Malkin Award Nominee - The Dish: “I see those six ladies in the jury putting themselves on that rainy night, in that housing complex that has just been burglarized by three or four different groups of black youngsters from the adjacent community. So it’s a dark night, a 6-foot-2-inch hoodie-wearing stranger is in the immediate housing complex. How would the ladies of that jury have reacted? I submit that if they were armed, they would have shot and killed Trayvon Martin a lot sooner than George Zimmerman did. This is self-defense,” – Geraldo Rivera, Fox News.What makes the Zimmerman acquittal "bad justice" for many is in the quote above - that we should feel empowered to confront someone on the street with lethal force, because of "fear."
That’s a staggering statement, effectively giving white people the right to kill anyone above 6′ 2″ in a hoodie. I haven’t been able to watch the cable coverage of this, but readers tell me that Fox is race-baiting in hysterical, reckless fashion. If Rivera’s understanding of “self-defense” is correct, then it’s open, hunting season on African-American men.
The case will test what is left of the Voting Rights Act after the Shelby
County ruling.
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In 2013, a divided Supreme Court effectively gutted the key provision of
the law, but it left another tool intact. Now that provision, too, may be
at risk.
9 minutes ago
