By George L. Cook III AfricanAmericanReports.Com
Black conservatives will defend their sides use of derogatory words/language toward African Americans by saying that those are only words and we shouldn't give them power. Then why do they get upset when called a coon or Uncle Tom? Hear more of my thoughts on this in the video below.
A proposal to end Arkansas' dual holiday for Robert E. Lee and slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. easily won Senate approval Tuesday, but faces an uncertain prospect in the House where a competing plan would honor the Confederate general the same day as the nation's first president.
The Senate voted 24-0 in favor of the proposal to remove Lee from the state and federal holiday honoring King on the third Monday in January. Only two other states, Alabama and Mississippi, honor the men on the same day.
"It's a day spent in prayer. It's a day spent in remembrance. It's a day that needs to stand alone," Republican Sen. Dave Wallace told the Senate before the vote. "It's a day that needs to stand for Martin Luther King."
The proposal would designate the second Saturday in October as a state memorial day, not a holiday, to honor Lee. It also requires the state to expand what is taught in schools about civil rights and Civil War history.
Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson has urged lawmakers to approve the change, which he says would help unify Arkansas and improve its image.
"While both men have left their mark on history, dually celebrating them, as we have done in Arkansas since 1985, is an obvious incongruence," Hutchinson said in a statement after the vote.
Read more: Arkansas lawmakers advance plan to strip Robert E. Lee from MLK day
While giving a keynote address at a conference, entitled “Universities and Slavery: Bound By History” at Harvard University, writer Ta-Nehisi Coates discussed reparations.
Coates, a known proponent of reparations made the case to the audience that progress on racial issues requires institutions to repay their debts to enslaved people.
“I think every single one of these universities needs to make reparations,” he said to wide applause. “I don’t know how you get around that, I just don’t. I don’t know how you conduct research that shows that your very existence is rooted in a great crime, and just say ‘well,’ shrug—and maybe at best say ‘I’m sorry’—and you walk away. And I think you need to use the language of ‘reparation.’ I think it’s very, very important to actually say that word, to acknowledge that something was done in these institutions.”
African-Americans are far more likely to be wrongfully convicted of crimes such as murder, sexual assault and illegal drug activity than whites due to factors including racial bias and official misconduct, a study released on Tuesday said.
Of the 1,900 defendants convicted of crimes and later exonerated, 47 percent were African-Americans - three times their representation in the population - according to the study from the National Registry of Exonerations, which examined cases from 1989 to October 2016.
The study also said black Americans were about seven times more likely to be wrongfully convicted of murder than white Americans.
"In the murder cases we examined, the rate of official misconduct is considerably higher in cases where the defendant is African-American compared to cases where the defendant is white," said Samuel Gross, a University of Michigan Law School professor who is senior editor of the group that tracks U.S. exonerations.
He said unconscious bias, institutional discrimination and explicit racism, were factors in some of the wrongful convictions.
When it comes to drug crimes, black Americans are about 12 times more likely to be wrongfully convicted than innocent white people, the study said.
Read more: African-Americans more likely to be wrongfully convicted: study
I keep telling people Dr. Ben Carson is an idiot savant and he keeps going out of his way to prove it. While speaking to department employees Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson referred to slaves as "immigrants". I am not making this up, you can watch video of him making that ridiculous statement below.
THIS IS WHY BLACK PEOPLE DON"T LIKE BEN CARSON
