The Law To Save Black Men From A Life Of Incarceration.

Our nation has a long history relating to racial and more recently religious profiling by law enforcement, which needs be legally halted once and for all through the passage of the End Racial Profiling Act (ERPA).

From driving while Black to traveling while Latino near border states to flying while Muslim or Sikh, racial and religious profiling continues to cause countless of indignities, which have led to detainment without predication and even acts of violence against law-abiding persons. In 2009, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Rights Working Group sent a report to the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination stating: "Both Democratic and Republican administrations [in the United States] have acknowledged that racial profiling is unconstitutional, socially corrupting and counter-productive, yet this unjustifiable practice remains a stain on American democracy and an affront to the promise of racial equality." But besides racial and religious profiling being humiliating to those who suffer it, it simply is not effective in deterring crime and contradicts empirical crime data.

As Ohio State Professor Michelle Alexander highlights in her book, "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness," White Americans use and sell drugs in close proportion to their percentage in society, yet Black and Latino males are the primary persons apprehended by law enforcement on suspicion of drug related activity. There is no racial profile to who does or does not consume and sell illicit substances in our nation, which is why such profiling is ineffective.

According to the FBI's statistics going back to 1980, 94 percent of domestic terrorism is committed by persons who are of various faiths outside of the religion of Islam, yet ACLUFreedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation revealed in September 2011 that the FBI considered Metro Detroit a hotbed for potential terrorists because of our "large Middle-Eastern and Muslim population."

In a veiled response last month to a CAIR lawsuit against the FBI, Customs Border Protection and Transportation Security Administration for asking invasive religious questions to Americans such as "Do you pray?" and "What mosque do you pray at?" FBI Assistant Special Agent Todd Mayberry dismissed citizens' concerns by rhetorically asking, "What really are the offensive questions here?" Ironically, University of North Carolina Professor Charles Kuzman released a report on terrorism and homeland security in February 2011 using government data, which states that American Muslims cause "a minuscule threat to public safety." More ironic is that the more religious or prayerful American Muslims are, the more likely they are to be adverse to violent extremism.

ERPA will not only make it illegal for all law enforcement officers to use race and religion as means to profile persons and entire communities of color but will also provide means to train officers to better police based upon behaviors, not race and religion.

We as Americans, once and for all, should loudly proclaim through federal law that racial and religious profiling is illegal and immoral. When we change the culture of profiling among our nation's finest, perhaps it will lead to a general cultural shift in which we will see the end to the type of profiling that led to the death of Trayvon Martin at the hands of a private citizen.

Source http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dawud-walid/end-racial-profiling-act_b_1475470.html?ref=black-voices&ir=Black%20Voices

The Black American Male Nightmare.

When the feminist poet Adrienne Rich died this week, the obituary of one of the most influential female writers of the last half-century described the goal of her life and her work as “the creation of a society without domination.”

The rest of the week’s news illustrated how far we have to go in achieving such a dream.   In Florida, when newly-released video showed that George Zimmerman was apparently unscathed after shooting Trayvon Martin despite his claim of being injured while defending himself against attack, the message was clear: whether their authority derives from a gun or the color of their skin, men will defend their right to control people they have traditionally dominated, even if they have to kill them in cold blood.

On the video, Zimmerman’s casual ease with the police who failed to arrest him conveyed an equally brutal message: when the effort to maintain domination ends in the murder of a youth armed only with a bag of Skittles, those in power will protect their own kind instead of holding them accountable

In New York, when a jury proved unable to reach a guilty verdict on rape charges against a drunken cop who committed a brutal sexual attack on a young woman while threatening to shoot her in the face if she cried out or opened her eyes, a comparable message was clear: men with badges and guns have the right to take what they want from women, no matter what the circumstances.

Read More http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/29/male-domination-persists-as-a-pervasive-reality-in-the-u-s-and-abroad.html?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pulsenews

The Fear Of A Black Planet, What Got Trayvon Killed.

This story, with its stench of racial bias, is not a matter of black versus white. It isn’t symbolized by nooses, clubs, or snarling dogs. It isn’t a modern-day Emmitt Till. Today the pain of racism flares up and then subsides; it throbs like a dull ache and often its source can be hard to locate. On good days, it even feels like it has gone away.

So it’s not really surprising that something as banal as a hoodie, which Martin was wearing when he was killed, has become symboli of Zimmerman’s presumed prejudice, ignorance, and animus. When Zimmerman described Martin as “suspicious” to a 911 operator, it begged the question: What, precisely, made him suspect? Since there was no indication from the call that Martin’s actions were untoward, logic turned to his mere presence. He was a black man in jeans and … a hoodie.

Such a stupid, innocuous garment.

It has never had the fear factor of black leather or steel-toe boots. Swaggering rappers and tough guys were never able to take full ownership of hoodies; they weren’t able to exploit them for their own purposes like baggy jeans or oversized white t-shirts. There was too much that was functional, cuddly, and universal about hoodies for them to be fully co-opted. Too broad a population embraced them. They remained rooted in weekend athleticism and collegiate sports, the Gap and Old Navy. Suburban dads wear them when they mow their lawn. Soccer moms wear them to soccer games. Channel surfers pull them on for pizza and beers.

Read More http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/29/hoodies-trayvon-martin-and-america-s-racial-fears.html?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pulsenews

Bobby Rush Still Fighting For The Black People.

Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) was thrown off the House floor Wednesday after wearing a hoodie and sunglasses in protest of the Trayvon Martin shooting in Florida.

"Racial profiling has to stop," Rush said as he peeled off his suit jacket to reveal a hoodie underneath, at which point he pulled the hood over his head and replaced his glasses with sunglasses. "Just because someone wears a hoodie does not make them a hoodlum."

Rush began citing passages from the Bible about the need "to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God" and about being "sent ... to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and to recover the sight to the blind and to set the oppressed free .... I urge all men who hear these words to heed these lessons."

Rep. Gregg Harper (R-Miss.), who was presiding over the chamber at the moment, repeatedly hammered the gavel and tried to interrupt Rush, but he kept talking with a louder voice.

"May God bless Trayvon Martin's soul, his family," Rush shouted. He was still yelling as he was escorted off the floor by the House Sergeant at Arms.

Read More http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/28/trayvon-martin-rep-bobby-rush-house-floor-hoodie_n_1385258.html?ref=mostpopular