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Emmett Till murder case re-opened after 63 years

BraveOne

Member
The US government has reopened an investigation into the 1955 murder of a black 14-year-old boy whose death galvanised the civil rights movement.

A Department of Justice (DOJ) report states the agency had received "new information" about the Emmett Till case, but offered no further details.

Till was murdered in Mississippi after a white woman accused him of making lewd remarks and touching her.

A recent book quoted the woman as admitting she lied in her testimony.

The DOJ investigation was announced to lawmakers on 26 March, but has come to light this week after a report by the Associated Press.

It is unclear what new information prompted the government to reopen the case, but a book published last year, The Blood of Emmett Till by Timothy B Tyson, had said Carolyn Donham, the white woman who testified against Till, admitted she lied about the teenager's actions in 1955 during a 2008 interview

BBC Article
CNN

Crazy to think the two men who did this where acquitted. Hopefully some justice will come from this.
 

BraveOne

Member
What "justice"? The men who did it are dead. This is a performative farce.

How about they work on all the cases of police officers shooting innocent black people in the last few years instead of this empty gesture to say "look blacks! We care!"

I figure its better to correct history than let it stand as a justified murder. But your right i can only imagine the headlines in 50 years saying how they screwed up the Trayvon Martin case
 

davepoobond

you can't put a price on sparks
It was pretty shocking to hear they did. Like what could possibly have changed that they could actually fix at this point?

I do remember that lady saying she lied about it but didn’t actually tell police that or something right?
 
Sorry to bump a real old one but I just found out about this murder and it's got me shook. I can't imagine being black in the southern United States during the 40's, 50's and 60's.

Then again the same sort of stuff happened frequently in South Africa during that time. To this day I still can't wrap my head around the issue of race, why it's still prevalent to this day and how we can rid society of it.

RIP young Emmett 😥
 

Mistake

Member
Sorry to bump a real old one but I just found out about this murder and it's got me shook. I can't imagine being black in the southern United States during the 40's, 50's and 60's.

Then again the same sort of stuff happened frequently in South Africa during that time. To this day I still can't wrap my head around the issue of race, why it's still prevalent to this day and how we can rid society of it.

RIP young Emmett 😥
Race boils down to our survival instincts from the primitive era. We haven’t outgrown it yet, but maybe some day
 
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CGNoire

Member
Race boils down to our survival instincts from the primitive days. We haven’t outgrown it yet, but maybe some day
Where never gonna outgrow it as long as the narrative that Only Whites are capable of Racialy based Tribalism. Tribalism is a Human Fraility we all must keep in check not just one group. As long as we hold this double standard there will be no pathway to sustainable progess.
 
Sorry to bump a real old one but I just found out about this murder and it's got me shook. I can't imagine being black in the southern United States during the 40's, 50's and 60's.

Then again the same sort of stuff happened frequently in South Africa during that time. To this day I still can't wrap my head around the issue of race, why it's still prevalent to this day and how we can rid society of it.

RIP young Emmett 😥
Watch the TV show THEM. Yes its somewhat horror fiction but shows how bad the transition was for the blacks when they were "allowed" into the white society. Now that must of been a nightmare to live through, doesnt matter how smart you are or are even a better scientist, everybody was putting you down. Mostly we get videos about racism during slavery period and then the latter in the 70s,80s. But the 50s were fucked.
 
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DeafTourette

Perpetually Offended
Sorry to bump a real old one but I just found out about this murder and it's got me shook. I can't imagine being black in the southern United States during the 40's, 50's and 60's.

Then again the same sort of stuff happened frequently in South Africa during that time. To this day I still can't wrap my head around the issue of race, why it's still prevalent to this day and how we can rid society of it.

RIP young Emmett 😥

It wasn't just the South... It was all over the country. Plenty of northern states had Sundown towns, violence against black and brown peoples and even whole communities and towns destroyed and turned into lakes (Lake Lanier, Central Park, etc) ... The majority of Confederate statues were created during the 1920s to the early 1950s when all these things were happening. Can't have uppity black folks ...
 

mortal

Gold Member
To this day I still can't wrap my head around the issue of race, why it's still prevalent to this day and how we can rid society of it.
Humans are inherently tribal animals. Racism is tribalism taken to its extreme. There is no" ridding" it because in-group preferences are part of human nature.
If civilization were to collapse next week, despite knowing what we know today about our history as a species, humans would still find themselves largely organized into racial groups.
 
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DeafTourette

Perpetually Offended
Humans are inherently tribal animals. Racism is tribalism taken to its extreme. There is no" ridding" it because in-group preferences are part of human nature.
If civilization were to collapse next week, despite knowing what we know today about our history as a species, humans would still find themselves largely organized into racial groups.

I disagree. While race DOES play a large part in racism, class and means ALSO play a part in it.

If people were, by and large, on an equal footing financially, I bet you'd see racism evaporate over time (probably decades). Resources invite tribalism... The lack of and the abundance of. Those who have the most see those with the least as beneath them. And those with the least see those with the most as a threat to their continued survival (taking over resources and land). Ergo, conflict.

Take away the inequality and make it more even (I'm not talking any of the political isms) and you make racism's "reasons" less and less appealing to join that "tribe".
 

mortal

Gold Member
I disagree. While race DOES play a large part in racism, class and means ALSO play a part in it.

If people were, by and large, on an equal footing financially, I bet you'd see racism evaporate over time (probably decades). Resources invite tribalism... The lack of and the abundance of. Those who have the most see those with the least as beneath them. And those with the least see those with the most as a threat to their continued survival (taking over resources and land). Ergo, conflict.

Take away the inequality and make it more even (I'm not talking any of the political isms) and you make racism's "reasons" less and less appealing to join that "tribe".
What's there to disagree with? This is evident now. Equality has nothing to do with it.
Standards of living are at an all-time high for all of humanity, especially so in democratic 1st world countries and republics like the USA, and still there's tribalism. You can't undo hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution overnight.
Tribalism is not even an inherently bad thing. Sports teams are a form of tribalism. As long as humans are tribal there will be racism of some kind is my point.

The idea that one day we'll somehow remove this part of our nature is a pipe dream. Even if we ever become an advanced interplanetary species, tribalism will play out there on that planet as well.
 
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DeafTourette

Perpetually Offended
What's there to disagree with? This is evident now. Equality has nothing to do with it.
Standards of living are at an all-time high for all of humanity, especially so in democratic 1st world countries and republics like the USA, and still there's tribalism. You can't undo hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution overnight.
Tribalism is not even an inherently bad thing. Sports teams are a form of tribalism. As long as humans are tribal there will be racism of some kind is my point.

The idea that one day we'll somehow remove this part of our nature is a pipe dream. Even if we ever become an advanced interplanetary species, tribalism will play out there on that planet as well.

There is so much wrong in what you said.

I know there's tribalism in even technology (iPhone vs Android, Apple vs Microsoft, PS vs Xbox vs Nintendo)...

But we've ALL seen groups of diverse people getting along and forming their own tribes ...

Skin color goes out the window when people see each other as being on the same side. Whether political parties or consoles or movies or fandoms... Race goes out the window when you're on "the same side".

My point was and is ... All things being equal, race is the least important part to racism/tribalism.
 

Cyberpunkd

Member
What's there to disagree with? This is evident now. Equality has nothing to do with it.
Standards of living are at an all-time high for all of humanity, especially so in democratic 1st world countries and republics like the USA, and still there's tribalism.
Standards of living for whom? For decades now there are parts in every country, US included, that didn’t advance much while other parts benefitted.
Look into the Till case and the environment surrounding the economic situation of the region and Blacks and uneducated Whites competing for land and resources where there was none.
 

Nobody_Important

“Aww, it’s so...average,” she said to him in a cold brick of passion
What's there to disagree with? This is evident now. Equality has nothing to do with it.
Standards of living are at an all-time high for all of humanity, especially so in democratic 1st world countries and republics like the USA, and still there's tribalism. You can't undo hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution overnight.
Tribalism is not even an inherently bad thing. Sports teams are a form of tribalism. As long as humans are tribal there will be racism of some kind is my point.

The idea that one day we'll somehow remove this part of our nature is a pipe dream. Even if we ever become an advanced interplanetary species, tribalism will play out there on that planet as well.
You are basically saying that the human race can never move beyond its own stupidity when it can. The problem is that the current divide is driven by entities that have a vested interest in keeping the tribalism going. The problem is not the people. It is the idiotic lies that dumb people are being told and who is telling them those lies. The bigger problem is the relatively ancient document that protects those people from the consequences of their blatant lies and the rightful consequences that would rain down upon them in better run countries.


I will say no more because "politics".
 
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mortal

Gold Member
There is so much wrong in what you said.

I know there's tribalism in even technology (iPhone vs Android, Apple vs Microsoft, PS vs Xbox vs Nintendo)...

But we've ALL seen groups of diverse people getting along and forming their own tribes ...

Skin color goes out the window when people see each other as being on the same side. Whether political parties or consoles or movies or fandoms... Race goes out the window when you're on "the same side".

My point was and is ... All things being equal, race is the least important part to racism/tribalism.
I'm sorry but your idealism is just not reality. So long as humans are tribal animals, which we are, there will be racism in the world to some extent.
That doesn't mean that individuals can't have postive and productive relations despite ethnic differences.

The notion that skin color would ever go out the window is absurd. Hell, we still group and identify each other by race now for all sorts of practical reaosns, despite the equality laws.
You can disagree with it, but that's human nature for better or worse.

Standards of living for whom? For decades now there are parts in every country, US included, that didn’t advance much while other parts benefitted.
Look into the Till case and the environment surrounding the economic situation of the region and Blacks and uneducated Whites competing for land and resources where there was none.
I'm taking about statistically. People are living longer than ever. Levels of abject poverty are declining. This isn't 'and we all lived happily ever after' or that everything is perfect.
Are you honestly implying that Americans, for instance, today have the same standards of living as they were 100 years ago even? That's obviously not true.
I say all that to drive home that humans aren't going to eradicate racism like a disease. It's always going to be here to some extent, some places less so than others.

You are basically saying that the human race can never move beyond its own stupidity when it can. The problem is that the current divide is driven by entities that have a vested interest in keeping the tribalism going. The problem is not the people. It is the idiotic lies that dumb people are being told and who is telling them those lies. The bigger problem is the relatively ancient document that protects those people from the consequences of their blatant lies and the rightful consequences that would rain down upon them in better run countries.


I will say no more because "politics".
No that's not what I'm saying because I wouldn't frame it as stupidly. It's result of nature and nurture.
Tribalism is part of human nature. Having in-group preferences is part of human behavior. Racist views are taught but those views are still rooted in tribalism.

You say it's not people but essentially say it's people in a roundabout way.
Who's telling those lies? People. That's the story of humanity for thousands of years across all of human civilization.
 
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