[needle]

I'd like to share, of all things, a 2013 movie review that I found deeply moving on the topic of black perspectives on life in America today:

Wesley Morris, who is black, reviewed Fruitvale Station, a 2013 movie about an incident I'm sure many remember, the shooting death of Oscar Grant, an unarmed young black man by a BART police officer, Johannes Mehserle, who said he accidentally used his gun when he meant to use is Taser.

Morris tied the movie and its depiction of the last day of Grant's life to the unrest following the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.

No excerpt is going to do Morris' writing justice, so I highly recommend you read the whole thing:

http://grantland.com/features/fruitvale-...on-martin/

Here's one excerpt:

The collective reaction to the Zimmerman verdict is striking. These protests and demonstrations aren’t directed solely at another race, at white people (black people know Zimmerman is also half-Peruvian and that the president is half-white). The outrage is directed at a system that’s demonstrably harmful to non-white people. It’s the institutions and all they’ve wrought that people are sick of. We don’t yet live in the world the Supreme Court thought we did when it struck down parts of the Voting Rights Act and weakened the case for affirmative action. More than ever, we live in a time of racism without racists, just racist laws, racist policies, and racist ideas.

[needle]

I'd like to share, of all things, a 2013 movie review that I found deeply moving on the topic of black perspectives on life in America today:

Wesley Morris, who is black, reviewed Fruitvale Station, a 2013 movie about an incident I'm sure many remember, the shooting death of Oscar Grant, an unarmed young black man by a BART police officer, Johannes Mehserle, who said he accidentally used his gun when he meant to use is Taser.

Morris tied the movie and its depiction of the last day of Grant's life to the unrest following the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.

No excerpt is going to do Morris' writing justice, so I highly recommend you read the whole thing:

http://grantland.com/features/fruitvale-...on-martin/

Here's one excerpt:

The collective reaction to the Zimmerman verdict is striking. These protests and demonstrations aren’t directed solely at another race, at white people (black people know Zimmerman is also half-Peruvian and that the president is half-white). The outrage is directed at a system that’s demonstrably harmful to non-white people. It’s the institutions and all they’ve wrought that people are sick of. We don’t yet live in the world the Supreme Court thought we did when it struck down parts of the Voting Rights Act and weakened the case for affirmative action. More than ever, we live in a time of racism without racists, just racist laws, racist policies, and racist ideas.