NOTE FROM JOHN: This story comes across far worse when you watch CNN's video. Watch the video. These are cute little pretty suburban white boys, who did this. First they all beat the guy, a 49 year old auto worker who was coming out of a motel at 5am, then when the man stumbled away for help, the one kid gunned his engine and ran the man over, dead. It's all on video. Speechless.
This is beyond disturbing. From Pam Spaulding:
I caution you to think about whether you want to watch this video, since it's graphic, but honestly, if you want to see what racism breeds.Read Pam's full post. Seriously.
In Mississippi, young men decided that their entertainment for the evening was to go for a drive and kick the sh*t out of the first black person that they came across. (CNN):
The fact that these teens were ready to kill any black person they came across is chilling; it is very hard for me not to project myself in that situation - my life is worthless to people like this. Life snuffed out in an instant.
You have to ask yourself -- what kind of home life did these teens have? Was there bold and open racist talk by their parents that sowed the seeds of hate? What kind of diversity existed in their school lives? Mississippi has to own this kind of cultural nightmare; but so do a lot of states, eve ones with diverse populations, that still deal with racism, colorism and violence over cultural differences.
We have come a long way in terms of laws on the books to address discrimination, but in other, darker corners of society, nothing much has changed at all for a slice of the population that sees people of color as expendible, exploitable, and an obstacle to their desire to remain socially segregated.
