Race Continues to Take its Toll in America

(Source: Times Union)

Twenty years have passed since the verdict in the Rodney King beating case, and yet the problems of police brutality and racial profiling remain with us.

On April 29, 1992, a mostly white jury found four Los Angeles Police Department officers not guilty of assault with a deadly weapon and excessive force against 25-year-old Rodney King following a high-speed chase on March 3, 1991. Police struck King more than 50 times with their batons, tasered him and kicked him in the head. Unlike most such incidents, this one was captured on videotape.

ACLU Sues Border Patrol Over Alleged Racial Profiling In Pacific Northwest Border

(Source: Huffington Post)

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Thursday against the U.S. Border Patrol seeking to bar agents from making traffic stops, saying people are being pulled over and questioned for the way they look and without reasonable suspicion.

The lawsuit stems from tensions between immigrants and the expanded presence of Border Patrol agents on Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula, which shares no land border with Canada.

British Police Officer to be Charged With Racially Abusing Man During 2011 London Riots

(Source: The Washington Post)

A London policeman will face criminal charges for allegedly racially abusing a black man detained during last year’s London riots, prosecutors said Tuesday, reversing an earlier decision not to charge the officer.

The Crown Prosecution Service said there was enough evidence to charge Constable Alex MacFarlane with “a racially aggravated public order offense.”

A 21-year-old man who was detained during the week of riots, but not charged, recorded a police officer using a racial epithet as he arrested him.

Rally Held in Shadyside Decrying Racial Profiling

(Source: Pittsburgh Post Gazette)

Jordan Miles’ mother today offered sympathy to the family of Trayvon Martin and drew parallels between her son’s case and the Florida teen’s, saying both black males were racially profiled while “walking down the street, minding their own business.”

“They were unfairly profiled and assumed to be up to no good,” Terez Miles said at a rally that drew about 50 people to Mellon Park in Shadyside.

The Alliance for Police Accountability has held a series of rallies around the city to demand that three city officers be prosecuted for beating Mr. Miles on a Homewood street in January 2010. This time, protesters also decried the deaths of 17-year-old Trayvon, who was shot dead by a block watch captain Feb. 26 in Sanford, Fla., and 31-year-old Jonny Gammage, a black motorist who died of positional asphyxiation during a 1995 altercation with police in the South Hills.

“My heart goes out to them,” Terez Miles said of Trayvon’s family.

Ethics Expert Apologizes for ‘offending’ Remarks on Trayvon

(Source: USA Today)

Southern Baptist expert Richard Land, the voice of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, borrowed his diatribe on President Obama’s Trayvon Martin remarks but, oops, failed to credit the sources for whole paragraphs of invective.

He even stood by his Trayvon-Obama comments when they came under fire.

But then a Baylor grad student blogger caught the quotes in Land’s regular radio br0adcast — where Land never mentioned any sources — and checked the language against the footnotes on his website where the original authors of the language were cited.

NHL Pioneer Inspires Newest Generation of Players in the Northland

(Source: Duluth News Tribune)

Had Willie O’Ree not experienced the ugliness of racism and segregation of the 1950s Deep South, he might not have broken the National Hockey League’s color barrier.

O’Ree told attendees at the third annual Pucks Against Poverty luncheon Friday at the Clyde Iron Works event center that a baseball tryout for the Milwaukee Braves in Georgia helped steer him toward hockey and eventually the distinction of being the “Jackie Robinson of the NHL.”

Senate Panel Holds Hearing On Racial Profiling Bill

(Source: NPR)

Civil rights groups are lobbying Congress to put an end to racial profiling, the practice of targeting people because of their race or religion. A bill before Congress aims to do just that. On Tuesday, a Senate Judiciary panel heard from victims, police and lawmakers.

The story begins in February 2001, when President George W. Bush delivered an address to Congress in which he promised to stop racial profiling. Then came the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“In the national trauma that followed, civil liberties came face to face with national security,” says Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin.

Taste of Asia Spring Festival

Shryock Auditorium, Front Steps
2-6PM

Come out to Shryock for fun in the sun, food, games, and live performances in this celebration of Asian Cultures. It’s not only a fitting end to Asian American Heritage Month but also the school year. Kickoff a great summer vacation with SIUC!
Info: linhtran@siu.edu

Asian Americans in Sports: The Jeremy Lin Effect

Student Center, Illinois Room
7PM

Jeremy Lin: the man with many nicknames and even more fans. The New York Knicks’ hottest point guard has taken the world by storm with his own brand of “Linsanity”. Come out and have a discussion about the way that Asians have impacted the world of sports.
Info: corbinwdoss@siu.edu

Trayvon Martin: What It’s Like to Be a Problem

(Source: The Nation)

Steven Jonhson, 3, joins a “Justice for Trayvon Martin hoodie rally” on Tuesday, March 27, 2012 in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Trayvon Martin was not innocent. He was guilty of being black in presumably restricted public space. For decades, Jim Crow laws made this crime statutory. They codified the spaces into which black bodies could not pass without encountering legal punishment. They made public blackness a punishable offense. The 1964 Civil Rights Act removed the legal barriers but not the social sanctions and potentially violent consequences of this “crime.” George Zimmerman’s slaying of Trayvon Martin—and the subsequent campaign to smear Martin—is the latest and most jarring reminder that it is often impossible for a black body to be innocent.