Michael Brown’s Pastor Tells His Kids ‘Try Not To Act As Black’
By Brian Anderson, January 22, 2015.
Reacting to the news that the Department of Justice will not be charging former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson with civil rights violations for the shooting death of Michael Brown last year, the Brown family pastor Rev. Carlton Lee expressed disappointment and made some pretty bizarre statements.
In an interview with The Daily Beast, Lee kicked off his inflammatory rhetoric by saying of the DoJ decision not to indict, “It’s a statement to all law enforcement officials that you can kill a black kid and get away with it.”
The two things wrong here are #1: he assumes that all or most law enforcement officials want to kill black kids and #2: that they are somehow now enabled to do so because of a lack of indictment.
“I’m very surprised, because of some of the conversations that were had behind the scenes about this case, it seemed like the federal government was going to come in and really investigate to the best of their ability,” Lee said, adding incredulously, “You mean to tell me the federal government didn’t have enough to charge [Wilson]?”
Well yeah, that’s why they didn’t charge Wilson; because they didn’t have enough evidence. That’s how our justice system works. A grand jury, armed with more evidence that any jury in the history of the process, didn’t see grounds for an indictment and the DoJ with strict orders from President Obama to find something also didn’t see enough to hand down charges.
Lee takes the black-centric view that because there will be no indictment that the DoJ didn’t perform a fair investigation. Trust me, Attorney General Eric Holder wanted nothing more than to string Darren Wilson up by his genitals, but the fact is, the officer did nothing wrong.
After claiming that the system is rigged, Lee tried to excuse black-on-black violence, which is a far bigger killer than officer-involved shootings, and blame it on the system (code word: white people):
“Critics like to say that the African-American race is killing each other one by one. But if you take the jobs away from them, you take education away from them, what the hell are they supposed to do? You take away these resources, you take away this help, what do you expect to happen?”
Nobody is taking jobs or education away from blacks; a lack of discipline and drive does that. Even so, Lee is basically saying that because blacks can’t find meaningful employment the next obvious step is to kill each other and that’s A-OK. He might as well have said, “Some blacks don’t try hard in school and become unemployable so naturally they have to kill other blacks.”
And finally, the Michael Brown incident has Rev. Lee altering his approach to parenting:
“What am I supposed to tell my sons?” he said of the boys, ages 12 and 4. “I tell them not to walk in the street. I tell them, ‘Try not to act as black.’”
How about telling them to act as respectful responsible citizens? Does “acting black” involve robbing a convenience store and attacking a police officer like Michael Brown did? That’s what got him killed, not his skin color or some cultural intricacy. I can only conclude that Lee thinks “acting black” means being violent and anti-social. We don’t even need to play the “what if a white guy said it” game; that’s racist no matter who says it.
I covered Carlton Lee months ago when he was claiming that non-existent white supremacists were responsible for black looters burning down his church during one of the Ferguson riots. It’s nice to see that he’s still completely out of his mind.
http://downtrend.com/71superb/michael-browns-pastor-tells-his-kids-try-not-to-act-as-black/
