'US racial discrimination meant to keep African Americans down'

Another not-guilty verdict for a white police officer who shot and killed a black man a few years ago has sparked outrage in the United States. Following is a synopsis of an interview Press TV has conducted with Paul McKinley, an American civil rights activist, and Fredrick Peterson, a senior congressional defense adviser, to discuss racial tensions in the US society.

Fredrick Peterson maintains that the law in the United States is color-blind and that if African Americans lose their lives, it is because of their own crimes and the defiance they show afterwards when they face police forces.

“What we are dealing with here is a matter of crime and I don’t put a color on that,” Peterson said.

“When we have a criminal and someone engages apparently in drug dealing, who flees from the police at high speed, refuses repeated orders to pull the car over, and continues a high-speed pursue very recklessly endangering not only his own life and the lives of his pursuing officers, but other innocents who have nothing to do with it, then is this not reasonable that the individual would be suspected not only of the crime that he was attempted to stop for, but perhaps being a dangerous individual to those who would be pulling him over?” the analyst exclaimed.

He further dismissed the allegations about the existence of systematic racial discrimination in the US, saying that some malignant elements within the country are exploiting the race issue in a bid to advance their own objectives.

What is systematic is the exploitation of race in order to engender fear and advance political and social objectives, Peterson said.

“These are often blacks themselves. Agitators, who attempt to engender fear, misrepresent fact, distort fact or flat-out lie about what is going on in order to stir the pot and stir up trouble. This is not doing service to the society in general. It is certainly not doing a service to the black community.”

However, Paul McKinley, the other panelist on the show, opined that the main goal behind the crackdown on African Americans is to keep them down and hinder their children's path to high political and social positions, shaming the black leadership in the United States for failing to stop the process. 

“This is an international issue. This is not a local issue and this is a national issue with black folks ... The black folks need to sit down with other black folks whatever the case may be, and solve our problem and come to a conclusion and demand justice for our people who are mostly victims at the hand of the alt-right,” McKinley reiterated.

Recently, a white police lieutenant in Georgia was caught on a video telling a nervous white driver, whom he had stopped, that "you are not black. We only kill black people." This is exactly the mentality that concerns many African Americans.

On Saturday, hundreds of Black Lives Matter protesters took to St. Louis' streets for a second night and clashed with police after Judge Timothy Wilson cleared former police officer Jason Stockley, 36, who was charged with first-degree murder for killing Anthony Lamar Smith, 24. Stockley was accused of planting a gun in Smith's car but claimed in his testimony that he had done so in self-defense.

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