"American Gangster" opens in theaters this weekend,
and it will be interesting to many to learn that the man who
decimated Harlem in the 1960s and 1970's and destroyed
innumerable black families with his drug trade was a black man,
Frank Lucas. It is also highly unlikely that the Reverend Al
Sharpton will place blame on Lucas for the carnage he waged
against his own community. When Rev. Sharpton recently threatened
to come to Staten Island to protest District Attorney Daniel
Donovan for not labeling an assault case a "hate
crime," it should have been clear to everyone how
increasingly desperate the "Reverend" has become in
manufacturing racial incidents instead of exposing the real ones
that still plague this nation.
Fresh from his success with the Jena Six incident in Louisiana
and the resulting furor, Sharpton attempted to repeat his triumph
here in New York with a fiery speech to supporters at the Harlem
headquarters of his National Action Network. Rev. Sharpton called
for a protest against the decision of Mr. Donovan to not
immediately press hate-crime charges against the two men accused
in the beating of 20-year-old Skylar McCormick of Elm Park. The
beating was clearly a hate crime, Rev. Sharpton insisted, because
the suspects charged in the incident, Daniel Avissato and Mark
Vincent Maleto, allegedly only attacked the black man in the
group and racial slurs were yelled. "If that ain't enough
evidence, then what is enough evidence?" Rev. Sharpton
asked.
I contacted the Staten Island D.A.'s office to see if the Rev.
Sharpton had followed up on his threatened protest, but as of
this writing, he hadn't. Perhaps he's learned two things about
Staten Island that may have dampened his enthusiasm. First, Mr.
Donovan has a well deserved reputation for fairness and
compassion for all residents. And secondly, there have been many
incidents of black on white crime that were clearly hate crimes
but never charged as such.
Both Reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson managed to create a
racial mountain out of a molehill by linking the arrest of six
Jena youths who assaulted a white teen to a school prank three
months earlier. According to the Jena News, the trouble started
with the hanging of two nooses on a tree that was falsely
reported to be a "whites only" tree. In reality, there
was no such thing. At an earlier light-hearted assembly, a black
student had jokingly asked if he could sit under the tree in the
campus center. Everyone laughed when the principal told him,
"Don't go there." He could sit anywhere he liked. Three
white students were found to be the noose-hangers and were
ordered to be removed from school and expelled. After a school
board hearing to consider these recommendation the students were
sentenced to spending a month in an alternative school followed
by a two week in-school suspension. The students were also very
remorseful and it was determined that they did not act out of
hatred. They had many black friends whom they were sorry to have
potentially offended.
Conservative talk show host and columnist Mychal Massie wrote in
World Net Daily, "But on December 4, 2006, what has been
described as one of the most violent attacks in Jena High School
history was orchestrated by [Michael] Bell and six other black
students on one unsuspecting white student. From all evidence and
witness statements gathered, the attack of Justin Barker by Bell,
Robert Bailey, and the five others had nothing whatsoever to do
with, nor was it connected in any way to, the noose incident
three months earlier."
Now that these demagogues have stirred up racial discord in Jena,
Louisiana, are they headed to Staten Island? Where was Al
Sharpton when Megan Williams suffered even worse abuse than
Tawana Brawley? The 20-year-old black woman was allegedly
tortured, beaten, forced to eat feces - rat, dog, and human - and
raped by six white men and women who held her for days in West
Virgina.
Black Lawyers for Justice cofounder, Malik Shabazz, said
"This case deserves national concern and national outrage.
The Megan Williams case is 10 times, maybe 50 times, worse than
what happened in Jena, Louisiana."
I agree. Racism still exists in this country and its ugly reality
needs to be exposed. It was just such brutality that he witnessed
as a child in North Carolina that made Frank Lucas into the stone
cold drug lord he ultimately became as an adult. Hate crimes are
color blind. What a pity Al Sharpton is not.