When The Crime Is Who You Are Part II: Adult Version

Duane Buck was sentenced to die because he’s a black man.

Don’t believe me?

During the hearing the trial prosecutor elicited testimony from a psychologist, Dr. Walter Quijano, indicating that African Americans, are more likely to commit future acts of violence.

During closing arguments, the prosecutor relied on Dr. Quijano’s testimony that Mr. Buck would be more dangerous in the future, fulfilling the requirement for the death sentence that prosecutors must show a defendant’s “future dangerousness.”

I’ve mentioned before that the statistics make it clear that Dr. Quijano’s testimony is complete and utter bullshit. Scroll to the bottom of that post and you’ll see the FBI tables which show that crime is overwhelmingly a Caucasian problem. If you do your own research you’ll find that recidivism is largely based on the support and opportunities that convicts have when they get out.

Normally, I would do that research for you but it’s nearly midnight and there’s a thunder storm rolling in. I love my computer and its continued good health more than I love data. Sorry.

But the data doesn’t matter in Texas. Oh, by the way, this testimony? It didn’t happen in the 1960s or 1970s. it happened in 1997.

It doesn’t matter in North Carolina either, apparently because the governor took the opportunity of one of the largest celebratory days People of Color have to rescind a law that “enabled death sentences which were tainted by racial discrimination to be reduced to sentences of life in prison without parole.”

Yes, you read that correctly. it seems North Carolina’s governor didn’t think that there were enough black folks dying due to racism and blatantly false testimony like in Texas so he took the time, on Juneteenth, to make it easier to kill people because of their race in his state.

Maybe next he can announce amnesty for racially based snipers on Dr. King’s birthday.

This isn’t just hair. This isn’t just one of the wounds that we have to bear as PoC in America. This isn’t just government shenanigans.

This is life or death. This is letting the lies of systemic racism kill PoC. This is legislating the death of other human beings because of an imagined “tendency to violence.”

And here’s the other thing; that imagined tendency toward violence in black men is the same thing that George Zimmerman is using as his excuse in his trial. It’s the reason it’s legally hunting season on PoC, especially males, in Florida. It lives cheek by jowl with the imaginary hyper-sexuality of black women which led to centuries of legally permissible rape of women and children of color and the appearance of one puts me on the lookout for the appearance of the other.

  The caption reads “Honey, I’se Waitin’ Fo’ You Down South.”

Did I fall asleep and fall into some horrifying time warp? Is The Doctor testing me to see if I can handle the insanity? What the hell is going on that this is happening in the 21st Century? How is it that people who rely on the votes of their fellow citizens to keep their jobs feel comfortable legislating lies and legalizing the devaluation of PoC? This “post-racial” America thing looks remarkably racist to me.