Bitch Plz

Posted by High Priestess Kang as News, Op/Ed

What is wrong with this country? What is wrong with our society?

Michael Vick has apparently been persecuted by the man because he’s black. That’s right! Whitey is stickin’ it to Vick because dog fighting is part of the black culture.

You know, folks, there has to be a limit to playing the race card. Just think of the boy who cried wolf too many times, shall we?

It was borderline ridiculous when people said OJ was prosecuted because he is black. It is absolutely hysterical to think that Michael Vick got rail-roaded into the deal. What would the critics say if they saw evidence? Mark Furman was in da hizz-ous?

Note to the NAACP: Quit while you’re ahead. Srsly.

Vick case divides African-American leaders
NAACP rift reported over whether to support quarterback’s reinstatement

The case against Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick has exposed a split within both the NAACP and the larger African-American community, as some activists condemn Vick’s role in the deaths of fighting dogs and others cast him as a victim of a racist justice system.

Vick, 27, is expected to plead guilty Monday to federal charges in connection with a dogfighting operation on his property in Surry County, Va. He could face up to five years in prison. Two associates of Vick’s who have pleaded guilty to conspiracy said Vick helped executed at least eight underperforming dogs.

A spokesman for Vick told NBC News on Thursday that Vick, who is black, was grateful to the Atlanta chapter of the NAACP for a statement of support issued by its president, the Rev. R.L. White. White said Wednesday that Vick should not be barred from playing professional football once he completes his prison sentence.

“It is regrettable to us that Michael Vick had to settle for a plea bargain,” White said. “All of us, the fans of Mr. Vick, had hoped for a more favorable outcome.”

White acknowledged that he had previously used the word “lynching” to describe public reaction to the prosecution of Vick, but he said he “honored” Vick’s decision to seek a plea agreement as the “most beneficial course.” He denied that he was “playing the race card,” saying he simply wanted to make sure Vick was “treated fairly by the public and by the court system.”

National NAACP withholds judgment
NBC’s Kevin Corke reported that White’s comments created a rift within the NAACP, whose national office has taken no position on Vick’s potential reinstatement to the National Football League.

Vick “certainly was in control of his actions at all times and should be held accountable for what he did,” Dennis Courtland Hayes, interim president of the national NAACP, said Thursday in an interview with MSNBC’s Amy Robach.

Hayes rejected the contention that dogfighting was an acceptable part of urban black culture, as celebrated in rap and hip-hop videos like “Grand Champ” by DMX or “99 Problems” by Jay-Z.

“I thinks that’s a product of stereotypical thinking,” Hayes said.

“I’m from the black community. I live in the ’hood when I visit my mother in Indiana. I travel the streets of African-American communities in Baltimore, and this is all news to me,” he said. “I think people should hesitate to conclude that it’s something cultural with the African-American community. It exists everywhere.”

Racial element arose from beginning
Discussion of whether Vick was being singled out for special attention because he was a famous black man erupted almost from the moment the allegations against him arose in April, and much public reaction appeared to split along racial lines.

When several hundred people turned out last month for a rally supporting Vick in Atlanta, only about 50 were white, said Gerald Rose, executive director of the New Order National Human Rights Organization, based in the city. Rose said the overwhelmingly black turnout reflected anger among African-Americans that black men who stumbled came under disproportional public judgment.

Alton H. Maddox, a New York civil rights activist who was disbarred for his role in the Tawana Brawley case, argued that Vick was being targeted because “he is not an assimilationist.”

“No one can mistake Vick for Tiger Woods,” Maddox wrote in an editorial in the New York Amsterdam News, a black newspaper. “In sports, they are both performing a ‘white man’s job.’ Vick, however, is doing it on the Black side. This is like a Black man rubbing salt in the white man’s wound.”

Most recently, the Rev. Al Sharpton, a two-time Democratic presidential candidate, charged that a star white athlete never would have been prosecuted for the same crime.

Like Hayes, Sharpton has denounced images of dogfighting in popular black culture, and he signed a letter along with hip-hop executive Russell Simmons condemning the activity as ignorant and cruel.

But at the same time, Sharpton argued that the prosecution of Vick was overkill.

“If the police caught Brett Favre (a white quarterback for the Green Bay Packers) running a dolphin-fighting ring out of his pool, where dolphins with spears attached to their foreheads fought each other, would they bust him? Of course not,” Sharpton wrote Tuesday on his personal blog.

“They would get his autograph, commend him on his tightly spiraled forward passes, then bet on one of his dolphins.”

Blacks urged to reject ‘street culture’
Other prominent black commentators dismiss that argument, however.

Hayes, of the NAACP, maintained that such sentiments were misplaced, saying African-Americans’ legitimate grievances against the criminal justice system should not excuse the very real crimes to which Vick has pleaded guilty.

“What we have to understand is the backdrop,” he said on MSNBC. “We have to understand that what we’re hearing expressed by some African-Americans is their anger and their hurt, distrust, in a criminal justice system that they feel treats them like animals.”

“Certainly, Mr. Vick was not a victim,” Hayes added.

Bryan Burwell, a sports columnist for MSNBC.com who is black, echoed Hayes’ assessment, arguing that it is impossible to claim that “Michael Vick was unjustly persecuted.”

“The negative images that are embraced by too many young (black) men in our society needs to be changed to make them understand that intelligence is right and ignorance is wrong,” Burwell wrote this week. “We need to alter the perception so that it’s cool to be smart and the thug and gangster lifestyle is wrong. When your friends can’t understand that, they aren’t your true friends.”

And in an open letter addressed to “young, black men,” ESPN columnist Jemele Hill, who also is black, wrote:

“I caution you not to make Vick a martyr. Do not applaud him for taking his comeuppance like some modern-day gangster. Do not blame others for Vick’s predicament when he alone should be held accountable for his actions.

“Let this historic unraveling be a wake-up call for the young, black men caught up in the same lifestyle that claimed Vick. Let his prison sentence send the message that a continued allegiance to street culture successfully keeps young, black men frighteningly behind in American society.”