they were served paper-thin bologna, bloody chicken and cold grits in the north Alabama county's jail.
"He makes money by failing to spend the allocated funds for food for the inmates," Clemon ruled after a daylong hearing in a lawsuit filed by prisoners over jail conditions.
Black people in particular have a distrust for the abuses and excesses of the justice system because there have been so many and they've been purposefully aimed at the black population for decades. Rioting's not the answer, but anger is completely justified. In fact, it's promoted by idiots like McCain idly wondering why those savage Negroes can't handle a few unjustified shootings every now and then.
Or, hell, the black people are probably just irresponsibly drunk on their way to procreate more gang babies. I heard that's what we do these days.
One last question: a taser is theoretically supposed to be non-lethal. So why would you make a taser that you couldn't tell apart from a gun?
