White privilege and the Al Sharpton straw man

Kathleen Parker's op-ed "Al Sharpton and the narrative of bias" (Washington Post, January 6), uses false equivalencies and intellectual laziness to completely mis-characterize the current racial divide regarding racial profiling and excessive policing in minority communities. She starts off by comparing the police using excessive force to kill unarmed blacks with Al Sharpton's entire persona as a political activist working on beha...lf of the black community to stop such conduct. Everything she says is either false or so exaggerated it completely discredits her entire theme. Calling him a "mere street agitator" who became a "disruptive celebrity" is gratuitous and unhelpful name calling. She goes on to say "he has arguably contributed to more harm than good. He creates a problem, then zooms in to save the day," without a word of substantiation. Incredibly, she implies he's partly responsible for the murder of two NY cops: " You do not get to stir the pot until it boils over and then say, 'Hey, whoa, I didn't say to turn up the heat that much. Simmer down'."

The problem with every one of these statements and characterizations is that they are not true. I've been listening to Sharpton's MSNBC show 'PoliticsNation' for years now and have been inspired how he's effectively channeled the anguish of the black community over the Trevon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Tamir Rice killings into a positive mass movement for legitimate and substantive change in minority policing. He's doesn't race-bait or mis-characterize police, being careful and specific of the need to improve policing with body cameras, better training and weeding out both intellectually and mentally unfit officers, just of small number of which cause the most egregious damage in minority communities. He's also called on white America to re-examine and eliminate institutional racism which, for example, caused the NY police to make 5 million stop and frisk incidents since 2002, most of which occur in minority communities involving over 90% completely innocent people. Parker assumes the entire policing problem experienced by minorities is over because NY Mayor di Blasio ended 'Stop and Frisk.' That shows Parker is still imprisoned in 'white privilege' which assumes there would be no minority police problems if those folks would just behave.

For her transgressions, Parker should be sentenced to one month of home confinement, but just weekdays between 6:00 and 7:00 PM EST. And she must turn on the telly to MSNBC to hear the real Rev. Al, not the disgraceful caricature she foisted on the public from her white privilege perch at the Washington Post.