Despite the conservatives' claim on the United States Supreme Court, I think it's safe to say that not only is racism not dead, but it's come out of the closet and into the light in ways we might not have imagined even eight years ago.
TPM:
His exasperation was understandable. On Saturday, Don Surber, the West Virginia paper's lone editorial columnist, took to his personal blog to offer his thoughts on "police brutality" and the killing of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown.
"This summer I had an epiphany as I watched packs of racists riot in Ferguson, Missouri, in support of a gigantic thug who was higher than a kite when he attacked Ferguson Police Department Officer Darren Wilson, who unfortunately had to put this animal down,"
Surber wrote.
It was his personal blog, yes. But as many of us have experienced, what you write on a personal blog might as well have been published on the pages you write for your employer. After an outcry, Surber updated his post:
By Sunday morning, Surber appended an update to the top of the post and crossed out the final phrase of the sentence.
"I made a factual error. Michael Brown was not an animal but a man. Big. Brutal. High," Surber wrote in the update. "His death was a justifiable homicide and not a putting down."
I guess Surber has some magical ability to transport himself in time and space to the very moment that Brown was shot by Wilson and knows as fact that Wilson was justified. The rest of us will just have to wait and see where the evidence leads, though the testimony of independent witnesses certainly has not suggested it was justifiable homicide at all.
