Such exceptionalism will lead to racism of a level unimaginable. I think twice about having a black doctor thanks to affirmative action. Something unimaginable to me in my younger days. There is a very good chance he became a doctor over much better qualified candidates – i.e. he’s a doctor because he’s black. Not only not a far fetched but quite likely.

poetcomic1 on January 4, 2008 at 12:50 pm

Debbie, you said:
“Apparently, you can get away with murder in America, so long as you are a minority who murdered a white person and can find a cop who used a racial slur at any time in his life, which is apparently not too hard. Guh-reat.”
Come on now….You know better than that! One Black celebrity (OJ) gets way with murder and somehow that model applies to all of the rest of us??? Please!!! What do Jayson Williams and OJ have in common besides being Black? They’re former athletes, have a boatload of cash, and are celebrities. As in the case of Phil Spector and Robert Blake, their celebrity status goes a long way in getting them off the hook. There is no way in hell that the everyday Black man on the street is going to get away with murder just because some cop uttered a racial slur. If you don’t believe me, go visit a prison and take a look at the racial composition of the prison population. Black men aren’t getting away with a damn thing (which is why I don’t know why we continue to engage in so much criminal activity….we’re not good at it because we’re always getting caught!). In fact, all of these “DNA projects” are showing that there is a sizable number of Black men in prison who DID’NT commit the crime but STILL got convicted. You can’t pick up a paper without reading how yet another poor soul is being released from prison after umpteen years because his DNA did not match that found at the crime scene.
So please, before we start making all of these racial generalizations and talking crazy about “exceptionalism”, let’s remember the power of money and celebrity in these cases rather than just race. Because I can tell you, if I shot someone and tried to cover it up, my non-celebrity Black ass would be in convicted and in the penitentiary in a New York minute, no matter what racial slur a cop on the case may have used….
[JJ: YOU MAKE SOME GREAT POINTS ABOUT THEM BOTH BEING ATHLETE CELEBS WITH TONS OF CASH. BUT IT DOESN’T TAKE AWAY FROM THE FACT THAT EVERY SINGLE DEFENSE ATTORNEY IN THESE KINDS OF CASES IS PLAYING THE RACE CARD, EVEN WHEN–AS IN MANY OF THESE CASES–IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THEIR CLIENT’S GUILT. IT’S GETTING TIRESOME TO SEE. AND I’D HATE TO SEE JAYSON WILLIAMS GET AWAY WITH IT B/C SOME IDIOT COP USED A RACIAL SLUR, THE WAY O.J. GOT AWAY WITH IT, THANKS TO MARK FUHRMAN.
YOU ARE 100% CORRECT ABOUT WHO IS BEHIND BARS. BUT LET’S BE HONEST. MOST OF THEIR VICTIMS WERE ALSO BLACK. SO, THERE’S LESS OF A RACE CARD TO PLAY.
I AGREE WITH YOU ON THE INNOCENCE PROJECT CASES–THOSE ARE TRAGIC, AND IN MANY CASES, THEY WERE CONVICTED B/C OF RACISM, NOT NECESSARILY IN THE JURY, BUT THROUGHOUT THE SYSTEM. THE PERCENTAGE OF THOSE SET FREE THROUGH THE INNOCENCE PROJECT, THOUGH, ARE JUST A TINY INFINITESMAL FRACTION OF THOSE WHO WERE LEGITIMATELY CONVICTED AND ARE MOST LIKELY GUILTY.
WE DISAGREE ON THIS ONE, BUT AS ALWAYS, I RESPECT WHAT YOU HAVE TO SAY, AND IT IS WELL SAID. I ALWAYS READ YOUR COMMENTS WITH INTEREST, AND THEY MAKE ME THINK. I VERY MUCH ENJOY HAVING YOU AS A READER AND COMMENTER. DS]

JibberJabber on January 4, 2008 at 2:41 pm

Co sign to that, JibberJabber. Of course these conservative morons know that but its easier to go on their signature “oppressed white person” bullshit.
Puh-fucking-leaze!!!

Emperor on January 4, 2008 at 3:09 pm

The O.J. defense team contested every single point the prosecution brought forward: the DNA evidence, the timeline, the LAPD’s evidence-gathering methods and failure to maintain a chain-of-custody over evidence, etc. They didn’t stipulate to anything. That’s why they won. They were like a well-rounded football team, strong on offense, strong on defense, strong on special teams, could move the ball on the ground and they had an aerial game too (‘if the glove does not fit, you must acquit’). Sure, Mark Fuhrman was a piece of it (and, by the way, Fuhrman was devastated in cross-examination by F. Lee Bailey, not Cochran) but there the elephant in the courtroom was the infamous decades-long racism of the LAPD. That’s what made it plausible they might’ve screwed with O.J. You treat people like crap for a century or so, you think they’re not gonna react when they get on a jury?

John West on January 5, 2008 at 8:29 pm

poetcomic1: “I think twice about having a black doctor thanks to affirmative action. Something unimaginable to me in my younger days. ”
In your ‘younger days’ there weren’t any black doctors because there wasn’t any affirmative action.

John West on January 5, 2008 at 8:37 pm

John….come on….please. Tell me you’re just promoting some anti-affirmative action agenda instead of stating what you think is a historical fact. Black doctors have been around since the latter 19th Century. However, there was a little thing you may have read about (well…maybe not, give the state of education and anti-intellectualism in America) called segregation and Jim Crow laws that kept most of those doctors exclusively practicing in the Black community. There was another little thing back in the day called racism and discrimination that kept many of their achievements from being known by the larger community. I grew up in a church whose membership had more than a few Black physicians. So unless poetcomic1 is over 140 years old, there were Black doctors around during his “younger days”.
If you are truly interested, and I seriously doubt it given your post, please read about three personal heroes of mine, Dr. Charles Drew, Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, and Dr. Ben Carson. So yes, to the surprise of those who chose not to educate themselves on true American history due to their own particular biases, there were Black folks in medicine BEFORE affirmative action.

JibberJabber on January 5, 2008 at 11:02 pm

JibberJabber:
You got me wrong, pal. My little comment was intended to be PRO affirmative action, not anti. I was satirizing poetcomic1’s post. Yeah, of course there were Black doctors before affirmative action, but he wouldn’t have seen much of them if he’s white. As you yourself point out, most of them practised exclusively within the Black community…
That’s what’s changed, and it’s huge. Today’s Black doctors and other medical professionals are represented in ALL major healthcare venues, including tertiary care facilities (university teaching hospitals). They get the same training, undergo the same supervision, pass the same boards, treat the same patients as Whites. I’ve not seen any data to suggest they do any worse. Why would they?

John West on January 6, 2008 at 11:12 am

Jibber Jabber, you should follow the case of Orange Taylor, the black thug who raped, then murdered, a white college student who was asleep in her dorm room. Surveillance cameras clearly showed him entering and leaving the building around the time of her murder, and he was carrying shopping bags he had taken from her room! His defense was that he entered her room, came upon her dead naked body, got so excited he masturbated over it (hence the reason his DNA was all over her thigh). A black juror decided that was good enough for her and refused to convict him. Now, much to the horror of the family, the trial has to be done all over again.
Was racism behind this fiasco? You bet it was. Just as it was behind the OJ trial. And it’s not the racism of white cops calling names, but the racism of black jurors deciding to stick it to Whitey. I fear for our future. There will be a backlash and it won’t be pretty.

AmericanJewess on January 6, 2008 at 11:47 am

John,
Please accept my apologies for jumping to conclusions and misunderstanding your post and thank you for setting me straight on it. Sometimes I see what I want to see instead of what is truly being said….
American Jewess,
The Orange Taylor case is indeed horrible and that juror who refused to convict him was a damn knucklehead. On the other hand, Black jurors send Black criminals to jail every day (as I told Debbie, just look at the prison population). And as Debbie correctly pointed out, Black folks tend to be the main victims of these thugs, so most of us are all to happy to get them OUT of our neighborhoods when given a chance, despite all of this “no snitching” B.S. I think there already is a backlash and as you say, it may get worse. However, I think that backlash is misplaced and based on only a few high profile cases. The only thing most Black folks want to stick it too is the criminals who have been terrorizing our neighborhoods and glamorizing the “thug” image in front of Black kids. Look for that backlash to occur very soon also!

JibberJabber on January 6, 2008 at 12:05 pm

American Jewess:
‘Fraid the LAPD’s sorry history–which provided the whole context for race in the OJ trial–amounts to a helluva lot more than just “calling names.” That’s why it was placed under federal supervision in 2001, to monitor its use of force, treatment of minorities, and tracking of officers’ behavior in the field. This was during the Bush administration, you understand. The LAPD is the largest police department in the United States to fall under federal supervision, and in May 2006 the consent decree was extended for another three years…
Incidentally, in American English the term ‘jewess’ has a faintly anti-semitic tinge. I understand what you intend by it but you don’t hear anybody using terms like Lutheraness, do you?…

John West on January 6, 2008 at 8:47 pm

Jibber Jabber, thanks for your thoughtful response. I only hope you are right that most blacks are more concerned with increasing the safety of their own communities than with shielding the bad folks among them.
John West, there is nothing inherently bigoted about “Jewess” anymore than “Jew,” yet I’ve had gentile friends who go to great lengths to contort their sentences so that they end up saying “Jewish person” instead of Jew. Someone somewhere has taught them that “Jew” is a bad thing to call someone. It is all so silly. In Hebrew, we have feminine and masculine versions of nouns as a matter of course. If you do some searching around on the internet, you will find that “Jewess” is making a resurgence among Jewish female writers.
I make it a point not to allow bigots to determine my linguistic style and I would encourage you strongly to do the same.

AmericanJewess on January 8, 2008 at 7:48 am