Why The 'Race Card' Is Played

South Carolina, Home of the Racist: White Supremacist Sentenced to Less Than 3 Years for Dylann-Roof Inspired Attack White supremacist Benjamin Thomas Samuel McDowell, 31, was sentenced to two years and nine months in prison after he admitted to wanting to commit a “fucking big-scale” attack “ in the spirit of Dylann Roof .” In March, he pleaded guilty to a single count of being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition as part of a plea deal he reached with federal prosecutors, according to the  Huffington Post . The plea deal that would have given him the right to appeal if he’d been sentenced to more than three years. The charge carries a maximum of 10 years but sentencing guidelines recommend 27 to 33 months. This is the definition of white privilege. He told an FBI agent, posing as a member of the Aryan Nations, that he’s been wanting to commit an act of violence against Jews, Muslims and people of color. However, his mental health was ta...

Woman Who Beat Elderly Mexican Man with a Brick on July 4 Charged With Attempted Murder  Laquisha Jones, the black woman accused of beating 91-year-old Rodolfo Rodriguez with a cement brick as he was taking his nightly walk, will face attempted murder charges. Jones was arraigned at the Los Angeles Superior Court on Thursday.  KCAL reports  that she pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted murder and elder abuse. The 30-year-old had originally been charged with assault with a deadly weapon. The brutality of Jones’ attack and the level of injury Rodriguez suffered played into the upgraded charge, says the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office. “The defendant personally used a deadly and dangerous weapon, a brick, during the commission of the crime and...she committed great bodily injury upon the victim,” wrote the LACDA in their felony complaint. According to his family, Rodriguez suffered two broken ribs, a broken jaw, broken cheek...

U.S. Navy Ends Ban on Dreadlocks for Women  The U.S. Navy is joining other branches of the armed forces, including the Marines, the Army and the Air Force, and putting an end to its ban on dreadlocks for the women who serve our country. The Huffington Post reports  that the Navy announced the lift on its ban  during a live broadcast on its Facebook page  on Tuesday. Many other styles, including ponytails and buns, will also be allowed under the new relaxed rules if they do not interfere with the female sailor’s operational or safety needs. Male sailors will still be required to keep their hair short, however. As HuffPo notes, Petty Officer 1st Class Jacqualynn Leak, who has worn her hair in dreadlocks since 2014, has been pushing to get the ban lifted, pouring over research on the cultural and health aspects of locs, as well as surveying several female sailors who have been impacted by the ban. “I wanted to make an argument s...

Family devastated after teen basketball star is killed while walking with his girlfriend — After bogus 911 call, cop pulls gun on unarmed Black kids who were being harassed —  “Me and Latrell were walking, and this guy was making a face,” said Tucker, 17. “Latrell asks the guy if he has a problem. He turns around and shoots him,” she told the Daily News. “I ran to him. I took my shirt and covered his head. I told him I needed him and loved him.” Brown was killed outside a Macon St. building near Lewis Ave. in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Trump UK visit: MPs warn that 'racist' US president is causing mayhem for British police Donald Trump ’s UK visit is causing “mayhem” for British police with security operations costing millions of pounds, MPs have said. Thousands of officers are being moved around the country to guard areas where the US president will make an appearance, as colleagues in their home forces have shifts extended and leave cancelled to cover their absence. Louise Haigh, Labour’s shadow policing minister, accused the government of providing “no guarantee that the additional costs required will be fully met”.

Aurora police officer fired for racist comment is reinstated AURORA, Colo. (AP) — The Aurora police chief says a former lieutenant will return to the department after he was fired for making a racist remark that was caught on his body camera. The Aurora Sentinel  reports  Lt. Charles DeShazer appealed his firing to the city's Civil Service Commission which agreed that the comment warranted punishment, but ruled it should have been a demotion instead of a termination. The commission says DeShazer should not receive any pay back for the 10 months he was out of work. Police Chief Nick Metz said Tuesday that DeShazer will first be assigned to the police academy. DeShazer's next assignment has yet to be determined, although Metz says his future position will not "be in a supervisory or citizen-facing role."

Diddy: Music industry still sidelines African-American executives Sean Combs  says that music companies still sideline African-American executives — even when they make “billions of dollars” for the industry. “You have these record companies that are making so much money off our culture, our art form, but they’re not investing or even believing in us,” Combs, a k a Diddy,  told Variety , adding, “For all the billions of dollars that these black executives have been able to make them [there’s still hesitation] to put them in the top-level positions. They’ll go and they’ll recruit cats from overseas.” Combs told the trade that he thinks “a lot about Black Wall Street,” a community of black entrepreneurs in the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, Okla., that was decimated in 1921. “The black people in this community were thriving, and others were having to look at them thriving because they had their own banks and supermarkets. Income was being cultivated, and they were ...

Facebook's diversity efforts failing African-American and Hispanic women SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook is inching toward increasing the diversity of its workforce but it still has a big problem: it's hiring very few black and Hispanic women. The social media giant’s latest diversity report released Thursday shows strides in boosting the ranks of some groups who’ve been underrepresented at Facebook from the beginning, but a closer look at the raw numbers reveals that these women of color are being largely left out of any progress. You can almost count on one hand the number of black women — six — who work as senior managers or executives at Facebook in the U.S., accounting for less than 1 percent of those 769 jobs. The next layer of managers at Facebook isn't more diverse: 34 out of a total of 2,816, or 1.2%. The number of Hispanic women who are senior managers or executives can be counted on two hands for about 1.3 percent of those jobs, accordin...

Papa John’s founder resigns as chairman after using the n-word during a media training conference call NEW YORK (AP) — The Latest on Papa John’s founder’s use of a racial slur (all times local): 12:00 a.m. Papa John’s says founder John Schnatter has resigned as chairman of the board. The company made the announcement late Wednesday, hours after Schnatter apologized for using a racial slur during a conference call in May. The apology comes after Forbes cited an anonymous source saying the pizza chain’s marketing firm broke ties with the company afterward. Forbes said Schnatter used the N-word during a media training exercise. When asked how he would distance himself from racist groups, Schnatter reportedly complained that Colonel Sanders never faced a backlash for using the word. In a statement released by Louisville, Kentucky-based Papa John’s, Schnatter said reports attributing use of “inappropriate and hurtful” language to him were true. ___ 4:20 p.m. Papa John’s foun...

Officer Who Stood by as Man Harassed Woman in Puerto Rico Shirt Resigns The Cook County Forest Preserves officer who stood idly by as a belligerent man harassed a woman in a Puerto Rico flag T-shirt resigned late Wednesday. Officer Patrick Connor drew widespread outrage after a viral video surfaced of Mia Irizarry being harassed and intimidated by a white man upset that she was wearing a T-shirt bearing a Puerto Rican flag. As the man aggressively follows Irizarry around a forest preserves site, asking her if she’s a U.S. citizen, Irizarry turns repeatedly to Connor for help. “You should not be wearing that in the United States of America,” the man tells Irizzary, not believing her when she informs him Puerto Rico is, in fact, part of the United States. On the video, not only does Connor hang back and do nothing, at one point, he turns his back to Irizarry as she asks him to intervene. “Officer, I feel highly uncomfortable. Can you please grab...

Government reopens probe of Emmett Till’s gruesome 1955 slaying Associated Press BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — The federal government has reopened its investigation into the slaying of Emmett Till, the black teenager whose brutal killing in Mississippi shocked the world and helped inspire the civil rights movement more than 60 years ago. The Justice Department told Congress in a report in March it is reinvestigating Till’s slaying in Money, Mississippi, in 1955 after receiving “new information.” The case was closed in 2007 with authorities saying the suspects were dead; a state grand jury didn’t file any new charges. Deborah Watts, a cousin of Till, said she was unaware the case had been reopened until contacted by The Associated Press on Wednesday. The federal report, sent annually to lawmakers under a law that bears Till’s name, does not indicate what the new information might be. But it was issued in late March following the publication last year of “The Blood of Emmett ...

July 12, 1991 On this day, director John Singleton’s “Boyz N the Hood” was released. Writing in The Washington Post, movie critic Rita Kempley called it “a rude, insistent rap, an unflinching, often funny, always compassionate look at coming of age.” The film follows three childhood friends: Doughboy, played by rapper Ice Cube of N.W.A., in what Kempley called “an impressive acting debut”; Doughboy’s “model-handsome” brother Ricky, played by Morris Chestnut; and Tre, played by Cuba Gooding Jr. Tre’s mother sends him to live with his father (Laurence Fishburne), who is “distant and preachy, but his tough love makes all the difference.” Tre perseveres, Kempley wrote, while his friends “fall by the wayside, victims of temper, neglect and indigence.” The film was a critical success. Singleton became the first African American and the youngest person nominated for a best-director Oscar. He went on to make such movies as “Poetic Justice” and “Baby Boy.” The film also made movie stars o...