The word “N*gger” has been thrown around in the last 24 hours more than a baseball on opening day.
Last Friday, Jake England, 19, and Alvin Watts, 32, went on a shooting rampage in Tulsa, Oklahoma that left three people dead and two others wounded.
Both are being held on suspicion of three counts of first-degree murder, two counts of shooting with the intent to kill and one count of possession of a firearm in the commission of a felony and will be formally charged at a later date while their bond was set at $9.16 million apiece.
England, a 19-year-old single father, was angry at the suicide of his fiancée in January and the loss of his father who died a year earlier when he was shot in the chest during a scuffle with a man who had tried to break into his daughter’s apartment.
The man who killed England’s father was black. He was charged in the shooting and is serving a six-year sentence on weapons charges, according to Department of Corrections records.
Prior to the shooting rampage, England posted a message on his Facebook page that read:
“Today is two years that my dad has been gone shot by a f—— n—– it’s hard not to go off between that and Sheran I’m gone in the head.”
The pressures of life can be overwhelming to the point where it becomes unbearable to think clearly, so it’s understandable for England to become angry. His fiancée shot and killed herself right in front of him, he’s a 19-year-old single father, he looked after his two younger siblings and his father was murdered a year earlier.
Under those circumstances anyone would flip out, but it’s no excuse for murder.
Police and the FBI officials in Tulsa say that it’s too early to say whether the shooting attacks in the predominantly black north side neighborhood where England and Watts pulled off their shooting spree was racially motivated.
“Too earlier to tell if it was racially motivated?” You don’t need to be a super cop to tell this was a racially motivated shooting.
Once again, the fear of labeling something for being racist or even calling someone racist has shown that we are cowards when it comes to dialogue about racism.
The fact is, England and Watts’ shooting spree was racially motivated. All the victims were black, they drove to a black neighborhood and his Facebook message read, “my dad has been gone…shot by a fuc*ing ni**er.” What other evidence do you need to characterize this as a racially motivated killing?
Family friend Susan Sevenstar told the Associated Press that England was “a good kid” and “a good, hard worker,” who “was not in his right mind” after losing his father saying:
“If anybody is trying to say this is a racial situation, they’ve got things confused. He didn’t care what your color was. It wasn’t a racist thing.”
Sevenstar went on to say that England is part Cherokee Indian.
Didn’t we hear this argument before when it came to George Zimmerman? After Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin, his friends and family came to his defense saying that George wasn’t a racist because he was Hispanic – as if being racist is only regulated to being white.
The thing is, it’s OK to call England a racist; his behavior displayed that fact. And it’s not wrong to say George Zimmerman racially profiled Trayvon Martin, that’s what he did: he saw a black kid rocking a hoodie and deemed him “suspicious.”
The racist element is blinding in both cases and we need to realize that being labeled a racist when you commit crimes like Zimmerman and England did only proves that racism exists. And none of us are colorblind even though we may pretend to be.
Shaka Griffith is the News/Politics Editor of GlobalGrind.com Follow him on twitter @Darealshaka
