🎄🔪 🎁 Holiday Hypocrisy: How the Justice System Lets White Killers Walk Free
Dive into the stories of Eric DeValkenaere and Daniel Penny, where the justice system seems biased in favor of white suspects.
😽 Keepin’ It Simple Summary for Younger Readers
👧🏾✊🏾👦🏾
Some people are saying that in 🇺🇸 America, the laws aren't fair ⚖️. Recently, two 👨🏻🤝👨🏾 white men who hurt 🏾 Black men didn't have to go to jail 🚓 because the system told their stories differently 🗣️. One man, Eric, shot 🔫 a Black man in his backyard 🌳 and was set free 🎄 just before Christmas. Another man, Daniel, choked 🏾 a Black man on a subway 🚇 and also got to go home 🏠 without punishment 🚫. People think this shows that the rules 📜 often treat white people better 👍🏻 than Black people 👎🏾, and many are calling for changes 🔄 to make things more fair ⚖️ for everyone.
🗝️ Takeaways
⚖️ Systemic Bias: The justice system often favors white individuals in violent incidents involving Black victims.
🎄 Holiday Release: Eric DeValkenaere, a cop who killed a Black man, received early release during the festive season.
🚨 Self-Defense Claims: Daniel Penny's acquittal for choking a Black man reveals significant flaws in how self-defense is interpreted.
🤔 Public Perception: Victims like Jordan Neely are often blamed for their fates, while white perpetrators are sympathized with.
🏛️ Reform is Needed: The issues illustrate that current institutions perpetuate racial inequalities rather than rectify them.
White Impunity: A December to Remember in American "Justice"
Welcome to the end of 2024, where the American legal system continues to perfect its art of transforming white violence into self-defense, one acquittal at a time. This month's masterclass in systemic racism features not one, but two blockbuster cases of white men walking free after killing Black men—a holiday tradition more consistent than eggnog and caroling.
The Tale of Two Killings: A Tale as Old as America Itself
First up, we have Eric DeValkenaere in Missouri—a white cop who executed Cameron Lamb in his own backyard and got an early Christmas release from Governor Mike Parson. Because nothing says "holiday spirit" like freeing a cop who invaded a Black man's property and gunned him down.
Then we've got Daniel Penny in New York, who choked Jordan Neely to death on a subway and just waltzed out of court a free man. Penny's defense? He was "protecting" subway passengers from a mentally ill, unarmed Black man who—checks notes—had a muffin in his pocket and hadn't actually touched anyone.
The Perfect Crime: Being White in America
Let's break down the playbook:
Be a white man
Kill a Black person
Claim you felt "threatened"
Watch the justice system bend over backwards to absolve you
Jordan Neely's backstory reads like a tragedy written by capitalism: a Michael Jackson impersonator who struggled with mental illness and homelessness, hospitalized for depression, diagnosed with schizophrenia, surviving after his mother was murdered.
His crime? Being hungry. Being Black. Existing while vulnerable.
Daniel Penny's background? A Marine veteran studying architecture. The kind of biographical detail designed to humanize, to soften, to explain away a chokehold that lasted six excruciating minutes.
The Theatre of "Self-Defense"
In Penny's case, witnesses heard someone say "He's dying" during the chokehold. A Marine Corps instructor even testified that Penny misused the chokehold technique. But hey, who needs expert testimony when you've got white tears and a sympathetic jury?
The medical examiner said the chokehold killed Neely. The defense trotted out their own pathologist to suggest it was a cocktail of K2, schizophrenia, and bad luck. Because of course they did.
A System Working Exactly as Designed
This isn't about individual cases. This is about a system so deeply racist that it transforms murder into self-defense, that turns Black trauma into a footnote and white violence into heroism.
DeValkenaere in Missouri. Penny in New York. These aren't aberrations. They're the rule.
When Black people are killed, the system asks: "What did they do to deserve this?" When white men kill, the system asks: "How can we understand your perspective?"
The Bottom Line
Reform is a fairy tale. These institutions aren't broken - they're working precisely as they were constructed. To protect whiteness. To criminalize Blackness. To turn Black bodies into targets and white violence into a form of self-preservation.
Meanwhile, in the Shadows of Forgotten Injustice
And while white killers walk free, let's not forget Leonard Peltier—an Indigenous activist who has languished in prison for decades, a political prisoner forgotten by a nation that prefers its narratives sanitized and its heroes silenced.
Peltier, a member of the American Indian Movement, has been imprisoned since 1977 for a crime many believe he did not commit, surviving decades of incarceration while white murderers get Christmas pardons and subway chokehold artists get acquittals.
This is the American "justice" system in its purest form: swift to imprison Indigenous and Black activists, lightning-quick to absolve white violence.
Stay angry. Stay organized. Because the revolution isn't coming—it's already here, and it knows exactly whose side the "justice" system is on.
🌵 Mondays with Morales: 🦅 A Call for Clemency for Leonard Peltier
😽 Keepin’ It Simple Summary for Younger Readers
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At one point or another we will all be victims of a majority white, male, monied power mounted oppressor. Sociopathy is minority, but it is prevalent enough that these anti-truth oppressor and oligarch wannabe’s flock to access to power. This is their wet dream.
All oppressed groups are essentially allies and we must bond together. We must embrace the art of resistance.
I was in Louisiana a decade or more ago. I am white, by appearance, and was with a white male friend. We encountered 3 young black men who cat called me. I am accustomed to this activity even though I thought it rude as hell. This behavior isn’t racial to me, it is gendered. Males in a dominant number. I muttered: ignore them. And my diminutive white escort confronted them with racial offensive bilge. I am from New York originally.
Cat Calling is sexual. These kids were absurd. They didn’t feel violent so I told them and the date to stop. “You stop and You stop,” I said. “There is no winner here.” After the Rittenhouse decision, George Floyd, all the named and unnamed dead and disabled, I understood why the small bodied date would approach young healthy men with aggression. I had to learn that white men are legally allowed to murder black men.
We do NOT have a justice system. We have a "legal" system that enables judges to defy common sense.
My personal experience -- and please bear in mind that I am "white" -- underscores the fact that the wealthy have one system and the rest of us have another. Massachusetts is a "two-party consent" state, which means it is illegal for anyone to record or intercept conversations without a warrant. Nevertheless, a municipal agent did precisely that. When I filed a criminal complaint, it was dismissed because there was "no probable cause," despite the fact that I had a police document attesting to the fact that an illegal recording of a therapeutic session had indeed been made.
The Fourth Amendment indicates that police cannot engage in the search of one's premises without a warrant. Nevertheless, police coerced their way into my residence -- without a warrant. Another complaint followed, and another motion to dismiss was granted.
Of course, Rethuglican judges skew the law even more vilely against the powerless, and I got a Rethuglican magistrate the first time and a Reagan-appointee the second. However, wealthy people often win cases on everything from speeding tickets to murder.
Let us brace ourselves. Things will get MUCH worse in the years ahead, particularly for non-whites.