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Originally Posted by GGG
I agree that it wasn't racially motivated outside of the general cultural preexisting prejudice that Natives are no good and therefore the first reaction is negative. But that is difficult for any individual who grew up in a culture of racism to control.
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I don't know if you can reach that conclusion, looking at his testimony though
Quote:
He said he was fixing a fence with his son, Sheldon, 28, while his wife mowed the lawn. A vehicle drove into the yard. Its occupants appeared to be attempting to steal a quad ATV.
When they heard Sheldon yelling, the people got back in the car and reversed toward Stanley. Stanley said he kicked the tail light. The vehicle then drove forward, revving fast, toward Sheldon, who hit the windshield with a hammer. The vehicle then rammed into one of the Stanley family's unoccupied SUV vehicles.
Stanley said Sheldon then ran off. By this point, Stanley said he was afraid, thinking of the news reports of cars crashing into crowds and a double murder that occurred 15 kilometres from his farm yard.
"I was still in disbelief about what was going on here," Stanley testified.
tanley said he heard two loud sounds as he aimed skyward and pulled the trigger two or three times. The two males fled, he said. Stanley said he lowered the gun and checked to ensure it was disabled.
"As far as I was concerned, it was empty — it had fired its last shot," Stanley testified.
He said he then realized he couldn't see his wife, and had a feeling of "pure terror" fearing she'd been pinned under the grey SUV.
Stanley said he was going to look under the vehicle, but popped back up after it started revving again.
"I wanted that car off," he said.
Stanley said he reached for the keys with one hand, with the handgun in the other. Then the gun fired.
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If we're going to talk about state of mind, could it be about racism? Sure, but it could also be about a guy who was feeling threatened and then had a fear that a family member had been harmed/had been run over by a car, that was after the SUV tried to run him over.
There was nothing in his testimony about race, or even the condition of the occupants of the car. He was in a situation that wasn't too different from a home invasion.
However, and fairly, I have said in the past that I don't believe in guns for home defense, because its likely that an accident will happen, or you'll end up killing the people that you want to save.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GGG
However this general complaint that this story isn't about race is false. The media is correct in looking at the institutions that led up to the event and surrounded the event.
Did the RCMP do its job
Did the court do its job
Is there systemic bias in the justice system against native victims and perpetrators.
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I don't know if agree with a lot of your statements. however
did the RCMP do their job, you could argue either way, they couldn't build a good enough case to probe that a hang fire couldn't have happened, based around things like the physical conditions of the expended shells and the gun itself. They also had a lousy set of witnesses who lied and changed their stories on the stand.
did the Court do its job, in my mind there was a lot of reasonable doubt, so the fact that Stanley wasn't convicted means that yes the court actually did its job.
The racial bias thing, sure maybe, but can you tell me that if they empaneled a native jury and they heard the evidence that they would then convict. Because then they would have ignored, bad testimony and reasonable doubt and they would have been a hanging party.
I would also state that lost in this, was that this case wasn't about the race of the victim, it was about whether Stanley murdered a victim. This case wasn't about the reasons why the murder took place as much as around the technical reasons for the death.
But everyone wants to make this a native versus white thing, I don't really buy that in its purest form that it is. But now we've got manufactured outrage.
Did the gun hang fire, or did Stanley deliberately executed Boushie. That's the question, that was the only thing on trial.
These are the items that frame the story. Your comment that people are looking for racism that doesn't exist is false. The public reaction to this incident warrants the investigation into the structures that allow this pervasive and systemic racism to exist.[/QUOTE]