Last week I offered my son, who is 19 and African-American-Italian the choice of going to The Conjuring or Fruitville Station.

His reaction: Fruitville Station. What?

My reaction: 1910 Fruitgum Company. What?

His choice: Conjuring.

Reasoning: What's the point, just a bunch of liberals crying and never changing anything. TM case in point.

Me: Agreed.

Worth noting FTR that Bart Police require special training before an officer may carry a Taser, Johannes Mehserle(the BART officer who shot Oscar Grant) had never taken this training, so therefore, he had never carried a Taser, also worth noting that BART police uniforms would have a Taser worn in a holster on the opposite side as the officer's firearm in a cross-draw fashion.

But as you say the Johannes Mehserles of this world are always given the benefit of every doubt

In case you are thinking that somehow there was a mistake, or somehow the filmmakers made this up, just google youtube Oscar Grant. There were many videos of the shooting. I followed the real case as I had lived and worked near that station in the past. I haven't seen the movie yet, but the actual footage is heartbreaking and will make you mad as well. The policeman's defense was he thought his gun was a taser. If you watch the actual footage, you can't even see a real reason to taser the victim. It was just cold blooded murder.

@4: Cops taser people all the time without justification. It is a compliance tool that they abuse. This is why that defense is a little plausible. If you pull out your pain toy and use it all the time, pretty soon you are just going to get used to pulling it out without thinking. And when that happens, it becomes reasonable to expect that one day you will accidentally pull out a gun and use it without thinking.

So is it negligence or murder? I would say murder because the cop accidentally killed Oscar Grant while trying to perform the crime of unlawfully tasering him.

@2: I saw the film and think it is brilliant filmmaking on just about every count. As a white person who works to recognize and check my privilege, I have been interested to know what the reaction of African-Americans would be to the film. It is a film made by a black filmmaker with a near all-black cast. That alone sets it apart from most films in the theaters. While your son may have a point, I hope that the film prompts viewers to deeply question their assumptions. The film shows a complexity to a life and a family that may cause people to question their initial instinct to judge a person or a lifestyle based on very limited information. Having empathy goes a long way to breaking down misconceptions and misguided beliefs, especially when it comes to race. Unfortunately, the people who probably most need to see the film (folks like George Zimmerman and the BART officer)...won't.

@2 - Artists make art. That's what they "do" about everything, because that's the particular gift/aptitude/proclivity/interest that they offer to the world, with which they interact with other organisms, etc.

If you don't want to see it, don't. But I'm not really sure why artists making art about what concerns them in the world should be dismissed as "liberals crying and never changing anything" by internet trolls (and their [perhaps fictional] children).

What do you do to better the world? And does that action, whatever it is, utilize your particular skills?

Seriously, I'd like an answer. I've a history of giving any of a number of our resident trolls every opportunity to prove themselves something other than the epic trolls they seem to thrive on being; to the person, they've either avoided my questions or regressed to their worst impulses. But I'd be more than happy to be surprised, just once, by someone answering a sincere and reasonable question sincerely and reasonably.

@ 7 - Why should anyone do your work for you?

Go to any mainstream stationary store and count how many birthday cards feature people of color.

@9 - Why do you need people on your birthday cards?

I thought that part of the movie was kinda funny, but really, who buys their mom a birthday card with a stock photo happy white family on the cover? Most cards don't have photos of people on them.

Other things are different, I remember my mom bought my sister the Hispanic American Girls doll because it was the closest thing she could find to an Asian doll.