Take the time to watch this...

its got some language I'm sure LJ will approve of but just be careful at work or around kids...

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I don't normally care for this kind of humor but given the current state of affairs in this country it's pretty spot on. The woman cracks me up..."He got weed, he got weed, he got weed!!!"

That is some funny sh*$ right there. I think somebody posted that a while back.....at least I remember seeing it a while back.
I imagine the reason it is so darned funny is because, like most good comedy, there is a LOT of truth in there!

http://abcnews.go.com/US/chris-rock-...ry?id=27158680

let's not forget that Chris Rock did that skit to make money, not because it's how he feels.

all these idiot asshole celebs saying we need laws to protect young men of color sickens me. These laws are already in place. There is a law that says that the young man shouldnt rob a convenience store. Theres a law that says the young man shouldn't walk down the middle of the street. There is even a law that says he shouldnt of assaulted the police officer. The trend seems to be that the group of people in question want to do away with the laws that allow officers to defend themselves and the public. I guess we need segregation. Black officers can shoot anybody but white officers can only shoot white criminals.
ok, I'm stopping now before I take this someplace very uncomfortable for even myself. I hate that the vocal black comunity is making me this mad and angry at an entire race of people. Shame on me.

LW, we come from the same place. So we have, I think, a lot of the same values. So let me first say, I agree with every thing you said in that post. And you said a lot.
But there's a side to this that I think we need to ackonowledge and I think that's where we need to identify our actions, if there's any at all to be done out of this deal, and that is this: there's no basis for any kind of reaction to this event. Period. But there is honest emotion and there are honest reactions by people I both love and respect that tell me there are things that are just not right. What they are, and why, and what the fuck we could even do about them is up for discussion. I won't say I have any clue as to what that might be. But something needs to change. There are valid questions hete. Its just that NONE of the right ones have been asked.

BKB

So ask em.

Above my pay grade.

BKb

And here I thought we were all the same pay grade in this outfit.

So.....who is it that's supposed to ask these questions that you know should be asked, but aren't??

Well, I think there are community and state leaders that need to be asking those questions. First off, I think we need to look at why we are incarcerating so many people in our country. We're number one in the world you know for incarcerating our people. Sure, they are committing crimes to get incarcerated. What I think needs to be assessed is what is a crime and what is not. My personal opinion is that the war on drugs has contributed greatly to the criminal element in our country. NOBODY gets rehabilitated in prison. They come out meaner, tougher, and more criminal than when they went in. So yeah, I think we need to look at reforming our criminal law in some way to stop producing more criminals and let our police work on TRUE crimes that indeed deserve incarceration. We do need to ask the tough questions about why black people are over represented in crime statistics. That's where black leadership in communities need to be brought into the solution. Where we see high crime rates in minority areas, police and local folks need to both own up to responsibility for the issue. I don't see anyone in Ferguson who lives there raising their hand and saying they have any skin in the game. Hell, they have the ONLY skin in the game as far as I'm concerned. Al Sharpton isn't gonna fix it, neither is Eric Holder or the friggin Congress or the President. The only people who can fix Ferguson is the people in Missouri and Ferguson. But this is the unvarnished truth, the people in Missouri are no different than the people anywhere else: Nobody in Missouri really wants to fix any goddamn thing in Ferguson and they won't. Soon as this dies, there won't be anything that changes. and the same distrust that good law abiding black folks have of the law will continue. There are people I know that are fine upstanding people, they work, they raise their families, and they are good people. And they are scared to death that they or one of their kids is going to get pulled over by a cop and have a gun pointed in their face. Some, not all, have already had it happen to them. All because they are black, at least that's the way it seems to me. I've never had a cop pull a gun on me or make me spread 'em or get thrown to the ground. Why is it okay for that to happen? I understand the difficulty law enforcement has to just do their own jobs and I also understand that after a lot of experience in law enforcement they get to the point that they know who the perpetrators are 90% of the time. But this is a fact that won't go away and I think some how, some way, we need to understand the 'why's' of that.

Now you can call me names and tell me I'm stupid or liberal or whatever else you've got for me. I don't give a shit.

BKB

I think you have a fair assessment of it.
Drugs need to be legalized (not meth or crack etc) but take the criminal element out of it.
Decide WHAT time will be given for WHAT crime and if a person is convicted of a crime that has a 20 year sentence lock their ass up and in 20 years go back and let them out. Period. Once folks learn that "time means time" you will be able to close half the prisons in the country.
An prime example of attitude between Black and White is if two cars are traveling down the interstate one operated by a black guy and the other by a white guy. Both are doing 15 miles over the speed limit. Both get stopped and written a ticket. The white guy feels he got the ticket for doing 15 miles over the speed limit. The black guy thinks he got the ticket because he was black.
And you can scream, holler, yell whatever but the fact of the matter is that is a true assessment of it. This is a subject I KNOW something about.
When I was still working the federal government made it a requirement for officers keep information on race of the drivers stopped and ticketed. They say this is to insure no race was targeted. All it tended to show me was what race was breaking the law more?

Really good points.

Here's my questions.
Why after 90 years of massive government programs to help blacks and poor, has nothing changed? Fault of the programs? Fault of recipients? Need even more programs? Eliminate all of them? Something has to be the answer to that.

Why when we are we supposed to be a nation of laws, do we fuss when they are enforced? Why is the answer always "we need more laws or more legislation", when the people we elect won't enforce the ones we have?

Why do minorities beg for more dialog but won't listen? Why do both sides think they aren't prejudiced, when one or both clearly are?