Tonight, TNT’s NBA Tip Off began with a ten minute segment on race, Ferguson, and police officer’s penchant for killing black men. This was in response to Charles Barkley’s interview on CNN, which is a thing that happened for some reason, and Barkley doubled-down on his talk about scumbag looters and black people’s necessity for cops in their neighborhoods. 

In between giving his legal opinion on the grand jury decisions in both the Mike Brown and Eric Garner cases, Barkley said that this country’s history of slavery shouldn’t always be mentioned in racially charged controversies, and that as a black man you need to know that you can’t get involved in situations that might result in getting killed by a cop, I guess. Who really knows what the hell he was saying. 

To give Barkley just the slightest benefit of the doubt, it seemed to be coming from a good place, he continually said he wants to judge each person on their own merits, but life obviously does not exist in this kind of a vacuum. Darren Wilson and Mike Brown did not encounter each other in a vacuum, nor did Eric Garner and officer Daniel Pantaleo. If they had, we might have gotten an indictment or two. 

[TNT]