Osama bin Laden’s blood had not yet run cold before black celebrities and others turned to social networking websites to forward a fake “message” attributed to civil rights leader Martin Luther King about not celebrating one death.
Now, a Pittsburgh Steelers running back is catching heat for showing sympathy for the slain 9/11 mastermind.
Rashard Mendenhall, who is black, tweeted:
“What kind of person celebrates death? It’s amazing how people can HATE a man they have never even heard speak. We’ve only heard one side…”
He further showed his ignorance by claiming 9/11 never happened:
“We’ll never know what really happened. I just have a hard time believing a plane could take a skyscraper down demolition style.”
A Steelers spokesperson rushed to distance the organization from Mendenhall’s remarks, saying, “I have not spoken with Rashard, so it is hard to explain or even comprehend what he meant with his recent Twitter comments.”
It’s easy to see why anyone — outside of the black community — would fail to comprehend what Mendelhall tweeted.
White people get their cues from their environment, such as books, newspapers, television news, etc. But black people are notorious for distrusting the mainstream media, and some of us don’t read. So we get our cues from the streets, and from word of mouth.
And even though the word from the streets might be convoluted and twisted, we still try our best to make sense of the message and to apply logic where there is none.
So no one should be surprised that blacks like Mendenhall are showing sympathy for Osama bin Laden, despite the overwhelming evidence that he was a mass murderer.
That’s just the way we are…
