How can a black person find justice?
May 3, 2007 by Staff
Filed under News, Weekly Columns
(Akiit.com) Tallahassee, Florida – I am concerned with the growing racial undertones that largely go unspoken but are manifested in the public square.
Our predominantly and historically black university constantly has to live under the threats and political strangulation of budget cuts, which will lead to nonexistence. Yet all historically black universities are facing similar challenges.
Florida A&M University has survived through rain or shine for nearly 120 years and has been named the No. 1 college in the country twice, by The Princeton Review in 1999, and by Black Enterprise in 2006 in its rating of historically black colleges and universities. These recognitions speak volumes – unless we are saying that these publications are out of touch with reality.
Why can’t we coexist? How is it that, most of the time, blacks are having to step back for whites to be in control? Why is there a never-ending perception that our white brothers enjoy domination over other people and other nations.
I am also concerned about the growing disconnect between many in the black community and our legal system, which has always been a lost cause for blacks. Our elected state attorneys should be prosecuted themselves if they continue to use circumstantial, manufactured, manipulated and questionable evidence to prosecute innocent citizens. Especially when DNA or other evidence determines innocence or questions someone’s guilt, the prosecutor should be held accountable.
I am by nature a hopeful person, but I predict that State Attorney Willie Meggs won’t drop criminal charges against De’Lean “D.J.” Johnson, a black woman charged with two third-degree felonies and one misdemeanor, for allegedly deleting e-mails and files that Leon County announced had been recovered. We know that everything done in our county government is backed up on its computer hard drive.
Leon County administrators requested a criminal investigation of Ms. Johnson three weeks after she was no longer employed as the county’s veterans’ affairs director – a request that came after community members and veterans asked the county to reinstate her. She had exceeded expectations during her employment and had been an excellent employee. This was documented in her personnel records and when the county administration submitted a 40-page, work-related issues report.
This is not justice, but it is what passes for our system of justice.
It is our experience that white males are not going to let any black ministers tell them what to consider. White males are in charge, and that is the way that it will be.
This racial undercurrent scares me – because unless it is reversed, I fear it will lead to violent racial strife similar to what we have seen in past eras of this nation’s history.
By Joseph Wright