>>>>>>>It would be nice to actually go more than 48 hours without seeing something like this happening in Oakland.
>>>>>>>
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bezz-6Q09ng>>>>>>>I understand that the police have a difficult task of trying to keep order - but this business where they keep attacking people with batons that are lying on the ground defenseless, then arresting anyone recording it is REALLY starting to get under my skin.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Maybe the derelicts should head back to their mom's basements or whereever else they may have crawled in from and quit trying freeload on the public.
>>>>>
>>>>>Right..and if they don't just violently attack them? Besides their mom's house was probably foreclosed.
>>>>>Remember the riots in 1992? How did that start? It started because 4 cops were caught beating the crap out of someone, then were acquitted of any wrongdoing during the arrest (as big of a joke as O.J. verdict). If this stuff is still happening next summer there will probably be a repeat - you'd think the city officials and police dept would learn because that wasn't the first time that had happened either.
>>>>
>>>>I remember the whole thing well. Rodney King was a small time crook who only became famous because of the cop beating and someone catching it on video camera. Blacks in L.A. had a long simmering resentment against cops and that video ignited it like a bomb. I watched the whole thing unfold on TV in a rented apartment in Denver, L.A. up in flames.
>>>
>>>Yep. They looted from the Koreans, Vietnamese, Cubans, and most anyone else who was successful at the time.
>>
>>I am not defending the looters. That was pure punk behavior, mob behavior.
>>
>>Blacks and Koreans, there is a long history of enmity there in L.A. It didn't take much to ignite that.
>>
>>Another of my favorite movies: "Do the Right Thing." A classic.
>>
>>Sometimes we like to kid ourselves that we are post-racial. We are not. (And neither are the Europeans, so it's not just an American disease). When Obama was elected I had a flicker of hope. I'm not saying everyone who dislikes Obama does so for racial reasons but some sure do. The news here is full of hate crimes, Just the other day there was a story in the Trib about three white high school guys luring a black classmate to one of their houses, ostensibly to hang out with them. They killed him. All three are awaiting trial.
>
>
>Yeah. Luckily they don't call what happens to white people in black neighborhoods hate crimes. They are just victimized by disenfranchised youth.
>
>
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>>Eh, enough heaviness. Did you see any clips of Patrick Kane's antics at the all star game? He competed in one of the skills contests wearing a Superman cape and Clark Kent glasses. I thought that was pretty funny.
>>
>>
http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/hockey/blackhawks/sns-ap-hkn-all-star-skills-,0,5913646.storyThe olive branch knocked out of my hand.....
You must be talking to someone else. I never said any such thing about hate crimes. A crime is a crime. If someone does something to someone else based on the color of their skin, they are racist. I do not and will not believe the argument that blacks cannot be racist. They can and they are.
All that said, I think you should find some compassion in your heart for those (of whatever race) who grow up disenfranchised. It's not an experience you have known and you should not look at them with condescension.
I will tell you a little story. It's about my father.
He was born in 1932 in northern Maine, up near the Quebec border. He never knew his father. He knew who he was but that was it. The biological father, as they put it.
His family was poor, as were most in Maine during the Depression. He went to crummy schools in small towns. It was not a gentle place. Other kids called him "bastard" and threw rocks at him. "Who's your fathuh?" He threw the rocks right back. He loved the New York Yankees for unknown reasons, which was a little different in Red Sox country. Later, when he got married, he named me after Mickey Mantle; I was born the winter after Mantle won the Triple Crown. He invented a baseball card game to keep himself busy. His team was a fictionalized version of the Yankees. Their star, his Mickey Mantle, was a guy named Jack Nalty. The deck was literally stacked in his favor. The queen of hearts was a home run. For Nalty so was the queen of spades, and the queen of diamonds in home games. He hit a lot of home runs and the team won a lot of pennants ;-) It was his solace. And I don't think he ever committed a crime.
He graduated first in his high school class of 7 ;-) College was not on the radar, not for most unwealthy kids at the time, so he took the logical first option: the Army. He was sent to England and Germany and his unit was due to be deployed to Korea until the war ended. (Somewhere along the way he picked up the ability to imitate English women's accents, I don't know how). He came back to Maine. The money he had been sending home out of every paycheck had all been spent. He didn't complain -- he NEVER complains other than about bad drivers -- and started over again. He went to an el cheapo business school over a bookstore in Skowhegan, on the GI Bill, and then to work for the hometown mill, Solon Manufacturing. They made all kinds of paper products and were the leading producer of popsicle sticks in the world. He tore it up and was hired by a bigger company, Cole's Express in Bangor. Tore it up again. From there he went to one of the best companies in Maine, Hannaford, where he was a VP of Transportation and then President when they split the trucking part off on its own. He was the Chairman of the American Trucking Association for a year, the first ever from the state of Maine. He has met Presidents and knows Olympia Snowe and Jock McKernan personally. And he still doesn't like spending $6 on dinner when he can spend 5 ;-)
So there's a disenfranchised child. Don't ever write them off.
