Do you think we’ve spiraled into a modern Jim Crow era? Tariq Nasheed is well-known for his Hidden Colors documentary series, exploring African American history and racism. Nasheed shared his thoughts with HuffingtonPost : On the inspiration behing “Hidden Colors 3: The Rules of Racism”: The Trayvon Martin situation. When that verdict came through, I saw the way black people reacted to it, and I don’t think people were serious enough about the outcome and the ramifications of that. When the Trayvon Martin decision happened and black people didn’t act accordingly, that should have snapped everybody to attention. We kind of let that slide. That gave white supremacists a green light to go further, so now there are cops beating up black women, beating up more children, shooting more black people … We’ve seen Jim Crow racism come back. It’s Jim Crow 2.0, looped back around. You can’t play games with systematic white supremacy. We have to be cognizant of the rules of racism. On Eric Garner’s death: We have to understand with the Eric Garner case that this is Jim Crow 2.0. We are literally back in the new Jim Crow era. People try to dismiss racism, because they’re not saying “ni**er go home.” They don’t have the signs. The racism and the white supremacy is still there — it’s just not written down anymore. That’s the only difference. Eric Garner was lynched. That was nothing more than a lynching. You don’t have random lynch mobs running around like they used to in Jim Crow. The police are the lynch mobs now — they’re the designated lynch mobs. And they’re showing you they can kill a black person on camera, and possibly still get away with it. They’re building their defense now, trying to say that he died of a heart attack, when we saw that the man was choked out. Black people have to be empowered enough to put politicians in place to get these rogue cops out of the system, to shut down these police forces that will support rogue cops and white supremacists. This police officer has been known to make racialized arrests, he’s been sued a couple of times — a lot of people don’t know that. We have to pool together our finances to shut people like that down.
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Race Matters: Hidden Colors Filmmaker Tariq Nasheed Says Eric Garner’s Death Was A Lynching – “This Is Jim Crow 2.0″
