Call for Justice Sets Off a Debate

[groovedaddy]

NEWBERRY, S.C. — Before dawn on June 2, law enforcement officials here say, a white man shot and killed a black co-worker at close range. Then, he tied his body to the back of a truck and dragged it for nearly 11 miles before the rope broke, leaving the mangled corpse of the victim, Anthony Hill, on a bloody patch of road.

On Saturday, black-clad members of the national New Black Panther Party marched to the courthouse steps to demand that the case be classified as a hate crime.

All that seems fairly straightforward, even par for the course. But on close examination, this story unfolds like origami in reverse, saying less about racism in the South than about the fraught posturing of the summer’s raging national conversation on race.

“We keep finding these surrogates and calling them a racial dialogue, but instead it’s just drama without a substantive discussion,” said Susan M. Glisson, the director of the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation in Oxford, Miss. “It’s like that old saying, ‘You shed more heat than light.’ ”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/us/19panther.html?th&emc=th

[alp227]

1. Hate group protesting a hate crime? Bollocks.

There are better orgs that should've been protesting. Such as the local community orgs or NAACP. Not the Fake Black Panthers, no. Even Bobby Seale disowns the NBPP!