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    bassguitarheroMichael Harriot
    11/26/18 4:38pm

    What amazes me isn’t the institutionalized level of racism that’s directed at people of color every day. What amazes me is the strength and grace with which people of color DEAL with that racism. What amazes me is the casualness of how people of color have integrated the little things they need to do to avoid provoking the wrath of white supremacists, as intrinsically as one learns to look both ways when crossing the road. What amazes me is that, knowing what this system is, how unfair it is, and how much it is directed at them, purely to spite them and destroy them, people of color rise each morning with a class and grace that allows them to continue navigating this world, even as much as they know that that hatred can find them, at any time, but that life must simply be lived, even with the sword hanging directly above their head.

    Hatred makes people ugly, it brings out our worst flaws. But the love people of color have for the world, and the opportunities we manage to shake loose, is truly beautiful. It makes me sad as hell to keep hearing about this pain day in and day out, but the people who come through it are so strong and so beautiful that I could never question how hatred will end. It will die with a quiet whimper, like it always does, and we won’t even acknowledge it was ever there, because the beautiful don’t sully themselves with hate.

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      All Legzbassguitarhero
      11/26/18 5:00pm

      This all day!!!

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    ThirdAmendmentManMichael Harriot
    11/26/18 4:56pm

    Don’t worry white people have already been rolling out the bullshit excuses for why it wasn’t because of race:

    1) He was running away! I mean damn, nobody runs away from a shooting!

    2) He didn’t drop his gun. I mean damn, it’s really easy to hear the calls from police officers when hundreds or thousands of people are screaming around you. That’s if they really did it anyways.

    White people HAVE to justify it to themselves. 

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      Lizard BreathThirdAmendmentMan
      11/26/18 6:51pm

      I am wondering if perhaps he was trying to be that good guy with a gun 

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      ThirdAmendmentManLizard Breath
      11/26/18 6:58pm

      I think that’s a good possibility. The two possibilities basically fit either scenario.

      They made the same excuse (#2) with the security guard. 

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    Issa TrapMichael Harriot
    11/26/18 4:07pm

    I grew up in Birmingham and visit my dad who still lives there every chance I get. Your writing about Hoover is spot on. Every time I visit, I’m amazed how/why people live like they do. My dad is the typical old person and refuses to move so I’m forced to experience that place at least 3 times a year. I have told him that when he “goes home to Glory”, I’m never going back even though I have other family there. He tells me that it isn’t bad and he is used to racism there about as much as I’m used to traffic where I live - it is only mentioned it when it directly affects you (late for work - that doggone traffic, shot for no reason - that doggone racism). Unfortunately, Waze hasn’t come up with an alternate route to avoid that type of disruption.

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    IDM3Michael Harriot
    11/26/18 6:00pm

    West central Alabama resident here. I know the Hoover area all too well. whenever I go to Birmingham to visit my relatives or travel to Atlanta, I avoid the I-459 bypass. I even don’t go to the Galleria. What’s the point?

    Also, what are your feelings about Cullman?

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      Issa TrapIDM3
      11/26/18 10:09pm

      Also, what are your feelings about Cullman?

      My ol’ man has stories about that place. Retired truck driver so he would deliver there often. Let’s just say it isn’t a place on my list to visit any time soon.

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    Freak0nautMichael Harriot
    11/26/18 4:35pm

    Anyone who knows anything about St. Louis will tell you that Ferguson is one of the least racists parts of it...

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      sTalkinggoat, first and last of his nameFreak0naut
      11/26/18 4:58pm

      Ain’t really no least or most racist place in America. A cop could murder you just as easily in Oakland, CA as Birmingham, AL.

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      Freak0nautsTalkinggoat, first and last of his name
      11/26/18 5:13pm

      Well that was sort of the double meaning of the comment.

      On the one hand the irony is that Ferguson is one of the most integrated parts of St. Louis in which people of different races are constantly communicating and coexisting amicably.

      On the other hand Ferguson is one of the least racist parts of St. Louis, Ferguson.

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    s3rp3ntsMichael Harriot
    11/26/18 6:38pm

    Grew up off-and-on around the corner in Riverchase where, if I’m not mistaken, my stepmonster is still the only black homeowner on the block. The home purchase was actually written up in the news at the time - the house had been seized from someone or another, and my father and stepmother basically paid cash for it - black folks with half-a-mil in the mid-80s. That’s how it ended up in the paper. You could read the incredulity on the neighbors’ faces when we sometimes played outside.

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    sTalkinggoat, first and last of his nameMichael Harriot
    11/26/18 4:18pm

    Something I’ve been wondering. When an active duty military member is killed under suspicious circumstances like this does the Army send its own investigators to look into it? Or is that just some NCIS bulshit?

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      Army0409sTalkinggoat, first and last of his name
      11/26/18 5:40pm

      He wasn’t active-duty. According to Army records, he didn’t finish his advanced individual training (where you study the specific job you’ll have in the military).

      If he had still been in, the Army *might* have gotten involved, because he would have had a life insurance policy and his survivors would have gotten some benefits from the VA when his name was cleared, although with who this administration has put in charge of the DoD and VA, I don’t know that I necessarily trust that to happen.

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    The Intersectional Feminist part dosMichael Harriot
    11/26/18 5:32pm

    There isn’t a single lie to be found in this article. My family lives in the surrounding area, and this is the Hoover I know. Hoover PD are ALWAYS lurking.

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    BadOmbreMichael Harriot
    11/26/18 7:13pm

    It’s really not that hard to be worst than Ferguson. Fergson was pretty bad (worse side of average as it relates to the disconnect between the population and the government), but it was a fairly typical inner-ring suburb. Many suburbs have much worse reputations. Black people were actually allowed to move into Ferguson; there are a lot of suburbs that are still disproportionately white when they’d have no reason to be given the ethnic composition of the metroplitan area as a whole.

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    digitalrevisionMichael Harriot
    11/26/18 5:48pm

    I’ve lived in Hoover for almost 22 years of my life now, but none of this was unexpected to me. I went to Hoover at the peak of the Rush Propst football years (before they got busted for grade-fixing and the booster club buying houses for good players from other areas to live in to become Hoover residents, one of which is in my neighborhood). I know the Hoover Chief of Police (went to high school with his daughter, who was also one of my brother’s best friends), and none of this is unexpected. People in this state love to complain about “those people downtown” and other such bullshit. They’ve been complaining about “apartment dwellers” since I was in school; they don’t want anyone to go to live in Hoover that can’t afford one of those $450-500,000 homes near the school. Those “apartments dwellers” is why the other “over the mountain” (aka white enclaves) cities look down on Hoover. My house is close to one of the old cities that’s majority POC but still zoned for Hoover. I shit you not, my house sold for about $200-250,000 less than the surrounding areas because our mailing address isn’t bougie Hoover, but rather, majority African American Bessemer (and God forbid, white people live in Bessemer!).

    Basically, Hoover has been a ticking time bomb for something like this for YEARS.

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