Thank you, Al Sharpton

[question everything]

The RWers are all ablaze: the teens who shot the Australian visitor in Oklahoma were bored. Black. The victim was white. Where are Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson? Where is the President?

So I caught the last minutes of his show on MSNBC and he said: first, one of the teens is white. Second, it is not a hate crime based on race. The local authorities confirmed it. They were just bored. Third, they were arrested and charged, so I have no problem with justice.

[dkf]

1. I thought it was a gang initiation?

[oberliner]

2. Since when is Sharpton so ready to accept what "local authorities" say?

Incidentally:

James Edwards Tweets: Teen Charged In Murder Accused Of Sending Racist Messages

James Francis Edwards, one of two Oklahoma teenagers charged with murder in the shooting death of Australian college athlete Christopher Lane, is accused of sending racist messages on Twitter.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/22/james-francis-edwards-tweets-racist-messages_n_3794913.html

[Skip Intro]

3. Nooooo, don't srew up the hypocritical narrative.

Race only matters when the victim is black and the shooter is white.

Come on man, get with the program!

[question everything]

4. Ok, one. What about the other two, one of whom is white?

And, these tweets were sent months before the shooting.

Are we now charging people for what they said month before committing a crime? Was the student selected because he was white or because he was at the wrong time at the wrong place?

[oberliner]

5. Your screen name is "question everything"

I question that race played no role.

The two people charged with murder are both black. The white kid was charged with accessory after the fact.

There is no way to know exactly what happened, of course, but I think it's hasty to just readily accept that race had nothing to do with this at all.

They chose who they chose for some reason, right? It could be that they wanted to kill a white guy - or at least would have preferred to kill a white guy rather than a person of color. I'm not sure that one can completely discount race as a factor.

Race is a factor in ways that people are sometimes not even themselves aware of.

I'm just not so quick to buy the official story here. Question everything.