24 Jul 2013 Project 21’s Newsome Seeks Serious Race Conversation on Canadian TV

Discussing both President Obama’s comments on the George Zimmerman case and the upcoming rallies protesting the case’s not guilty verdict, Project 21 member Hughey Newsome offers constructive advice on America’s race problem on the 7/19/13 edition of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s “Power and Politics” while Danielle Moodie-Mills of the Center for American Progress — like Obama — attempts to use the personal tragedy for the family of Trayvon Martin as a means to push their political agenda.

Pointing out that he believes the root cause of current race problems are “built on a perception of the African-American male being a thug” that is perpetuated by the media and the entertainment industry as well as a fixation on a belief in rampant overt racism that no longer really exists, Hughey says Obama ignored the “need to have a specific conversation” on the black male perception problem.  Commenting on the Zimmerman case, he added: “[I]f we focus on him [and the ‘stand your ground’ law that never factored into the case], we lose an opportunity to really talk about these perceptions that are so ingrained in our brains.”

To the contrary, and counterproductive to Hughey’s suggestion, Mills demanded that “we need to focus on the law.”  Furthermore, she made her case against the unrelated stand your ground law laughable by starting off the discussion by claiming that “racism has been the elephant in the room that we have been ignoring… for eons.”