At her personal web site's home page, Ebony Magazine Senior Editor Jamilah Lemieux says she is "One of those pesky Black feminists who challenges the status quo, while remaining fresh and fab at all times."
"Fresh and fab" would hardly describe Ms. Lemieux's Wednesday appearance on CNN Newsroom, where she took issue with, per the White House, President Barack Obama's characterization of the murders of five Dallas law enforcement officers as "hate crimes." You see, that's not her "most comfortable word choice," because it involved white cops.
As will be seen in the latter portion of the video (HT Zero Hedge), CNN Law Enforcement Contributor and former FBI agent Steve Moore pushed back hard, and Ms. Lemieux tried to interrupt his self-evidently true response:
Transcript:
HOST ANA CABRERA: We'll start with you, Jamilah. Because the White House yesterday came out and made a pretty bold statement saying President Obama considers the attack on Dallas police a hate crime. You know, the killer specifically mentioned he wanted to kill white people, especially white police officers, according to law enforcement there. How do you feel about the president defining this as a hate crime?
JAMILAH LEMIEUX: You know, I have to say, I would not describe hate crime as the most comfortable word choice, considering these circumstances. There's so much we do not know about what took place, what motivated this person. We only have the one account of law enforcement. We haven't had the opportunity to really look into his history in a meaningful way.
When we use a phrase like "hate crime," we're typically referring to crimes against people of color, people of various religious groups, LGBT people, people who have been historically attacked, abused or disenfranchised on the basis of their identity. To now extend that to the majority group and a group of people that have a history with African-Americans that have been abused, we can apply that to either police officers or to caucasians, I think gets into very tricky territory.
So I'd be curious to know if he was referring to the hate crime because he singled them out by race or because they were police officers.
CABRERA: Steve, do you agree with that, the fact that this man was targeting white people according to what he told police? Does that fit the definition of a hate crime?
STEVE MOORE: It absolutely fits the definition of the hate crime. You can't just say that only certain groups are allowed to be hated. Only certain groups can have crimes designated as hate groups, or hate crimes, against them. That's racism.
What you're doing here is saying that the actual truth of the matter is that hate crimes are defined as a crime against a specific race, doesn't list them, gender, gender preference group or membership in an organization. That's how it's defined. You can't just say if you're white, nobody can commit a hate crime against you. This guy said I'm doing it because you're white and I'm doing it because you're cops. That's race and that's organization. It's a hate crime as far as legally and it's a hate crime the way the FBI would investigate it."
The video clip only comes back to showing the trio together very briefly at the end. It was worth capturing to see that Ms. Lemieux appeared to be visibly upset with Mr. Moore's plainly true statement:
Lemieux apparently believes that it is actually possible that Dallas Police Chief David Brown, a black man, has been lying when stating that said that Micah Johnson wanted to kill white people, and particularly white police officers. She also seems to believe it's possible that every other law enforcement officer involved would be willing to back up any false statement Brown might make.
Five days after Johnson's massacre, Lemieux claims that "We haven't had the opportunity to really look into his history in a meaningful way." My goodness, woman. Where have you been? There have been dozens of writeups on Johnson since he committed his murder spree.
Lemieux seems to think it matters whether the Obama administration is "referring to the hate crime because he (Johnson) singled them out by race or because they were police officers." The answer is, "The administration was referring to both," and that it probably didn't occur to them parse the motivation any further. Why would it have?
In January 2014, Lemieux wrote the following statement at Ebony.com:
Look, White folks, can we just agree to disagree on the whole “treating Black people with respect” thing? Clearly, we aren’t going to see eye-to-eye. So… can y’all just leave us alone? Like, just look away when you see us doing anything and don’t put us in your movies, TV shows or living room sets. Just leave us be, leave us be, leave us be. Don’t celebrate Dr. King’s death on his birthday, don’t celebrate his birthday at all, just please go back to your corner and we’ll stay in ours. I don’t want integration anymore. I don’t even want those cheesecake swirl brownies from Starbucks. You just take that creamy stuff and let us keep the chocolate.
This is a woman who has no interest doing anything but complaining. If the rest of the nation were to "leave African-Americans be," she would be the first to scream about blacks being "disenfranchised" and "abused on the basis of our race." How do I know? She made those complaints later in the CNN interview:
You can't compare the hatred that certain white nationalist groups have had towards African-Americans with the feelings that many African-Americans feel about how we've been treated in this country, how we've been historically disenfranchised, abused on the basis of our race.
This is a woman living in the past who wants to stay in that past. Part of that involves never admitting that hate crimes can occur against police officers or whites — oh, and whining about "cultural appropriation." She's not genuinely interested in seeing race relations improve, because if they do, her ability to grievance-monger diminishes.
Ebony does no one any favors by continuing to employ her.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
