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Reba · 05-08-2008, 02:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jillio

So he defends people of color. Why is that such an issue with you? He has been involved with civil rights issues since the late 1950's and early 1960's. Since civil rights violations predominantly occur against persons in minority groups, it makes perfect sense that he would defend people of color.

And, since you don't have a lsiting of all of his clients from the time of his passing the bar, you don't know what ethnicity all of his clients have been.

Whether you choose to believe it or not, there is a huge disparity between arrest, conviciton, and sentence between persons of color and caucasions. It needs to be addressed. Simply chosing to defend a person of color hardly qaulifies as "playing the race card."

If he is truly concerned about justice, why does he limit himself to non-white victims? After it was proven that Tawana Brawley was a liar, did Sharpton do what he could to clear the names and reputations of the falsely accused cops? After it was proven that the Duke rape case was a hoax, did he apologize to those falsely accused students and try to make things right for them?

For the benefit of those ADers who haven't been following Sharpton's career, here's a brief history:

Quote:

1987: Sharpton spreads the incendiary Tawana Brawley hoax, insisting heatedly that a 15-year-old black girl was abducted, raped, and smeared with feces by a group of white men. He singles out Steve Pagones, a young prosecutor. Pagones is wholly innocent -- the crime never occurred -- but Sharpton taunts him: "If we're lying, sue us, so we can . . . prove you did it." Pagones does sue, and eventually wins a $345,000 verdict for defamation. To this day, Sharpton refuses to recant his unspeakable slander or to apologize for his role in the odious affair.

1991: A Hasidic Jewish driver in Brooklyn's Crown Heights section accidentally kills Gavin Cato, a 7-year-old black child, and antisemitic riots erupt. Sharpton races to pour gasoline on the fire. At Gavin's funeral he rails against the "diamond merchants" -- code for Jews -- with "the blood of innocent babies" on their hands. He mobilizes hundreds of demonstrators to march through the Jewish neighborhood, chanting, "No justice, no peace." A rabbinical student, Yankel Rosenbaum, is surrounded by a mob shouting "Kill the Jews!" and stabbed to death.

1995: When the United House of Prayer, a large black landlord in Harlem, raises the rent on Freddy's Fashion Mart, Freddy's white Jewish owner is forced to raise the rent on his subtenant, a black-owned music store. A landlord-tenant dispute ensues; Sharpton uses it to incite racial hatred. "We will not stand by," he warns malignantly, "and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business." Sharpton's National Action Network sets up picket lines; customers going into Freddy's are spat on and cursed as "traitors" and "Uncle Toms." Some protesters shout, "Burn down the Jew store!" and simulate striking a match. "We're going to see that this cracker suffers," says Sharpton's colleague Morris Powell. On Dec. 8, one of the protesters bursts into Freddy's, shoots four employees point-blank, then sets the store on fire. Seven employees die in the inferno....

Al Sharpton: The Democrat's David Duke by Jeff Jacoby -- Capitalism Magazine