Silly Black People, Eric Garner Died To Enable Abortion Protests

Somebody call Webster’s, because Joe Scarborough has rendered its definition of “white privilege” obsolete. On Tuesday morning’s Morning Joe, Scarborough and his diverse panel (Howard Dean was once voted for by black people) tackled LeBron James’ “I can’t breathe” protest t-shirt. The Cleveland Cavaliers superstar was one of several players who took to the court during warmups at last night’s Cavs-Nets game wearing shirts invoking Eric Garner’s last words. Naturally, LeBron and company were waiting for Scarborough’s approval before proceeding, and they got it, but not without a reminder that Michael Brown’s killing was not worthy of protest:

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“There were some conservatives and a lot of liberals also concerned about accusing white police officers of shooting people with their hands up in the air. But in this case we got it on videotape. It is appropriate, is it not?

“I can imagine if I were a black man, or more importantly, if I were the mom of a young black man, I would be wearing t-shirts like this or buttons like that. It’s only appropriate for him to do that, right?”

You can catch “If I Were A Black Man” on Joe Scarborough’s Fractured Fiddler! soundtrack, from K-Tel Records.

Set aside the gross white privileged arrogance of Scarborough actually deciding which black person’s death is or is not worthy of public protest, and the fact that even in his perfect victim scenario, he only envisions black people wearing protest garb, at least for a moment. Scarborough’s evangelism for Eric Garner is actually the worst thing about it, worse even than the kind of balls-out racism that says that all black people are the enemy, and potentially deserving of death.

[su_thin_right_skyscraper_ad]That’s a premise that is easy to reject, from a legal, policy, and social perspective. What Scarborough is saying is that if you are shot by cops and you are unarmed, and sixteen witnesses say you had your hands up, and even the guy who shot you tells his sergeant that you had your hands up, and the prosecutors in your case hold a secret trial at which they essentially tell the grand jury to let your killer go, that’s not good enough. Not good enough for you to even protest, let alone expect justice.  By the way, good on Howard Dean for trying to correct Scarborough, but the likelihoood of young black men being killed by police is actually 21 times more than whites, not ten.

If you thought it couldn’t get any worse from there, though, you’d be wrong, as Scarborough then pivots to the really important lesson to be gleaned from LeBron’s protest, which is somehow that abortion is murder…READ MORE

D.B. Hirsch

D.B. Hirsch is a political activist, news junkie, and retired ad copy writer and spin doctor. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.