Smart bombs: Eyes on the prize

If you see a pasty, freckled-faced guy grooving to tunes behind the wheel of a minivan this weekend, it’s probably me. I recently picked up a CD collaboration between Mavis Staples and producer extraordinaire Ry Cooder called “We’ll Never Turn Back.” It’s an inspirational collection of Civil Rights Movement songs that are, sadly, relevant today.

You may know gospel/soul singer Staples from such chart-toppers as “I’ll Take You There” and “Respect Yourself” when she fronted the Staples Singers, but she was also a favorite of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who found inspiration in her lesser-known renditions of spiritually based protest songs. On the CD, Staples inserts modern references, such as Hurricane Katrina, to some traditional tunes to demonstrate that while the nation has made progress, we’ve yet to attain racial equality. Or, as she sings:

Ninety-nine and a half … it just won’t do.

Readers weary of the issue of race might ask whether it wouldn’t be better to just move on. Staples recently told the Los Angeles Times, “Everything is not fixed yet. Katrina has just happened, you hear about these policemen in New York shooting 50 rounds into this young black man … we still feel it.”

Think she’s exaggerating? Read on.

‘With my own eyes.’ Jerry Miller, a black man, recently became the 200th person to be exonerated by DNA testing since 1989, but not before spending 25 years in prison on a rape conviction.

Hey, these faulty eyewitness accounts happen, and they also affect white guys, right?

Sixty percent of those exonerated have been Latino or African American men, according to a Washington Post article.

OK, but let’s be honest: Black men commit a disproportionate number of crimes, so the numbers are going to reflect that.

Of those cleared of rape convictions, 85 percent were black men accused of raping white women. In cases where white women are raped, 33.6 percent of the accused are black men.

So it’s clear to me that when it’s a black man accused of raping a white woman, the chances of gaining a conviction soar.

’Ain’t gonna let injustice turn me ‘round.’ Black and Latino drivers are more likely to be searched and arrested by police, according to a recently released U.S. Justice Department study. The one nugget of progress is that those drivers aren’t any more likely to be pulled over than white drivers. But once they are, sharp differences emerge.

Black drivers were twice as likely as white drivers to be arrested. Plus, 9.5 percent of blacks, 8.8 percent of Latinos and 3.6 percent of whites were searched. Take it away, Mavis:

Gonna keep on a-walkin’, keep on a-talkin’, marchin’ into freedom land.