Prior to the tragedy that occurred in Dallas Thursday night, leaving five police officers dead, WWE Superstar Titus O’Neil was interviewed by RapZilla regarding the shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile:
“I just talked to one of my partners at my office of a situation he just had last week,” O’Neil said. “He’s a white male, early 40s, and he got pulled over. He has a license to carry a concealed weapon and he told the police officer. ‘Hey, I just want to let you know, I’m carrying a licensed weapon’ and the officer said, ‘Oh, it’s ok, I just need to see your license’. He got his license out, he’s still alive, and I’m eating dinner with him tonight. If a black man did the same thing last night, in all likelihood he would face much greater scrutiny or he could find himself in a situation like what happened the other day.
“So again, people want to make it about race but it’s deeper than race. This is institutional racism because you can be in the right place at the wrong time and depending on who you run into it can be a great experience or a bad experience, and in a lot of cases that comes down to race. That’s why people are so outraged. How is it that in Kentucky they can riot about losing a championship basketball game and there aren’t many cameras out there for that? People’s lives were endangered and hurt, no labeling. Same thing happens in minority communities except people are murdered and then minority people are labeled animals or thugs. Are you kidding me? It’s the same action, but they are responding to a basketball game. These people are responding to a lost life after years and years of oppression and issues. What really bothers me is that they actually have the nerve to talk about a person’s past. What does that have to do with the actions happening in the present?”
