Latasha Harlins (1975-1991) was an unarmed 15-year-old Black girl in South Los Angeles who was shot in the back of the head over a $1.79 bottle of orange juice. She was killed by Soon Ja Du, a Korean American shopkeeper. Du thought she was shoplifting. When police arrived they found Harlins dead – with $2.00 in her hand.
This is the “Latasha” and the “bottle of juice” in the songs of Tupac Shakur.
On Saturday March 16th 1991, less than two weeks after video came out of Los Angeles police beating up Rodney King, Harlins walked into Empire Liquor Market Deli to buy orange juice. She put the bottle in her backpack, placing it so that it was sticking out, and walked to the counter with two dollars in her hand.
Du: “You bitch, you are trying to steal my orange juice. (starts pulling Harlins’s sweater) That’s my orange juice.”
Harlins: “Let me go. Let me go.”
The video from the security camera shows Harlins hitting Du. Du falls, gets back up and throws something large (a stool) at Harlins. Harlins puts the orange juice on the counter and walks away. Du shoots her. Harlins falls.
The verdict: A trial jury found Du guilty of voluntary manslaughter and using an altered handgun. The two charges together can get you a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.
Judge Joyce Karlin, who is White, said during sentencing:
“Statements by the district attorney (which) suggest that imposing less than the maximum sentence will send a message that a black child’s life is not worthy of protection, (are) dangerous rhetoric, which serves no purpose other than to pour gasoline on a fire.
“This is not a time for revenge”
“Although Latasha Harlins was not armed with a weapon at the time of her death, she had used her fists as weapons just seconds before she was shot.”
“But for the unusual circumstances in this case, including the Du family’s history of being victimized and terrorized by gang members, Mrs Du would not be here today.”
“Did Mrs Du react inappropriately to Latasha? Absolutely.
“Was Mrs Du’s over-reaction understandable? I think so.”
“[Mrs Du] led a crime-free life until Latasha Harlins walked into her store”
All but making Du the victim and Harlins the criminal. Yet even the police said that Harlins was not shoplifting. Nor was Harlins a gang member, as Karlin insinuates. She was a cheerleader, a summer camp counsellor and was active in her church.
The sentence: In November Judge Karlin sentenced Du to five years probation, 400 hours of community service and a fine of $500. Du also had to pay Harlins’s funeral and hospital expenses. No prison time.
In April 1992, a higher court upheld the light sentence.
A week later the police who beat up Rodney King walked free. Los Angeles burned for six days.
Du’s liquor store was burned down. Most of the other businesses that were hit were also Korean American.
– Abagond, 2017.
Sources: especially LA Times (1991); “The House That Race Built” (1998) edited by Wahneema Lubiano; YouTube (security camera video); Google Images (photos).
See also:
- Welcome to Asian American History Month 2017
- shopping while Black
- Rodney King
- LA Riots
- Tropes applied by Judge Karlin:
- other Asian-involved killings:
- Peter Liang – Asian-on-Black
- Vincent Chin – White-on-Asian
- Davon Neverdon – Black-on-Asian
- ??? – Asian-on-White
579
Reblogged this on League of Bloggers For a Better World.
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Nothing new here. Probably no drive to impeach the judge took place. The Mayor Tom Bradley was black.
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Let me guess, next post will be about “Davon Neverdon – acquitted by a Black jury of killing Joel Lee, a Korean American”. Balance, baby, balance!
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So very sad
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I grew up in a mostly white community outside of NYC & was frisked leaving shops after they assumed as a child POC that I must have stolen something. It doesn’t even take putting something in your bag for a moment before paying — as this post describes. It takes nothing to make racist people act on their racism. I was so used to it that I didn’t understand when a friend’s mother wrote an angry letter to a shop about it. My mum gave me the “don’t run” talk despite being very tiny & a girl. My pale sister did not get the talk. (I was also kept from swimming in public pools whilst my sister was not).
Elsewhere today in Dystopia: The murderer of twelve year old Tamir Rice was just fired now — almost three years later. … & the jury is being selected now for the Philando Castile trial.
The endless series of murders & trials seem pointless. When people like the judge in this post are obviously completely racist & are not aware of it & if almost the whole system is infected w/ the same virus & never any justice afterward.
I see there is a Zoe posting here before me — so I should probably write something else for my name. (Such as: ‘Zoe but not Zoe Jordan’ OR ‘Other Zoe’ OR ‘Zoe 2’). Please take a poll.
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http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-0318-latasha-harlins-20160318-story.html
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Latasha_Harlins
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A lot of narcissists and/or sociopaths are attracted to positions of power. This is the reason behind the astonishing lack of empathy so often seen in law enforcement & other positions of power… & also the performing arts… & it is a type of ‘performance’ in a courtroom… & racism equals a lack of empathy.
There is a tribe in the Andes that makes an effort to teach empathy beginning w/ very tiny children — because they believe it has to be taught very young & that without teaching it purposefully people grow up without it & become warlike etc. I saw it in a documentary. A young man told one little boy to pretend he was crying & then told the other little children to go over to him & comfort him. Over & over — like practising something. It makes a lot of sense since we are creating neurological pathways/connections that get stronger the more they are used. This seems like a solution. Teaching empathy from infancy.
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“…Los Angeles burned for six days. Du’s liquor store was burned down. Most of the other businesses that were hit were also Korean American.”
One myth that is prominent in recent American history is that during the 1960s and beyond, Black people rioted in major urban areas and “burned their own neighborhoods down“. That myth is repeated endlessly in the media (movies and television) to prove how stupid and “naturally violent” Black people are as a group. What is less known is that those fires were set to burn out non-Black businesses that attach themselves to Black neighborhoods. Fire is an indiscriminate tool that is not easily contained.
The truth is Black Americans live in internal US colonies. Black people have little control over where we live, work or play. Black people also don’t have control over who comes into Black neighborhoods and economically exploits the residents.
The White Power structure approves of the economic exploitation because it does two major things for them:
◎ retards the development of independent Black economic structures.
◎ drains money away from Black households with high prices for shoddy goods.
I wonder how supportive White cheerleaders of Mrs. Du would be if she’d shot a White girl in the back of the head? Would a White mob have stopped at merely burning the store down?
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@ Afrodem
Don’t forget about the roles of law enforcement and the Prison-Industrial Complex in all of this, as both ensure otherwise productive black men are either funneled into concrete holding pens until they’re too old or mentally broken to represent credible threats to white hegemony or killed on the spot.
It’ll take a few dozen ICBMs, a couple hundred years or so of declining American hegemony and possibly another civil war or two before black Americans can even dream of being free of white control, let alone carve out their own autonomous areas where they can live and prosper in relative peace.
We already know the answer. Just look through history.
I would say “crack open a history book, but a great many books are guilty not just of bias, but also the sins of omission.
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BTW, Abagond, it’d be interesting to see a follow-up concerning the drastically changed demographics and the effect it’s had on the overall community at large. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Los_Angeles#Demographics
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re. ‘angry’ trope… ‘burning down own…’ trope.
When people believe they are the center of the universe & that everything revolves around them — probably they lose their sense of causality. Perhaps they then move through life as if watching a film that they cannot interact with — except to shut off the film or walk away. Then other people’s justifiable anger which is a response to experienced abuse would just look like random patternless chaos to them. A whole nation of people are emotionally unmoored & untethered to the impact of their own actions on their neighbours.
As the ‘angry Arab’ trope follows me around relentlessly at the smallest attempt to be understood I have had to give this more thought than it deserves.
It’s like the film ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’. They look human but when you try to talk to them you realise they’re hollow. If you’re very clever you may find the pods & hope to get away in time… but there is nowhere to run. That 1950s police station in the film in which the hero is finally believed at the end never existed — in reality or metaphor…
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LA was sick in 1991, very weak mayor and extremely flagrant street gangs. So Daryl Gates cracked down and they spread all over CA.
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Watched this on the Showtime documentary Burn Motherf*cker Burn during the anniversary of the L.A. Riots. R.I.P. Latasha Harlans.
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“A lot of narcissists and/or sociopaths are attracted to positions of power. This is the reason behind the astonishing lack of empathy so often seen in law enforcement & other positions of power… & also the performing arts… & it is a type of ‘performance’ in a courtroom… & racism equals a lack of empathy.”
This statement is false, the judge showed lots of “empathy”, she put her self in Du’s shoes and concluded that circumstances were at fault, not the individual. You may object to her partisanship but you can’t seriously deny that she empathized with the killer. I think in this case, a less empathetic judge would have led to an outcome more congenial to people on this blog.
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I’d often visit cousins who were living in South Central at that time. During the riots we just drove around sightseeing. We were young so we just assumed we’d be alright. The thing that struck me was that the rioting didn’t effect USC. USC is in the hood! I think a store in the shopping center across the street sustained light damage but the campus itself – while on lockdown – was largely unscathed. My aunt had a restaurant across from the Colosseum so we just ate and talked about what was going on around us.
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@ gro jo
“you can’t seriously deny that she empathized with the killer.”
On some level, the judge signaled that she is a killer at heart, too
Empathy for Ms. Harlins would have been more appropriate since she was unarmed and dead by cowardly violence.
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@ v8driver
Why do you think LA was “sick” in 1991?
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@ Zoe
” ..other people’s justifiable anger which is a response to experienced abuse would just look like random patternless chaos to them”
The media in the USA has the power to portray other people’s anger as:
A. unjustified
B. random
C. self-destructive
D. devoid of context
They have the power to portray the expression of that anger in these ways to both a domestic and global audience.
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@ Mack Lyons
“Don’t forget about the roles of law enforcement and the Prison-Industrial Complex in all of this, as both ensure otherwise productive black men are either funneled into concrete holding pens until they’re too old or mentally broken to represent credible threats to white hegemony or killed on the spot.”
The Prison-Industrial Complex is also used to reduce/maintain the Black population at “acceptable” levels. They have moved beyond just caging Black men to also caging Black women——–some of whom have been forcible sterilized in California prisons.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/08/california-female-prisoner-sterilization/
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@ gro jo
? I never said that the judge “empathized with the killer”.
& I was not only referring to this case when I wrote that positions of power attract people w/ sociopathy & narcissism & hence a lack empathy.
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“Empathy for Ms. Harlins would have been more appropriate since she was unarmed and dead by cowardly violence.”
Says who? It just shows your lack of empathy for white women. The judge ignored Ms. Du’s race and put herself in her place.
“[Mrs Du] led a crime-free life until Latasha Harlins walked into her store”
“Du: “You bitch, you are trying to steal my orange juice. (starts pulling Harlins’s sweater) That’s my orange juice.”
Harlins: “Let me go. Let me go.”
“Although Latasha Harlins was not armed with a weapon at the time of her death, she had used her fists as weapons just seconds before she was shot.”
“But for the unusual circumstances in this case, including the Du family’s history of being victimized and terrorized by (black) gang members, Mrs Du would not be here today.”
“Was Mrs Du’s over-reaction understandable? I think so.”
“This is not a time for revenge”
You have to love the bit about “…the unusual circumstances in this case…” It could have happened to any decent human being.
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@ gro jo
I’m sorry gro jo — I misread your comment when I replied to it moments ago. I missed the word “deny”. I see what you’re saying re. not completely lacking empathy because she identified w/ the killer/had empathy for the killer.
Sociopaths can empathise w/ people when they WANT to. The difference is they can switch it off & on only for people they favour.
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I think there may be an important distinction between identifying and empathizing.
The judge could identify with Du’s feelings in that situation. The judge could not identify with Latasha Harlins’ feelings on the other side of that situation, and she lacked the empathy that might otherwise have enabled her to get a sense of Latasha’s experience.
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“I never said that the judge “empathized with the killer”. Where have I said you did? You said that people like her lacked empathy and I demonstrated that she was full of empathy for killer Du, so lack of empathy had nothing to do with her judgement. I would guess that people on this blog would have preferred a more vengeful judge as validation that Black Lives Matter. It’s not the job of the court to extract revenge for the family. Her job was to evaluate the criminal and pass judgement based on Mrs. Du’s criminal history.
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A decent human being would not have shot a teenage girl in the back of the head while she was walking away from the confrontation. Du shouldn’t have sworn at her and laid hands on her in the first place. There are other ways to confront a suspected shoplifter.
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“The judge could identify with Du’s feelings in that situation. The judge could not identify with Latasha Harlins’ feelings on the other side of that situation, and she lacked the empathy that might otherwise have enabled her to get a sense of Latasha’s experience.”
Latasha was dead, she had no feeling to identify with and she wasn’t on trial. The judge was trying Mrs. Du for that crime, so Latasha’s experience played no part in the sentencing nor should it have.
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@ gro jo
“Her job was to evaluate the criminal and pass judgement based on Mrs. Du’s criminal history.”
That is a flawed argument. The judge’s job was to come to an equitable decision based on the available evidence. Mrs. Du’s criminal history was not the major factor in this case. Her well documented, premeditated criminal actions against Ms. Harlins was the major factor. Unless you think shooting an unarmed person in the back is acceptable?
What about justice for the victim and her survivors in this case?
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The judge characterized Latasha as “using her fists as weapons” which means she didn’t even try to empathize with a 15-year-old girl who was being assaulted by an adult woman. Du lay hands on Latasha first, and she had a right to protect herself.
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@ Afrofem
Right. Plenty of first-time offenders serve time, even those who have lived utterly blameless lives up to that point. The severity of the crime committed should carry considerable weight in sentencing.
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How funny that the same one who made such a big fuss in defence of an overentitled East Asian’s “quiet enjoyment of the good he paid for” is here defending an evil East Asian’s murder of a black girl who only wanted “quiet enjoyment of the good” for which she intended to pay.
#hypocrisy
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“The judge’s job was to come to an equitable decision based on the available evidence. Mrs. Du’s criminal history was not the major factor in this case.”
That’s a flawed argument, the criminal’s propensity to recidivate does play a greater role than her murderous outburst. The thinking was that it was a crime committed under duress and unlikely to be repeated. Courts are not here to do justice to the dead and their families, but to make sure that the system isn’t menaced by uncontrollable individuals and groups.
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The “justice” you get depends on the group you belong to.
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“That’s a flawed argument, the criminal’s propensity to recidivate does play a greater role than her murderous outburst. The thinking was that it was a crime committed under duress and unlikely to be repeated.”
If that were true, there would be no women serving hard time for killing their abusive partners or their stalkers, much less sentenced to 20 years for just firing a warning shot.
“Courts are not here to do justice to the dead and their families, but to make sure that the system isn’t menaced by uncontrollable individuals and groups.”
If that were true, no judge would listen to victim impact statements before sentencing. The impact of the crime can (and does) influence the sentence given.
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“How funny that the same one who made such a big fuss in defence of an overentitled East Asian’s “quiet enjoyment of the good he paid for” is here defending an evil East Asian’s murder of a black girl who only wanted “quiet enjoyment of the good” for which she intended to pay.
#hypocrisy”
It’s back! You have a weird definition of “defending” you confuse the law with vengeance the two are not the same. I understand that as a black person you would want vengeance, a court is not the proper venue. You might have failed to notice that at trial, it’s the state against the criminal for committing a certain crime. It is not about the victim but about the state and the individual who committed the crime. In this case, the judge deemed that the criminal was no threat to society and was lenient towards her. You may not like it, but that’s the way it is. There’s zero partiality on my part, and no hypocrisy either. Moral of the story is kill rather than be killed. Yes, the group you belong to goes a long way in determining how dangerous you are deemed to be. THESE ARE THE FACTS, NOT FANTASIES ABOUT A PERFECT WORLD.
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“If that were true, there would be no women serving hard time for killing their abusive partners or their stalkers, much less sentenced to 20 years for just firing a warning shot.”
Such ‘crimes’ are deemed a menace to the institution of marriage. Courts exist to maintain the institutions on which society is based.
“If that were true, no judge would listen to victim impact statements before sentencing. The impact of the crime can (and does) influence the sentence given.”
That’s a recent right-wing novelty added to convince the hoi polloi that they matter. It worked on you.
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I’ve given a victim impact statement in court. I saw how the judge reacted, and the prosecutor was convinced it made a huge difference in the sentence he handed down.
As far as protecting the institution of marriage, that does not explain why women are given heavy sentences for protecting themselves against stalkers they’ve never been married to or romantically involved with, against abusive partners whom they never married, or against abusive partners whom they are no longer married to or are in the process of divorcing. It doesn’t explain why a husband who violated a court order of protection and murdered his wife got a lighter sentence than a woman who fired a warning shot to scare off her abuser.
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Justice is supposed to be ‘blind’ (impartial) — but it’s not. That was what I was thinking when I referenced ’empathy’ here. (I’m not a scholar like apparently many here — I’m an artist — so please forgive me when I sound unclear & not academic). Perhaps society should accept that about our justice system (without abandoning it) & create systems that include a focus on empathy — such as what has been done in the US in the late 20th c. w/ victim statements (as referenced above by Solitaire).
Also I don’t want to derail the thread too much but I think children of colour are not included (in the majority society) in the concept of the ‘innocence of childhood’ which emerged in the 19th c. after industrialisation (beginning w/ mostly wealthy white people/children & then extended to encompassing all white children). Hence the bizarre attempts at justification one witnesses when Black children are murdered in cold blood. The jumping through hoops to find the so called reasons for the murders is sickening.
This is very sad also for all the micro & macro aggressions that children have to endure even when not the victims of physical violence — which are due to the above paradigm (= not seen as innocent or even capable of hurt feelings). I remember as a child watching other children swim in pools & being forced to sit & watch them but not allowed in & no adults caring — because this scenario was somehow normal to them. Sorry for my seemingly endless autobiographical posts — I am an artist & goldsmith & poet w/ no university degree etc. I don’t know how to link articles & post photos etc. like others here either!
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“As far as protecting the institution of marriage, that does not explain why women are given heavy sentences for protecting themselves against stalkers they’ve never been married to or romantically involved with, against abusive partners whom they never married, or against abusive partners whom they are no longer married to or are in the process of divorcing. It doesn’t explain why a husband who violated a court order of protection and murdered his wife got a lighter sentence than a woman who fired a warning shot to scare off her abuser.”
Statistics, please. “Yes, the group you belong to goes a long way in determining how dangerous you are deemed to be. THESE ARE THE FACTS, NOT FANTASIES ABOUT A PERFECT WORLD.” Extra penalty for unladylike behavior? Courts are not impartial with regard to class, race, sex, etc.
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@ gro jo
And yet Soon Ja Du was not penalized for her unladylike behavior.
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@ Zoe
Personal experience is relevant and an essential element of social justice work. Speak your truths.
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“@ gro jo
And yet Soon Ja Du was not penalized for her unladylike behavior.”
Who was her victim? You keep forgetting a basic rule: “Yes, the group you belong to goes a long way in determining how dangerous you are deemed to be. THESE ARE THE FACTS, NOT FANTASIES ABOUT A PERFECT WORLD.”
Why are denizens of this blog always astonished when the system they claim is racist lives up to expectation?
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Is this just gro jo playing White Devil’s Advocate for his own amusement?
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@ Zoe
“I don’t know how to link articles & post photos etc. like others here either!”
That was true for all of us when we first started commenting. Fortunately, Abagond has pages of instructions on how to enhance your comments:
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“Afrofem
Is this just gro jo playing White Devil’s Advocate for his own amusement?”
No, it’s gro jo telling you facts you don’t want to hear.
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@ gro jo
Yeah right! LOL!
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Which part of my comments were White Devil Advocate like?
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You’re not saying that the race of the victim and the criminal play no part in how they are treated at trial are you? Why that would be silly.
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@ gro jo
These words:
” would guess that people on this blog would have preferred a more vengeful judge as validation that Black Lives Matter. It’s not the job of the court to extract revenge for the family. Her job was to evaluate the criminal and pass judgement based on Mrs. Du’s criminal history.”
I can’t speak for other commenters, but justice, not “revenge” is the desired outcome. I am well aware of real world conditions, which include anti-Black racism, bias and prejudice.
Mrs. Du’s criminal actions, not her “criminal history” are most relevant in this case. Shooting an unarmed person in the back is a cowardly and reprehensible act. There are no arguments that make that okay.
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@ Solitaire
Of course the judge would empathize with Du, because she would have done the same thing if she were in Du’s shoes.
It’s a shame the rioters didn’t just toss a few Molotov cocktails at the judge’s home and called it a day.
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“There are no arguments that make that okay.”
Where have I proffered arguments of that kind? I read that the judge did not empathize with the victim. I pointed out that the victim wasn’t on trial she was dead, no amount of ’empathy’ could do anything to remedy that fact. The judge could only look at the perpetrator and decide if leniency made sense in this case. She decided it did because, I guess, she felt that Latasha Harlins sassed Mrs. Du. “Although Latasha Harlins was not armed with a weapon at the time of her death, she had used her fists as weapons just seconds before she was shot.” Whether you agree or not, whites expect a certain amount of deference when dealing with blacks, she extended that expectation to Du and decided that she was no threat to society. “But for the unusual circumstances in this case, including the Du family’s history of being victimized and terrorized by (black) gang members, Mrs Du would not be here today.”
“Was Mrs Du’s over-reaction understandable? I think so.” “This is not a time for revenge”
I see no White Devil Advocacy in anything I wrote just the facts and speculations regarding the thinking of the judge. You and others are wrapped up in the unfairness of what happened to Ms. Harlins, I don’t disagree but vengeance is not the reason laws exist. If you want to go that route you can’t claim the protection of the law.
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https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/3553#fn002226
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The following is an excerpt from a review of the book The Contested Murder of Latasha Harlins: Justice, Gender, and the Origins of the LA Riots by Brenda Stevenson
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/common-ground-brenda-stevensons-the-contested-murder-of-latasha-harlins/
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Could someone read gro jo’s comments below and inform me of which one makes any sense, if any at all?
“Courts are not impartial with regard to class, race, sex, etc.” – gro jo
Response: The courts are not impartial with regards to class, race and sex in theory only, but not in practice.
“Yes, the group you belong to goes a long way in determining how dangerous you are deemed to be.” – gro jo
Response: Here, you are shooting yourself in the foot because the previous comment above highly suggests that one’s phenotype or characteristics does play a part. For once, be decisive and quit waffling.
“In this case, the judge deemed that the criminal was no threat to society and was lenient towards her.” – gro jo
Response: Here, the judge clearly abused her judicial discretion. You mean to tell me that a criminal such as Ms. Du deserve leniency after shooting an unarmed teenager in the back of her head?
“Her job was to evaluate the criminal and pass judgement based on Mrs. Du’s criminal history.” – gro jo
Response: The job of a judge isn’t to “evaluate the criminal.” Evaluating someone’s behavior or illness is the job of either a Psychologist or a Psychiatrist, depending on the subject’s circumstance(s). The job of a judge is to decide either a civil, criminal or family law case within the confines of the law particular to the situation brought before him or her.
“It just shows your lack of empathy for white women. The judge ignored Ms. Du’s race and put herself in her place.” – gro jo
Response: Here, a white woman was neither the victim nor the perpetrator, therefore, if you have a fetish for white women, keep to yourself and refrain from projecting your personal choices upon others. Furthermore, the judge did not ignore Du’s race. That’s seems quite impossible if someone is standing ten or twenty feet away from you in a courtroom. However, it does seem much more plausible that the judge ignored Latasha as a human being and devalued her life as well, all at once with the slamming of a wooden gavel.
“This statement is false, the judge showed lots of “empathy”, she put her self in Du’s shoes and concluded that circumstances were at fault, not the individual.” – gro jo Response: If the “circumstances were at fault,” why wasn’t the mere circumstance placed on trial and subsequently placed on probation such as they did to Ms. Du? Furthermore, did the circumstance shoot Latasha in the back of the head? Did the circumstance pull the trigger? Did the circumstances utter the following sentence: ““You bitch, you are trying to steal my orange juice?”
In summary, Judge Karlin is clearly an individual divorced from reality and lacks emotional intelligence and therefore, shouldn’t have been in a position to judge anyone to begin with.
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@ Solitaire
That excerpt from a review of the book “The Contested Murder of Latasha Harlins: Justice, Gender, and the Origins of the LA Riots” by Brenda Stevenson added depth to the discussion.
This passage really stuck out for me:
Neither Ms. Harlins nor Mr. Martin had the opportunity to ‘go home’. Both were murdered unarmed and alone by gun wielding cowards.
Thanks for the link.
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@ gro jo
“I pointed out that the victim wasn’t on trial she was dead, no amount of ’empathy’ could do anything to remedy that fact.”
I disagree. The deceased Ms. Harlins was the person on trial. The passage I referenced in the response to Solitaire describes how “the prosecution worked hard to invert the roles of victim and aggressor”.
It is often alleged that Ms. Harlins used her fists against Mrs. Du. A look at the video footage does not support that allegation. She slapped Du to force her to release her jacket. Ms. Harlins was neither aggressive nor committed to confronting the true aggressor in that situation, Mrs. Du.
I understand that we have differences of opinion in this case. I find it interesting that you keep tossing out the term “revenge” when justice was what Ms. Harlin’s survivors sought and did not receive.
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@Zoe
I just notice you say mum. So I’m assuming you live somewhere in Britain. I was told by a child-hood friend from Boston many years ago that London was ideal and not as racist as America but you say you can’t even swim in a public pool? I too have lost much hope in this world because of the ‘hate’ I’ve encountered in my life as well as those to people of various backgrounds for whatever reasons.
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@Zoe
I again am perplexed but enjoying another post of yours. I want to know more about this Andes’ tribe that teaches such a compassionate trait. At the end this is truly the way to go about the world if we want to survive and live together.
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Again, I can’t stand how anybody could open up a store to sell ‘instability’ especially in some other ethnicity’s neighborhood. I know Koreans know better and know what these products do and then there’s ultimate tensions that would and should arise from such a situation.
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@gro jo
“It is not about the victim but about the state and the individual who committed the crime. In this case, the judge deemed that the criminal was no threat to society and was lenient towards her. ”
In your own words, “Let me guess, you have a Harvard law degree.” Except I’d substitute “Harvard” for “University of Phoenix.”
So yes, it’s hypocritical when you take this position now when the victim is black, but you took the position that the victim’s rights were all that mattered when the victim was an East Asian named Dr. Dao.
You even cried, “You see, my little resw, there’s such thing as individuals having the right to live their lives unmolested by governments or corporations”
Why aren’t you here doing the same now? Because the victim is black?
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@ TeddyBearDaddy
ENGLAND: No I wish! I live near New York City. (After being priced out of the City… sorry I have to go scream & then I’ll come back & finish typing).
WORD FOR MOTHER: My mother is from Berlin. In German Mom/Mommy is Mütti. So I long ago blended those Mütti+Mom=Mum. But yes it is British English also. My mother had seven years of British English before coming to the States & I have some dyslexia & have trouble remembering which words are spelled British way & which American. (Spellcheck is slowly repairing this problem… although by now I am set in my ways).
POOLS: I had the pools experience in a Connecticut Shore town an hour outside NYC in the first half of the 1960s. That was really big then. Torturing sweet little brown children by not letting them swim. The South had signs. The North had mean adults ignoring you. England (& elsewhere in Britain) had it’s own horrors peculiar to themselves. Such as Golliwog dolls — which lead to Eric Clapton screaming at an audience about “Wogs” in the 70s. Or a family from London asking me to dinner at age sixteen & talking about “Greasy Arabs” there — then going deathly silent & turning to me & saying: “Oh but we don’t mean you… ” Some great music & clothing though…
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“You even cried, “You see, my little resw, there’s such thing as individuals having the right to live their lives unmolested by governments or corporations”
Why aren’t you here doing the same now? Because the victim is black?”
This is why I love you, you never miss an opportunity to write something absurd.
“In your own words, “Let me guess, you have a Harvard law degree.” Except I’d substitute “Harvard” for “University of Phoenix.”” Sorry to disappoint, I tried to do a paralegal course and found it distasteful so I dropped out. I noticed that the law had nothing to do with justice, empathy for the victim and other things like that. THE LAW EXISTS TO DEFEND THE SOCIAL SYSTEM. I wish you all luck finding ‘justice’ or empathy.
Solitaire, thanks for the long quotes from law books. I believe that the gist of these quotes was that the accused and victim are evaluated according to what’s good for the social order, please correct me where I may be wrong.
Afrofem, I’m not sure I understand the claim “the prosecution worked hard to invert the roles of victim and aggressor”. Are you saying that the prosecution threw the case by making the victim the aggressor? The quotes that followed that claim were from the DEFENSE, NOT THE PROSECUTION. ” “Mrs. Du in this case was vulnerable, not Miss Harlins,” Du’s defense attorney Charles Lloyd proclaimed in 1991, and twenty-two years later, Zimmerman’s lawyer Mark O’Mara would argue that “[t]he person who decided to make the night violent was the guy who didn’t go home when he had the chance.” ” How did the prosecution invert the roles? The defense did that successfully.
“It is often alleged that Ms. Harlins used her fists against Mrs. Du. A look at the video footage does not support that allegation. She slapped Du to force her to release her jacket. Ms. Harlins was neither aggressive nor committed to confronting the true aggressor in that situation, Mrs. Du.”
It’s too bad for her she wasn’t, had she knocked out Mrs. Du she would be alive remembering this as a nasty incident in her youth. Let’s agree to disagree.
blakksage, your confusion is comedy gold, keep it up.
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“blakksage, your confusion is comedy gold, keep it up” – gro jo
How so? It should be easy for you to explain yourself since you seem to be EXTREMELY intelligent.
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“Sorry to disappoint, I tried to do a paralegal course and found it distasteful so I dropped out.” – gro jo
LOL! This is quite fitting because this is exactly what the vast majority of school drop outs do, when they realize they don’t have the required aptitude to finish the course. However, I commend you for dropping out because we definitely don’t need a Mr. Karlin in the peewee league of law and certainly not on the bench.
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@ TeddyBearDaddy
” I know Koreans know better and know what these products do and then there’s ultimate tensions that would and should arise from such a situation.”
Agreed.
I don’t buy the Korean story that they immigrated to America in the 1970s and didn’t know about the historic tensions between Black and White Americans.
More likely they just didn’t care——they just had dollar signs in their eyes and poor Black communities were a prime opportunity for them to make money. They were aware of the racial hierarchy and sought to benefit from their position in the middle of the system.
P.S. Zoe answered a ton of your questions about her background here:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/open-thread/comment-page-1/#comment-372440
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@afrofem like across the street from my place on 12th st. there was an alley with a couch in it and all kinds of spray paint all over the place, and people would sit there and inject drugs in the sunshine, quite unafraid they were
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@afrofem it’s the 90’s ‘lite’ now but this is just a couple years ago (not near where i was living)
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the takeaway? the gov’t does not care
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“blakksage
“blakksage, your confusion is comedy gold, keep it up” – gro jo
How so? It should be easy for you to explain yourself since you seem to be EXTREMELY intelligent.”
I don’t know about the “…EXTREMELY intelligent.” part, but I do try to read with care, something you might try just to break up the monotony of your errors.
Please explain what you were objecting to when you wrote the following: ““Courts are not impartial with regard to class, race, sex, etc.” – gro jo
Response: The courts are not impartial with regards to class, race and sex in theory only, but not in practice.” So you believe that in practice, the courts are totally impartial and every defendant is treated equally regardless of class, race, sex, etc? That claim would be monumentally stupid, I gave you the benefit of the doubt and assumed you were being your usual confused self. I may have been wrong.
Your next comment makes your confusion manifest: ““Yes, the group you belong to goes a long way in determining how dangerous you are deemed to be.” – gro jo
Response: Here, you are shooting yourself in the foot because the previous comment above highly suggests that one’s phenotype or characteristics does play a part. For once, be decisive and quit waffling.”
I fail to detect any “waffling” on my part, please elucidate. I could go on in this vain but I get no pleasure in wading in your confusion. You and the rest of the gang, misread my comment as ‘support’ for the judge when I merely demonstrated that it wasn’t a lack of empathy at play, so sensitivity training wouldn’t have led to a different ruling on her part.
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plus the crack would actually get you high back then
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@ gro jo
‘wadding’ was good also. (Picturing that… works in another way). 🙂
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@gro jo,
look who is talking, a self proclaimed “drop out.”
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“blakksage
@gro jo,
look who is talking, a self proclaimed “drop out.””
Is that the best you’ve got? Next time don’t come at me with your confusion.
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“vain” should have been “vein”. Wadding would have worked if I had written: ” I could go on in this vein but I get no pleasure in suffocating in the wadding of your confusion.”
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@ v8driver
Huh?
If the government cared they wouldn’t criminalize what people put in their own bodies. Addiction of any sort would be a health problem, not a legal problem.
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@Zoe
I could write, direct and produce a movie about you. I’m only just about to turn 37 but would have love to make a biopic about you if it hasn’t happened already.
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“plus the crack would actually get you high back then.” – v8driver
Pardon me, how did you become aware that “crack would actually get you high back then.” Is there something you aren’t telling us?
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@ TeddyBearDaddy
sleep inducing tragicomedy
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“Latasha Harlins has her own Wikipedia page. Joel Lee does not. Numerous books have been written about Latasha Harlins. A google search on Joel Lee turns up almost nothing. It is clear that social justice activism circles tend to hold Black life above Asian life. That’s a fact.” – Kiwi
Your tired narrative of: “social justice activism circles tend to hold Black life above Asian life” isn’t working on this blog because it rings hollow. Now, you’ve stooped to the asinine level of either valuing or devaluing an individual’s life upon whether or not they have a Wikipedia page.(smh)
I surmise that your argument wouldn’t ring so cavernous if you were capable of producing an Asian Sandra Bland, an Asian Philando Castile, an Asian Michael Brown, an Asian Tamir Rice, an Asian Trayvon Martin, an Asian Eric Garner etc, etc. And of course, these are merely the shootings or suspicious deaths that were widely publicized and not the hundreds more that didn’t receive national or worldwide attention.
Continuing to push this false narrative of yours make you seem all the more desperate in your attempts to prove something that doesn’t exist. Perhaps only in the dark corners of your dilapidated mind that “Black life above Asian life” is true!
On second thought, I’ll give you the benefit of doubt and wait for you to produce a list of Asians that were needlessly murdered. Perhaps there are some shootings of Asians that I’m not aware of.
I’ll sit back and wait for the submission of your list, indicating the wrongful death of Asians!
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Kiwi need a belly rub. Go cry some where else.
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Let the oppression Olympics begin. Kiwi, the Asian champ is here.
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The expressions on both the judge w/ the scary Stepford Wife razorwire hair & the murderer are so cold. You could cut yourself on both their faces. The older I get the more I believe in the devil.
Enough of them.
I wish peace of mind for the family of Latasha. Despite that that is probably impossible here on earth… even this long afterward. How agonising. She’s so sweet looking here. Memory Eternal.
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@ blakksage
I think what v8driver must have meant is that a person nicknamed “Crack” frequently got him “high back then” when he was instructing him in flying small private planes. (Or air balloons. Or dirigables/blimps). Because everyone on here is destined for sainthood — so not the cheap 80s/90s street drug.
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@Gro Jo
“Kiwi, the Asian champ is here.”—Correction Asian chump.
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@blakksage
Kiwi does not care about Asians. He just throws them out like some cheap consolation prize. There is so much going on in the Asian community and all he cares about is the white man is not letting him in their schools or how activist groups aren’t caring about Asians when Asians don’t care about Asians.
I mean how hard is it for Asians such as Kiwi to make a Wikipedia page if they cared so much about Joel Lee? How hard is it to write a book if they cared so much about Joel Lee? Yet he stays mad that blacks are putting in the work to get it done. smh
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Kiwi said,
“The myth that Black rioting against Korean businesses is merely a response to exploitation of Black neighborhoods is a total joke when you take into account the fact that hundreds of Korean businesses that were located miles away from the nearest Black neighborhood were attacked during the LA riots.”
Korean business were attacked for different reasons.
In Black communities they were attacked because of exploitation; in Hollywood they were attacked because of the surrounding chaos created by the riots.
Many Korean business owners defended there businesses with guns.
Only a small number of Korean business are exploitive. Koreans are not the only ethnicity in Black and poorer neighborhoods who run groceries that sell over priced food and liquor on credit, or have hair product stores.
Kiwi said,
“We should also look into how German rioting against Jewish businesses was a justifiable response to Jewish exploitation of Germans ….”
That analogy doesn’t work. Only about half the rioters were Black. So while its true that Black rioters burnt down those businesses that took advatage of them in some Black areas other rioters in the out lying areas were looting for free stuff. Those rioters were Hispanic and white.
The Germans portrayed the Jews as collectively exploiting Germany as a whole. The Germans were the ones with the power not the jews.
Blacks are not the ones with power within some of their communities.
Some Korean businesses are exploitive and some are not. Some Korean businesses are assets to a particular area.
It is white supremacy that values certain groups over others and that example guides other about their position within racial hierarchy.
So when Blacks burn down those business that are parasites within their communities that’s an attack against white supremacy the current system in place. It is not an attack against the Korean community the same way Hitler attacked the Jews.
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Black criminality was (and still is) an overblown fear in a lot of people due to negative stereotypes that continue to thrive one way or another, and it’s not limited to the psyche of white people. It transcends race. There are even black people who bought into it.
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@sharina
“Yet he stays mad that blacks are putting in the work to get it done”
Yup. For a while there was a saying “not your mule” that was used when non-black “POC” got upset because black people were fighting for their own causes and not doing free work for others.
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It’s like the campus mural Kiwi complains about. I told him last year he was wrong in thinking some do-gooder white liberal administrator had decided on their own to have a mural celebrating prominent African Americans. I told him I was positive black student activists had been working for years to get that mural.
About a week ago, I read an old thread where Kiwi mentioned what university he attends. Up until then, I had mistakenly assumed he was going to one of the schools in his hometown area. Now that I knew which school he was talking about, I was able to quickly Google information about the mural and sure enough, news articles about the mural’s dedication mentioned some of the students (most of whom had already graduated) who first proposed the mural and worked behind the scenes to convince the administration to make it happen.
Kiwi wants an equivalent mural for Asian Americans. I think this is a good idea. Even though Asian American students are over-represented at his university, the faculty is still predominantly white and Asian Americans are still a minority in the overall U.S. population. A mural representing their long history in California seems appropriate to me.
But if Kiwi wants this, he needs to work for it the way black students worked for their mural. Either he starts agitating for one now, or he makes a boatload of money right out of school and funds the mural as an alumni gift. There is no beneficent white liberal fairy bestowing these murals and purposely slighting Asians.
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@ MJB
Well said. People forget there were white rioters.
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@ blakksage
“your argument wouldn’t ring so cavernous if you were capable of producing an Asian Sandra Bland, an Asian Philando Castile, an Asian Michael Brown, an Asian Tamir Rice, an Asian Trayvon Martin, an Asian Eric Garner etc, etc. And of course, these are merely the shootings or suspicious deaths that were widely publicized and not the hundreds more that didn’t receive national or worldwide attention.”
Well said!
Kiwi attempts to blame all Black people for the death of one Asian person in the past decade when Black people mourn the loss of of up to ten community members per week. Per week! Kiwi’s constant harping about one Asian person versus the hundreds of Black dead speaks volumes about whose lives he values. (Hint: It’s not Black people’s lives.)
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@ Michael Barker (aka MJB)
“Only about half the rioters were Black. So while its true that Black rioters burnt down those businesses that took advatage of them in some Black areas other rioters in the out lying areas were looting for free stuff. Those rioters were Hispanic and white.”
Thanks for pointing that out. People tend to forget how the “riots” spread outside of Black neighborhoods into more affluent areas. That spread was due to large numbers of Latinx and White looters taking advantage of the chaos to grab consumer goods, like televisions and disposable diapers.
Also, while it is true the Koreans in Koreatown defended their community businesses with guns, it is also true that they were responsible for the the only Korean death (by friendly fire) during the uprising. Edward Song Lee was mistaken for a looter and shot by Koreans. The other Asian person was Vietnamese.
Out of 60 recorded deaths, approximately, 28 of the dead were Black men and women, 2 were Asian, 19 were Latinx, and 11 were White.
http://spreadsheets.latimes.com/la-riots-deaths/
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@ Sharinalr
“I mean how hard is it for Asians such as Kiwi to make a Wikipedia page if they cared so much about Joel Lee? How hard is it to write a book if they cared so much about Joel Lee? Yet he stays mad that blacks are putting in the work to get it done.”
So True!
It would be a better use of his time than ranting at Black people on this forum.
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yeah my boss sent me home early april 29 1992, she said go straight home, don’t take the surface streets. we smoked weed and watched all our stores we went to burn
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‘april 29th florence and normandie’
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@Origin
Thank you. I don’t think I heard that term, but it perfectly sums it up.
@MJB
I was not aware of the white or Hispanic rioters.
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@Solitaire
I am beginning to wonder if Kiwi is actually Asian or some white activist taking up an Asian cause.
How can anyone begrudge the efforts of another group? I didn’t agree with Dao, but dude did put forth the effort the get what he felt he was owed and to right what he felt was a wrong to him. This is life. If you want something you put in the effort.
@Afrofem
“It would be a better use of his time than ranting at Black people on this forum.”–I find it alarming how he plays into this stereotypical idea of Asians being helpless and docile and needs the big black brute to do his dirty work.
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@blakksage lol i see you don’t read my irr thread here
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let me pass the blunt to my wife, yeah blakksage i have a drug problem! and i’m an alcoholic
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huh well LA in 1991 i was a senior in college with only general education requirements left my last semester, i was like taking the earthquake 101 class etc iits when i started smoking it as a matter of fact
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@ Zoe, always nice to meet a lady with the same name! Please don’t be Zoe2… You are the one and only u!
@ Teddy Bear Daddy. I’m the British Zoe, a Londoner, I’ve never been to the states so I can’t swear from my own experience but my belief is that whilst there is, of course, wide spread racism here, it is way worse in the States.
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Yeah im a trojan, it did skip usc, the 21 market? I dont remember.
The pep boys just north had a stream of people in and out through the back door.
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@ Zoe Jordan
You are the only one to have answered my ‘poll’ above re. our names the same & what to change mine to. A few people on this blog in threads said they “hate” Arabs so I may change the screen name here to simply ‘Arab’… hahaha… Perhaps in upper case: ‘ARAB’. Thanks for the love but I am rather fond of ‘Other Zoe’ since you don’t want me to be ‘Zoe 2’ & you were here first! But as you wish I will just stay plain ‘Zoe’ for now ❤
You are right — I think — about London & the States! (Re. comparable racism). Here is my completely unscientific evidence! When I have been asked out by White London boys/men they complimented my clothing/asked me about books/asked me things about myself. Whenever I was asked out by White American boys/men they would call me “exotic” (this is for another thread! so infuriating! may as well just say ‘not white’!!!!!!!!)/pulled my hair up & let it fall back whilst making comments about it being “fluffy” (it is just garden variety brown very thick wavy hair)/asked me when I came to this country then when I said I was born here asked me when my parents came to this country (my dad is from Ohio!)/asked me when I converted from Islam (my family on the Lebanese side have been Christians for most likely 2000+ yrs!)/asked me “was (my) grandmother angry when ( I ) stopped wearing the veil” (one grandmother was from Berlin Germany & a custom dressmaker in the 1930s there — the other Orthodox Christian Lebanese… so the answer: ‘NO — because neither I nor anyone in my family has ever worn the veil‘). Also the White American boys/men always did this weird loud whispery voice when saying the word “exotic”. I am getting angry (& feeling an evil chill) just thinking about it. The other more polite/less racist people whilst asking girls/women out are Jamaicans: ‘Good morning’/’Good Afternoon’/still opening the door for one about fifty years after American men stopped. Once — whilst leaving a shop in New England — some White American boys/men (boy-men) opened the door for a pale blonde walking in front of me & then after she was through slammed it in my face laughing. When one of them (that hadn’t done it but witnessed it) tried to object to them — they kept laughing mocking his disapproval. This was around 2000 — in case anyone thinks this was in the 1950s. (That whole ‘Racism is in the past’ lie people use so they can live w/ themselves without making an effort to change things). White Londoner men usually open the door for me. The verdict is in. Sorted. (I hope Abagond leaves this in despite we are off topic).
What is your nickname Zoe? Mine is just Z (Zed). I loathe when people say ‘Zo’. Three kisses…
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Also, the fear of black criminality is so strong that any black person killed in another person is suspected of some kind of wrongdoing which got him or her killed in the first place or that the victim was at fault for causing the death in the first place (victim blaming).
It’s what got LaTasha killed and why she was seen as the one at fault for her own death. It doesn’t matter if she was a little unarmed girl who posed no real threat. She was a BLACK girl that got murdered. So, people assume in an instant that she must’ve done something wrong by color association alone.
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This same fear is what getting a lot of black men and black women killed every year by police and vigilantes. The argument is always pointed back at us to clean up our act so we wouldn’t appear so scary. (respectability politics) But we know it’s all BS. We’d frighten people if we wore top hats and tuxedos and spoke in Oxford English.
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@ Brothawolf
Exactly. I wrote about that here. That the Victorian concept of innocence in children first only applied to wealthy White children & then to all White children but not to Black children. Hence even when the child is the victim — people try w/ all their might to find some fault w/ the child’s behaviour. Like they murdered themselves. Basically.
Also to your point: in my post at the very top I wrote about how I got frisked in shops as a CHILD for zero reason.
& your “top hats/Oxford English” analogy is brilliant.
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@ Brothawolf
“Top hats … Oxford English”
You just reminded me: I was in a Starbucks & about four young university age kids walked in — male & female. Black kids. Talking to each other & laughing. This elderly White woman standing near me by the door was so freaked out when they walked by — she said to me “What are they going to do?!”… sort of under her breath. I just happened to be standing in front of her where they have the napkins etc. I was puzzled why she trusted me & not them. It’s an hour northwest of NYC & there are two universities in town but she couldn’t work out that twenty year old kids walking into a Starbucks w/ bookbags were not wanted criminals & murderers. & I thought this is like a sickness — like a mental illness people have. The question is: Why are the people like her who are living in the very safest circumstances — the most paranoid? So that w/ paranoid schizophrenia they are willing to kill even children?
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@ Brothawolf
I meant to write at the end of the last post that their paranoia *resembles paranoid schizophrenia.
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@ Zoe, I will reply on the open thread.
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@sharinalr
+1000
“all he cares about is the white man is not letting him in their schools”
As if Asians weren’t already overrepresented in white universities, while blacks are under presented. But facts don’t matter to kiwi.
“I mean how hard is it for Asians such as Kiwi to make a Wikipedia page if they cared so much about Joel Lee? How hard is it to write a book if they cared so much about Joel Lee?”
There’s a reason he’s like a broken record with regard to Joel Lee: b/c that type of incident is so rare and it’s much more common to see cases of Asian-American brutalizing blacks, including their own black customers in stores such as the several cases caught on video of East Asian men beating black women.
Of course you won’t ever see a black male store owner beating an East Asian woman, because that’d require East Asian to patronize black businesses…which we all know they don’t do!
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Abagond King wrote this about you
”Those were indeed the kind of reasons why I left.
But also things like
Blacks can’t be racist because racism can only be defined as a huge social institution. If a Black man simply hates people just based on skin color, he is not a racist. I thoroughly reject this idea.
A Stasi-like system of self-policing in which everyone’s credibility is constantly questioned if they disagree with the common assumptions of SJW worldview. Anyone can be a “traitor” if they start asking too many questions or have differing opinions.
A long but steady reduction of voices with differing views, through scapegoating and broad-brushing and ridicule. One by one, voices of reason kept vanishing until it has become small group of people who all think very much alike, (save one or two polarizing gadflies.)
Inconsistency: Like condemning statements like “Black people stink.” Yet defending statements like, “White people stink” by explaining that he didn’t say ALL White people!!!”
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@ Rabab
You gave me a lot to think about. Thanks.
Which commenters did you consider “voices of reason”?
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@ Rabab
Could you provide a link? I’ve thought for over a year that King left here on purpose (as opposed to just getting busy in real life). I’d like to read more of what he has to say on whatever blog it is.
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@Solitaire: King was one of my favorites on this forum i miss him.
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Afrofem… That is not my view. King wrote that comment on bigwowo.
Here is the link
http://www.bigwowo.com/2017/04/when-i-learn-chinese-i-see-myself-as-chinese/
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@ Rabab
Thank you for the link.
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@ Mary Burrell
Same for me. I wish he’d come back.
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I lost respect for King.. I use to adore him. Now is agrees with that racist Byron and Kiwi.
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@ Rabab
Thanks for the link.
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@ Rabab
Thanks for the general link to the conversation. King’s comment is found here:
http://www.bigwowo.com/2017/04/when-i-learn-chinese-i-see-myself-as-chinese/#comment-327624
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Now we know that King did not stop posting simply because he got too busy. He left.
I must admit that I found this blog much more rewarding 3-6 years ago. In the past few years it has devolved into more of the SJW dogpiling that they were referring to, or sometimes just drivel.
King’s point #1 — it became anathema to him and I more or less feel the same way. And I do remember when that surfaced prominently on this blog, he left soon after that. The result is a much higher concentration of audience that shares that opinion (and hence a noticeably poorer quality of posting and commentary).
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@ Rabab
@ Jefe
Replies to both of you on the Open Thread.
https://abagond.wordpress.com/open-thread/comment-page-1/#comment-373326
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@Jefe
“In the past few years it has devolved into more of the SJW dogpiling that they were referring to, or sometimes just drivel.”—-I won’t say the last few years as King did engage in the SJW dogpile he is referring to.
The term SJW really has become a throw out term for anyone who doesn’t agree within itself. SJW has no worldview. It is different and changes based on the cause or people a person is fighting for.
As to the ” white people” double standard, he is right but I also don’t remember him doing much speaking on that double standard.
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Mary & Solitaire
I miss him as I agree with most of what he said, but I miss legion more and we often disagree. 🤔
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“I must admit that I found this blog much more rewarding 3-6 years ago. In the past few years it has devolved into more of the SJW dogpiling that they were referring to, or sometimes just drivel.”
This is rich coming from somebody who wrote quite a few stupid lies on this blog: Hong Kong has all the drinking water it wants. In fact, it has been short of water since the 1960s.
Mao and his heirs promote cigarette smoking in order to kill off the elderly. Mao and his heirs were heavy smokers themselves. Two of the most egregious lies told by this paragon of virtue.
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@ jefe
“In the past few years it has devolved into more of the SJW dogpiling that they were referring to, or sometimes just drivel.”
How is that qualitatively different from the virulent anti-everyone-but-Chinese bigotry on bigwowo?
There does tend to be a lot of “is too” —- “is not” drivel in the comments where people are determined to have the last word. That dynamic is found in a lot of comment sections of blogs and forums.
While you decry the “SJW dogpiling” you perceive in the comments, I think that is a byproduct of the Black commenters feeling under siege in US society. Not only under siege, but the threat of death is very real to many Black people right now. I’m certainly aware of it as I go about my daily business in so-called “liberal” Seattle.
Other groups claim to feel that, but they don’t see, hear or know of their community members being publicly murdered by police and White vigilantes on a regular basis. The Black commentators witness total impunity for the murderers. Then other groups have the temerity to say to Black people (both online and offline) “what are you complaining about”?
There has to be a relief valve for that well of fear and emotion. Also seeing the casual impunity for individuals who harm Black people has hardened their positions. Many Black people feel that they can only rely on themselves, where even three to six years ago, there was still that feeling (however misguided) of alliance with other “people of color” and “communities of color”. That veil has been torn from the eyes of many Black people in the present moment.
As a result, a lot of former Black commenters have migrated to other sites that cater to their rage and emphatically exclude White, Asian and Latino voices.
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Another factor is the overly long and tedious presidential campaign that all Americans endured during 2016. Two rotten candidates and a horrible result. I noticed that knocked the wind out of a lot of people, both online and off. It also started a time of obsessive and redundant discussion about the intricacies of the election and its meaning on this blog. I would have preferred a month or two of post-election moping followed by little or no political content on a wide range of subjects—–especially subjects of uplift.
jefe, to me, this era is as full of promise as peril. It is a fascinating historical moment, where I think the most important duty we all have as humans is to not turn away, not distract ourselves (with entertainment, drugs, alcohol, shopping, sex, or religion) and not give in to defeatism.
So while the comments have changed on this blog and others over the past few years, so has the social climate in the US. Many of the comments reflect those changes with all of the fear, alienation, distraction, division commenters deal with everyday.
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Could we please move this to the Open Thread? I want to take part in this discussion, but I don’t want to open myself up to another accusation of derailing threads about black victims of racial violence.
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@Afrofem: You articulated what I couldn’t. I have decided to just go into lurker mode and not comment sometimes I can’t read the comments on this forum has they have devolved into madness and trolling from certain posters. Especially during and after the elections. I miss the discourse from earlier years past.
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@ Mary Burrell
You calm and steady wisdom has been missed by me.
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@Afrofem: You are very kind i really appreciate reading you and Sharina and Solitare and fighting the craziness that going down.
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@Mary Burrell
I really miss you. It has been weird since pumpkin, misstoogood4yall, Linda and so many others have been gone.
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@Sharina: Thank you i am still reading you.
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@ Mary Burrell
I hope you will continue to comment. I don’t blame you for wanting to stay out of the fray. But you make such valuable comments and I miss seeing you around.
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OFF TOPIC: “Abagond used to be great” but has devolved
It now has a post of its own:
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Afrofem. ”Many Black people feel that they can only rely on themselves, where even three to six years ago, there was still that feeling (however misguided) of alliance with other “people of color” and “communities of color”. That veil has been torn from the eyes of many Black people in the present moment.
As a result, a lot of former Black commenters have migrated to other sites that cater to their rage and emphatically exclude White, Asian and Latino voices.”
This is exactly how I feel
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@ Rabab
How do you deal with those feelings when you are studying in Bulgaria or back in your home country? (I’m sorry, I can’t remember if you are from Egypt, Libya or Sudan? Or none of the above? Please forgive my forgetfulness.)
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AfroFem.. I am currently in Bulgaria. I am member of an organisation called ACS (African Caribbean society), as you can already tell, it is an organisation for black people studying in Bulgaria. Majority of the people in this organisation are race conscious and have a good understand of the problem with racism that we as black people in the world face. So we tend to support each via space that we have created.
I am originally from Egypt, Aswan to be exact really. In Egypt, it is difficult because there isnt really a race awareness among Egyptian.
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@ Rabab
How are ACS members treated in Bulgaria? Are most of you in Sofia or another university town nearby?
In your comment, you said, “there isnt really a race awareness among Egyptian[s]”. How does, race, color and heritage play out in the part of Egypt you call home (The Aswan region)?
In other words, do you and other dark-skinned Egyptians face any discrimination in housing, schools or public places because of your skin tone? Do you face any ridicule because of your facial features or hair texture? How is your mother treated as someone who was not born in Egypt?
Finally, how did you develop race awareness?
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For some people, it is Rodney, Eric, Sandra, Sean, Michael, Tamir, Philando, Henry, or Trayvon. For me, it is Latasha.
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‘Anone choses a faith or a path that fits them best’. (c)
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30 years ago today…
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