Ferguson Payback: 'If There Was Any Justice ... They'd Be Suppressing White People'

The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies bills itself as a nonpartisan think tank with a focus on racial issues that is distinctly above the fray.  This is how it describes itself:

Originally known as the Joint Center for Political Studies, the Joint Center brought together black intellectuals and professionals to provide training and technical assistance to newly elected black officials. Today, the Joint Center is recognized as one of the nation’s premier think tanks on a broad range of public policy issues of concern to African Americans and other communities of color.

Sounds mainstream, right?  So imagine my surprise when the Daily Beast published this gem from David Bositis, late of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

For example, Ferguson is two-thirds black, yet a majority of voters in their local elections are white. “Otherwise Ferguson would have a black government and a black police force, and if there was any justice in the world, they’d be suppressing white people,” Bositis says with a wry laugh.

A wry laugh indeed.  I’ve heard that laugh before.  When I was working on the voting rights case United States v. Brown, I used to hear that laugh.  The Brown case saw Bositis’ sense of justice play out in Noxubee County, Mississippi.

Noxubee County also was a majority black jurisdiction.

There, black political bosses in fact did discriminate against white voters through a complicated scheme involving voter fraud and other illegal acts.  I listened to audio tapes containing similar wry laughs of the perpetrators talking about the justifications for delivering payback to whites for the sins of their grandfathers.

I used to think this gutter mentality was confined to just a handful of people in rural Mississippi. Then I came to learn the one-way view of civil rights was more common than we knew.

Now, we can enjoy Mr. Bositis’ wisecracking to Eleanor Clift about payback against whites as “justice.”

Pay attention to Ferguson.  Mr. Bositis has adherents to this idea all over the place.