Guilty of Being Black

Black people driving in the U.S. -- men, mostly -- have characterized their being routinely stopped by police as "driving while being black", as a way of pointing out that the real reason for it is the prejudice based on their color. Now, there's a  new twist to this practice; one could call it "in driveway while being black." About a month ago in Florida, an unarmed black man was shot at by two policemen 15 times in his own driveway, just because a neighbor thought that he was a car thief. Even if one were to accept that the man made some "suspicious" movement, shooting at him 15 times is clearly excessive, and tends to indicate that the policemen were predisposed against him for being black.

Incidents such as this one happen time and time again to blacks in the U.S. If the man had been white, the policemen would have proceeded in a different manner. Surely, they would not have opened fire as they did in this case.

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