From a Reader:

LeBron James’s California Home Spray Painted with the N-Word
“Hate in America, especially for African-Americans is living every day”

June 02, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Lebron James: "No matter how much money you have, no matter how famous you are, being black in America is tough."

 

 

 

On Wednesday morning the N-word was discovered spray painted on the front gate of LeBron James’s home in Brentwood, California.

James responded by saying, “No matter how much money you have, no matter how famous you are, no matter how many people admire you, being black in America is tough.  It just goes to show that racism will always be a part of the world, a part of America. And, you know, hate in America, especially for African-Americans is living every day… We got a long way to go for us as a society and for us as African-Americans until we feel equal in America.”

He also went on to say that one of the first things that came to his mind when he saw the graffiti was the mother of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African American teenager who was brutally murdered in Mississippi in 1955. Till’s mother had an open casket at Emmett’s funeral for people to see the mutilated body of her son. James said that “she (Till’s mother) wanted to show the world what her son went through… being black in America.”

James is an NBA all-star and is in the midst of playing in the NBA finals with his team, the Cleveland Cavaliers, against the Golden State Warriors.

A couple of James’s white neighbors in the wealthy Brentwood community of Los Angeles commented to the local CBS news on the spray painting. One said, “It’s terrible that something like that happened right here. It’s appalling.” Another said, “It’s concerning. It’s not okay at all.”

James has previously spoken out on racism and police murders of Black people. He wore an "I Can't Breathe" warmup shirt in memory of Eric Garner, who was murdered by New York cops, and he and his Miami Heat teammates wore black hoodies as a form of protest of the murder of Trayvon Martin by a vigilante in Florida. Recently, he spoke out against the racism faced by Baltimore Orioles outfielder Adam Jones during a baseball game in Boston.

James’s statement that “racism will always be a part of America” speaks to the truth of what Bob Avakian said in Basics 1:1 that “There would be no United States as we now know it today without slavery. That is a simple and basic truth.”

Since the election of Donald Trump, there has been a huge increase in reported hate crimes in this country. The Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino reported that there has been a 23.3% increase in hate crimes “that started during the presidential campaign and has continued unabated” against Black people, immigrants, Jews, and Muslims in the six major urban centers in this country.

Last week, two people in Portland were murdered by a fascist racist, and a third survived being stabbed in the throat, when they came to the defense of a Muslim teenager and her Black friend who were receiving hateful shit from this racist. Adam Jones, who plays baseball for the Baltimore Orioles, had bags of peanuts thrown at him and was taunted with the N-word when he played in Boston this past month. Just a day ago a second noose was found hanging in a Smithsonian museum in Washington DC, this time in the section on segregation at the National Museum of African-American History and Culture. The huge increase in this type of racist shit being perpetrated on the people by white supremacists is one element of what fascism looks like in this country.

Fascism is the exercise of blatant dictatorship by the bourgeois (capitalist-imperialist) class, ruling through reliance on open terror and violence, trampling on what are supposed to be civil and legal rights, wielding the power of the state, and mobilizing organized groups of fanatical thugs, to commit atrocities against masses of people, particularly groups of people identified as “enemies,” “undesirables,” or “dangers to society.”

This shit must stop.

Drive out the fascist Trump/Pence regime.

       

 

Volunteers Needed... for revcom.us and Revolution

Send us your comments.

If you like this article, subscribe, donate to and sustain Revolution newspaper.