'GETAWAYS'

'GETAWAYS'

This finely-crafted article was so insightful that I couldn't resist posting it: (aside from the fact that it was written by my own son) From the Caribbean Life Newspaper, January 28, 2009 Brooklyn/Staten Island page 12:

"OFFICER MEHSERLE MIGHT GET AWAY IN GRANT KILLING
By Laurence Legall Taylor

Make no mistake. I am not criticizing the video. There seems to be a disconnect between our youth and the slightly older population when it comes to remembering how this system handles black males and videos of them being brutalized and killed by the police. I criticized the system which had a clear video of Rodney King being beaten nearly to death; yet the police got off.
The system essentially sent a message to society that they didn't see police officers obviously beating a human being nearly to death; they didn't see what they thought they saw on the video and therefore it was not excessive.
As I am writing this, I am hearing an individual on radio grasping at the fact that Oscar
Grant's killing was videotaped, as if the targeting of black males by this hostile-to-color system will stop because it is being videotaped.
I hope we don't think that capturing the act on video is enough to stop the lynchings that this hostile-to-color justice system has been doing since way before the Dread Scott case.
We need to be vetting (testing and treating) the decision-making (individuals)at every step of this process to ensure that the racist/colorist conditioning they received from this society doesn't cloud their judgement which, unfortunately, it often does under the current circumstances.
However, as it stands now, a racist/colorist justice system that says through its actions and rulings that the videotape of Rodney King did not show a human being being nearly beaten to death ("it was a threatening black man"); that 41 shots with 19 hitting Amadou Diallo is not excessive against someone who is not part of the human race ("it was a threatening black man'); 50 shots at Sean Bell is not excessive against someone who is not part of the human race ("it was a threatening black man")/ and the many, many more cases where the immediate victim was a black male, but the system's target are all black males, who, because they are "breathing while black" are threatening, we could pretty much write t he verdict that a jury, who has not been tested and treated for their racist/colorist conditioning, will come up with in this case.
It will be interesting to see what propaganda follows in the Oscar Grant murder by police in the weeks to come.

Your Brother In The Struggle,
Laurence Legall Taylor
Vice President, The Institute for "Interracial" Harmony, Inc.
www.racismtest.org www.discussrace.com (718) 856 1271"