I've been away a while, or I certainly would have contributed to this thread sooner. A few years ago, a white supremecist named Metzger came to Portland, Oregon to encourage cowardly, racist skinheads to commit violence on black people. An innocent black man named Mugeleta Seraw was slaughtered by some of Metzger's minions. The Southern Poverty Law Center sued Metzger and his white supremecist organization, and won a judgement which bankrupted Metzger. The Southern Poverty Law Center's success was applauded by every cop I know.

Of the hundreds of times I have been called a racist, the accusation has never, not once, been made in good faith. Whether it's a lawyer trying to deceive a jury, or a drug dealer trying to buy time before I find the stash in the hollowed out tongue of his Nikes, or a rapist trying to figure out a more plausible lie to explain why that little girl's fingerprints are in his rental truck, the first line of defense for these scoundrels is to accuse the cop of being a racist. But if I'm a racist, does that mean I just got lucky when I caught them? Do they really think, in good faith, that I've been falsely arresting hundreds of people because of their ethnicity, and this time I finally caught one who actually is guilty? Of course they don't think that. Nor do the fine gentlemen of Body Count think that more than a tiny percentage of police in L.A. engage in brutality. But whether you're the rapper or the rapist or the defense attorney, there's a benefit to perpetuating the stereotype of the brutal racist cop. These stereotypes feed on themselves, so folks like Pete M actually believe that the lyrics are "an accurate reflection of the feelings of that culture." The feelings of the culture are a perverted reflection of these lyrics. So should they be censored? Absolutely not. Should the motivations, the cynicism, and the dishonesty of the people who write these lyrics be analyzed and exposed?

If one of Chet W's lost students, enamored of the Gangsta mystique, should carry out Body Count's imperative on me when I'm responding to a loud campus beer party, will the Southern Poverty Law Center sue Body Count's record company on my family's behalf? And if one of you folks are on the jury, are you going to believe that defense attorney who tells you that I brutalized the poor dear and made disparaging remarks about his ethnicity?