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OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 7/31/19

Presidential Racism: Shining Example of America's Somber Status Quo

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Message Linn Washington

The wrongful conviction Central Park 5 case is another chilling example of the deeply embedded, incessantly denied racism.

'The Donald' did spend over $80,000 on full page advertisements in four New York City daily newspapers demanding the death penalty for the five non-white teens charged that brutal 1989 beating/rape of a white female joggers. But when Black leaders in NYC and beyond called-out societal responses to that crime as 'lynch mob' hysteria, their criticism referenced reactions Trump contributed to but did not create.

White police, prosecutors, press pundits and public so vocal about that Central Park rape exhibited blind-eye silence about the brutal rapes of four black women in NYC around the time of that jogger's rape, including the black rape victim thrown off a building roof.

The recurring refusal of Trump to acknowledge the injustice endured by the Central Park Five overshadows the foul fact that officials in NYC spent ten years fighting against compensation for the wrongful imprisonment of those non-white teens.

Trump's racism is not an aberration. Remember Republican leaders on Capitol Hill have acquiesced to Trump's racist assaults on non-white members of Congress, most recently Trump raging about ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings. The GOP (and friends at the FOX network) disingenuously defend Trump's tirades as partisan not prejudice.

In 1852 fabled anti-slavery activist Frederick Douglass warned that racism comprised a "horrible" venomous reptile "coiled up in [America's] bosom" during a legendary speech on the meaning of July 4th to black Americans.

Douglass urged his fellow Americans to destroy that "hideous monster" forever a request that remains unfulfilled"to America's continuing detriment!

While many Americans conscientiously ignore the dangerous racial divisiveness of Donald Trump, it is evident one the other side of the Atlantic.

Simon Woolley, a leading equal rights activist in Britain, noted in a recent commentary that, "Sadly, President Donald Trump will readily sacrifice the soul of America to stay in the White House."

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Linn Washington is a co-founder of This Can't Be Happening.net. Washington writes frequently on inequities in the criminal justice system, ills in society and problems in the news media. He teaches multi-media urban journalism at Temple (more...)
 

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