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The Jussie Smollett incident took enough twists and turns to fill an entire season pay TV before its climactic finale that ended with his arrest. However, the liberal media and race hustlers are still trying to squeeze the last bit of juice out of that orange. If you thought this hoax was over, you are wrong. The identity politics purveyors and the media will use this case as a rallying point to keep this insidious game of race politics alive.
A narrative is now developing by Smollett’s supporters and apologist who are desperately trying to salvage anything possible. They question the motivations of the Chicago Police arguing that Laquan McDonald—the armed black male killed by police and the cover-up by withholding the body cam video until after Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s re-election means the Chicago Police can never again be believed. However, there is another aspect in the aftermath of all this that I find more disgusting. It’s the rationalization of bad behavior—even criminal behavior—by certain black people who should know better. Liberal media elitists, black political pundits, and professors in ivory towers in academia lead the chorus in furthering the cultural rot that is becoming pervasive throughout the black community.
Instead of being responsible by exhibiting leadership through the influential positions these liberal elites have—many of them who are black—chose to commiserate and pander by finding justification for bad behavior by black men. Folks, the world is officially upside down.
There was a time when black icons in the fight for justice were much different. These are icons like Dred Scott, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells, Harriett Tubman, Nat Turner and Crispus Attucks who was the first American killed in the Revolutionary War. More recently Emmitt Till, Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Jackie Robinson, Jesse Owens, Thurgood Marshall, and Dr. Martin Luther King come to mind. These stalwarts in the pursuit of justice and equality were people worthy of icon status and role modeling. However, today the people who are championed as heroes and icons in the black community more resemble a police blotter. People like Rodney King, Mike Brown, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, and Trayvon Martin are now the giants in the civil rights movement. This is an insult, a perversion of the blood, sweat, and tears endured by people worthy of being forever remembered throughout history. It’s disgusting that some hucksters are so desperate to find 21st-century civil rights icons as an example that the fight for justice continues (as if nothing has gotten better), that they are willing to disparage and water down the sacrifices made by real black icons.
Every one of these previously mentioned modern-day civil rights icons (miscreants) were engaged with not civil disobedience, but dangerous criminal behavior at the time of their death. Mike Brown had committed a strong-armed robbery of a convenience store clerk before attempting to disarm a police officer for heaven’s sake.
Listen to how these miscreants were heralded. Race hustler Al Sharpton said, “The demonstrations, the rallies that many of us came and started led into what later happened two years later around Ferguson (Mo.), around Eric Garner; but it started, the seeds of that started in Trayvon Martin, so Trayvon Martin energized a renewal of civil rights activism in the 21st century like Emmett Till energized it in the 20th century.” Seriously?
Is anybody surprised that CNN show host Don Lemon excused the hoax allegedly perpetrated by Jesse Smollett by saying that, “it’s not his fault,” and that Smollett simply lost in the court of public opinion. Lemon further blamed it on how his lawyers handled it.
However, the gold medal winner in the aftermath of the alleged hoax is CNN’s race provocateur Van Jones who likened Smollett’s stature to the impact on American society that Jackie Robinson’s breaking the color barrier in baseball had. I kid you not. He called Smollett, “the fall of an icon” in the black community. Jones takes hyperbole to a new level. This is sick.
Young black men should be shielded from people like Mike Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Colin Kaepernick, and Jesse Smollett unless we use them as examples of how not to behave or model after. We need role models in the black community, but we don’t need this group. While we’re at it, we should consider shielding them from bad behavior enablers like Don Lemon and Van Jones too.
If Colin Kaepernick, Jussie Smollett and a list of criminals are the 21st-century symbols of where the civil rights movement stands today, then shut it down. What an abomination. Let’s add no more names to the list of who’s who among black icons. In fact, not being able to find people worthy of civil rights icon status today tells me that it’s time to acknowledge that while we should never forget, we have overcome.
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