Barack Obama: President of Black America

If Obama Had a Son He'd Look Like Shawn Tyson
By Mychal Massie

On Feb. 26, 2012, Mr. George Zimmerman – identified as a white Hispanic – shot and killed Trayvon Martin, a black teenager, in what was said to be self-defense. For reasons I have discussed in other columns, the shooting went virtually unreported until late March. Then, with Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, the New Black Panther Party and the national press ginning up a national outcry claiming grave racial injustice, Obama stepped to a microphone and injected himself into the situation.

He said: “I can only imagine what these parents are going through, and when I think about this boy, I think about my own kids, and I think every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this, and that everybody pulls together, federal, state and local, to figure out how this tragedy happened.” OK, fair enough – his comment was appropriate for what it was worth and all things considered.

But on March 1, 2012, a 13-year-old, white East High School student in Kansas City, Allen Coon, was followed home by two boys from the school he attended just two blocks away, and as he walked up the steps to the front door of his home, they grabbed him, pinned his arms behind him, doused him with gasoline and set him on fire. As the little boy burned they taunted him with, “This is what you deserve. You get what you deserve, white boy.”

This was not just an isolated incident – it was the culmination of a racist atmosphere encouraged by his school’s black faculty and administration. From the start of the school year, Allen Coon was racially harassed by students and teachers alike. Black students routinely called him “honkey” and “cracker,” and Hispanic students called him “guero.” He was pushed into lockers and beaten up in the bathroom. 

His mother said that when he raised his hand to answer a question during Black History Month, Mrs. Karla Dorsey, a black teacher, derisively mocked him in front of his class, saying: “What would you know about it? You’re not our race.”

Canada Free Press reported that Mrs. Coon was to find out that her son was not the only white child being subjected to racial abuse by black students and teachers. Karin Wildesen’s twin 14 year-old daughters were also subjected to racial abuse in the classroom. Their advanced English class teacher, Ms. Veda Monday, was teaching her class racial material about civil rights, which Mrs. Wildesen said had nothing to do with advanced English. Monday allegedly attacked her daughters “in front of the class … telling them that ‘everybody from Texas is ignorant rednecks’” and all white people were to blame for a racial atrocity that happened in Jasper, Texas, “because [their] skin was white.”

The paper goes on to report unconscionable racist attacks by the faculty and offered the possibility that Coon’s being set on fire may have been the result of another black teacher showing a graphic film of blacks being lynched.

Even though this horrific scene is being played out right under Obama’s nose, he has had nothing to say about it. Does he not care what “these parents are going through?” What happened to Allen Coon and the other white students in East High School is condemnable on every imaginable level, yet Obama and the Justice Department are silent. 

Every word Obama spoke in reference to the Martin case is applicable to the situation at the school Coon attended. But even the media were dutifully silent. I watched Kansas City TV station KMBC’s reporting of the incident. Not once did the reporter or the news anchor mention that the boys who set Allen Coon on fire were black – not one time. They used words like “two teens, the attackers, the suspects,” and they referred to Coon as “the boy.”

Allen Coon didn’t have gold teeth. He wasn’t photographed giving the finger to anyone. He wasn’t suspended from school for having an empty bag of marijuana, jewelry that didn’t belong to him and instruments of crime in his backpack. 

Obama and his Justice Department were silent when 25-year-old James Cooper and 24-year-old James Kouzaris were brutally murder by 17-year-old Shawn Tyson, a black thug, as they begged for their lives. They were white tourists who had been out drinking and stumbled into Tyson’s Sarasota, Fla., neighborhood. Tyson’s plan was to rob them, but finding they had no money, he murdered them. 

Referencing Martin, Obama said: “You know, if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” I think it bears noting that if Obama had a son, he would also look like the boys who set Allen Coon on fire and Shawn Tyson. Don’t their families and the American people – whom Obama took an oath to represent – deserve the same concern he shows for black hoodlums? 

With these thoughts in mind, do you believe this is the kind of man people thought they were voting for when he was elected? And the damage his policies have done notwithstanding, is this the kind of man America wants to re-elect? Does America want a man in the White House who shows concern for crime based on color of skin?