In celebration of twenty-five years of the Useless Toady, the paper runs this sob piece by DeWayne Wickham, “25 years of gains, and retreats, on civil rights [1].” Wickhan is offensive by intent:
As enthralled as I was by that moment, I was enraged by what the criminal justice system did to Latasha Harlins [2] and Amadou Diallo [3]. In 1992, a Korean grocer was convicted of voluntary manslaughter for firing a fatal shot into the back of the head of Harlins, a 15-year-old black girl whom she had mistakenly suspected of trying to steal a bottle of orange juice. A white judge gave the grocer five years probation and 400 hours of community service. Diallo was an African immigrant who was killed when four white undercover New York City cops fired 41 shots at him in 1999. The officers said that Diallo had behaved suspiciously and that they opened fire when they mistakenly thought he was reaching for a gun. A jury acquitted the cops after the judge told them to see the case from the officers’ perspective, not Diallo’s [4].
Who did what to Amandou Diallo, a man who resembled a serial rapist, was an immigrant from Africa who did not speak English, likely did not understand a police order to stop and who made a threatening move. Of course the jury was supposed to try to see the crime from the perspective of the police officers. They were on trial for what they did and not for who they did it to.
Wickham decribess minorties as victims as much as he can. What Wickhan fails is to mention minorites as the villians, like the professsional race merchants like Al Sharpton [5].
Or as murders, Wickham omits the greatest set back to race relations in this country in life the last twenty-five years. It was a crime where a black man, O.J. Simpson, murdered both a white woman, Nicole Brown Simpson and white man, Ronald Goldman and was acquited by a largely black jury, who only feigned deliberation for a mere four hours.