Don Lemon isn't the first CNN Talking TeeVee Pundit Head to promote the Fox News false, black-on-black crime, narrative, to deflect from the real issues surrounding the injustices in the Trayvon Martin case.
Remember this?
"Would you, would fellow African-American Congress members care as much if Trayvon were white?" When I heard Brooke Baldwin ask Representative Corrine Brown (D. FL) this question I had to check my TeeVee to see If I had accidentally tuned into Fox News. Shudder
What's wrong with this argument?
It's the Media.
The black-on-black crime argument says that blacks in America have no right to complain about white-on-black crime till they do something about black-on-black crime. It is a racist deflection.
Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Chris Wallace and others on the right used the argument in the days after the George Zimmerman verdict. Whitewashed people bring it up whenever crime and race are at issue.
Remember this?
"Would you, would fellow African-American Congress members care as much if Trayvon were white?" When I heard Brooke Baldwin ask Representative Corrine Brown (D. FL) this question I had to check my TeeVee to see If I had accidentally tuned into Fox News. Shudder
What's wrong with this argument?
It allows the white press to determine reality, which makes it seem like Zimmerman is an exception while no one is doing anything about black-on-black crime. As it turns out, on average there is a Zimmerman-style shooting (armed security person or vigilante killing an unarmed black person) once every 28 hours. Trayvon Martin is just what made the papers. His case is hardly the worst nor the only one to get protests. Likewise, there is plenty being done about black-on-black crime, like by the Nation of Islam, but the white press is not particularly interested in reporting that either. Even worse, the white press turns a blind eye to the bad policing that leads to a high black crime rate. Yet, somehow, it always seems to find time to show black male suspects on the 11 o’clock news.
It's the Media.
Until Don Lemon, Bill O'Reilly and other are willing to address the root causes of violence, they need to shut the hell up. Don Lemon, why didn't you rant on and on about poverty, unemployment, gun control, inferior schools and mass incarceration?Why? Because that would be too much like right (no pun intended).
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