On Sunday's PoliticsNation, during a discussion of recent high-profile cases of blacks who have been killed by whites, MSNBC contributor Jason Johnson declared that such behavior has been "empowered" by a "white nationalist, white supremacist presidency," adding that "It is a daily danger to live life as a black person in this country."
And, while discussing the case of Florida resident Markeis McGlockton being shot and killed by Michael Drejka, host Al Sharpton oddly suggested that there has been little media coverage of the violent incident, even though ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN have all covered it repeatedly since the news broke last weekend.
At 8:40 a.m. Eastern, Sharpton turned to Johnson and posed:
Are we seeing an emboldening of people that really want to come out and just aggressively deal in a racist manner? Or are we seeing it, again, being exposed? Because one of the things that I have questioned is why the media has not been talking more about what happened to (Markeis) McGlockton. People always argue, "Why does Al Sharpton and others march?" If you don't rally and you don't do things, they don't even really make it a news item. It's like we don't matter.
But, as previously documented by NewsBusters, ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN have all given a substantial amount of attention to the controversy around Drejka provoking a verbal fight with McGlockton's girlfriend, and then shooting McGlockton when he responded by shoving Drejka. By contrast, the same networks had mostly ignored recent cases of armed citizens defending themselves from attacks that were unprovoked.
In fact, just yesterday, CBS This Morning, the NBC Nightly News, and CNN's Smerconish all ran updates on the McGlockton killing.
Referring to the recent stabbing murder of Nia Wilson in Oakland, California, by a man with schizophrenia, Johnson began:
What happened to Nia -- that woman in California -- that's terrorism. And we've seen a rise in white nationalist terrorism and white supremacist terrorism in this country. You see these large numbers of vaguely employed white men with bizarre criminal records who are killing black people at random -- killing them with knives, shooting them with guns, and then, you know, only sometimes running way, sometimes not running away, primarily for the purposes of demonstrating that they're willing to kill a black person.
That's almost a gang initiation. That is something they do as an act of terrorism.
Johnson suggested that the murder of Wilson was racially motivated, even though police investigators have so far not made any claims about motive.
The race-obsessed MSNBC contributor -- also politics editor for The Root -- implicated the Trump administration as he continued:
Then what you see with so many other viral videos -- with somebody being yelled at for speaking Spanish in New York and this shooting with McGlockton down in Florida. That is just the emboldening of white bigotry by a white nationalist, white supremacist presidency, and his cronies like, you know, Jeff Sessions and Stephen Miller and all the other white nationalists that he has empowered. It is a daily danger to live life as a black person in this country.
That has never not been the case, but the emboldening of sort of your random white bigots and then the loosening of the grips on white terrorism in this country has raised the stakes for all of us, so it's extremely important to take into consideration. I'm not going to tell you to avoid any white man who walks up to you and doesn't seem to know you and might possibly stab you. That might be crazy and make it very difficult to use the subway.
Johnson ended up recommending that black Americans purchase guns to defend themselves against white attackers, although the same could be said generally that law-abiding Americans of any race should consider arming themselves to defend against attackers of any race -- especially considering that people who are crime victims are usually attacked by members of their own race.
Johnson: "But I will say this: It might be in black people's best interests to be even more invested now in buying guns and teaching yourself about safety and making sure that you vote in every single local election that you can to get rid of prosecutors who do not take these cases seriously."
It was not put into perspective that, according to FBI statistics, whites tend to commit only about 44 percent of all homicides even though about 70 percent of Americans are white, giving whites a relatively low rate of committing such crimes.
Whites also tend to commit hate crimes generally at a relatively lower rate.
