Culture critic Touré and conservative podcaster Kmele Foster, two Black men at the opposite ends of the spectrum when speaking about police brutality, went head-to-head on MSNBC’s AM Joy. The two clashed after Foster dared to water down the severity of police shooting against Black folks.
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When speaking about police shooting of unarmed black men, Foster said there were only about “20” unarmed men shot down by police last year, and he criticized the movement for police reforms and disparaged how Colin Kaepernick has taken the fight against racism.
“The fact is there is a lot about the conversation about police reforms, police-involved shootings that I think is very unhealthy,” Foster said.
“The fact is when people in a Black Lives Matter camp talk about things or someone takes a knee, the thinking is anyone who disagrees with their perspective does so because they don’t care about black lives.”
He continued: “I would say if you have a movement like this, you’re interested in achieving reforms, it’s not apparent that having Colin Kaepernick at the tip of your spear is good. He’s going to inflame things that are hyperbolic and don’t get to the heart of the issue.”
He further downplayed police-involved shootings of black men saying:
“We shouldn’t be hysterical,” he said. “Only about 68 of those people [killed by police in 2017] were unarmed and only 20 of those people were black. Thirty of them were white.”
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Armed with Facts
Touré hit back with facts.
“The core issue here is the killing, the wrongful killing of black people by agents of their government,” Touré replied.
“Colin Kaepernick is morally right — indeed, has a moral imperative to speak about this when he has a platform. And the notion that you don’t do this in your workplace really does not fit.”
“When you have a case of life and death, one, two, three is far too many wrongfully killed by our government,” he added. “My question is not why is Kaepernick saying so much, my question is why are not more people saying more? Because this is an incredibly important issue in modern America? Why would we settle for any number of black people being wrongfully killed by their own government?”
Watch the exchange below:
