The niece of Martin Luther King believes the NAACP and other groups are race-baiting with their call for a federal civil-rights case to be lodged against George Zimmerman, and believes they may be getting paid to do so.
"It is not helpful to race-bait," Dr. Alveda King told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.
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"[The] NAACP and all of the organizations … We need to wonder why they're doing that, what kind of checks and money they're getting behind the scenes to stir us up into racial anarchy.
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"We should be speaking nonviolence, justice, peace, and love as Trayvon's parents are doing, by the way. So we need to ask why they're race baiting, because they are."
King’s remarks come following the acquittal of Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, on second-degree and manslaughter charges in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.
The conclusion of the racially-charged trial in Sanford, Fla., has set off a nationwide string of protests by groups who believe justice was not done.
King said she doesn’t believe the NAACP’s argument that the Zimmerman case is a race issue.
"I don’t defend their … ‘Oh, this is a race problem. It's all of that.’ No, this is a human heart problem,” she said. “We need to approach this in prayer. We need to be nonviolent."
King — pastoral associate and director of African-American Outreach for Priests for Life and Gospel of Life Ministries, and a Newsmax contributor — said she admires the Martin family’s handling of the tragedy.
"I’m praying with them. I admire their insistence on peaceful, nonviolent resolution as they move forward. They’ve always asked for peace, they’ve always asked people not to riot," she said.
King said her uncle, the beloved civil-rights leader, had always called on the world to live together as brothers — or perish as fools.
"There’s no black race, white race, yellow race and red race," King told Steve Malzberg.
"The other thing is, Mr. Zimmerman is not a Caucasian. He’s a Hispanic. The media is somehow forgetting that, so [there are] all of these nuances, all of the race-baiting, all of the pain."
"He was not thinking rationally. It was very tragic that Trayvon was dead. Trayvon never should have been shot," she said.
"[But] stop thinking that this is a race thing between separate races. This is all human beings here. If we're still feeling that one part of our community is better than the other because of skin color, that's got to change right now."
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"This is not a time to celebrate a victory because no victory has been won. An acquittal just happened. But some lives have been really devastated."
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