NAACP Won’t March with Black Lawyers for Justice

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Rarely do I ever agree with the NAACP.  This time I do.

Back on September 10, I blogged about the abduction and torture of Ms. Megan Williams, a young black woman from Charleston.  This is an absolutely abhorrent story.  The people who participated in the atrocities committed against Ms. Williams deserve to be punished to the fullest extent of the law.  I hope every one of them get at least 20 years of hard time.

The dispute happening in the community now is whether this crime falls under the umbrella of the hate crime legislation.  Was what happened to Ms. Williams done because of her race?  On the surface you might think yes.  The psychos who abused her were all white, she is not.  But dig deeper and you begin to raise questions.

Ms. Williams was not abducted at random, she knew her abusers.  She had visited the home in the past and may have been intimately involved with one of her abusers.  If this was a pure hate crime the abusers wouldn’t have tolerated her for more than 10 seconds, in my opinion.  I’m not a legal eagle, these are purely my thoughts based on what little I know of the case.

So, the family is reported to have been contacted by the Black Lawyers for Justice.  Locally, the founder/lead spokesman for the group is a man named Malik Shabazz.  Now, Mr. Shabazz says he wants to hold a rally in support of Ms. Williams and against hate.  Problem is that Mr. Shabazz is known for a lot of hateful speech against other groups. 

In today’s Charleston Gazette, a story notes the following:

 A national group, Black Lawyers for Justice, is organizing the Charleston march. A local group, the Charleston Black Ministerial Alliance, said last week they would not participate in the march because they feared controversy would draw attention away from the well-being of Megan Williams and her family.

I agree with them. 

From the moment Mr. Shabazz came to the area the focus has moved away from Ms. Williams and the prosecution of the freaks who tortured her to Mr. Shabazz and the controversy around him.  Even the area churches have spoken out against participating in the event.  Mr. Shabazz’s presence has cause a rift in the community that undermines the very things he says he is trying to address.

There are some in the community who say we don’t need an ‘outsider’ coming in to the area and telling us what to do.  I disagree.  Sometimes the best thing you can do to identify problems is to bring in someone who isn’t hampered with a historical perspective.  However, I don’t think we need THIS group coming in to help the community.  There’s too much junk tagging along.  They are too divisive.

And if we are supposed to be working toward a colorblind society then we have to get away from the finger-pointing on race.  Yes, I understand that there are people in this world who hate someone of another race.  Yes, I understand that “white people” have had the upper hand so long that it will take even more years before we rise above it.  But he time has come that we start prosecuting people for the crime committed and not for what we believe they may be thinking.  Discrimination is discrimination is discrimination whether it’s because of race, sex, religion, disability, or whatever. 

People aren’t property.  You don’t beat your spouse, significant other, girl/boy friend or children because they are ‘yours’.   People aren’t less ‘valuable’ because they are of a specific race, religion, sexual orientation or have a disability. 

And southern WV coal miners are just as valuable to our world as New York lawyers, if not more. 

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