People who loot and commit other violent acts in the name of protesting recent cases of black youth killed at the hands of police are hypocrites, says John Turnipseed, a black activist and author.
"It's like, if I hate a racist, why would I be racist?
If I hate the killing? Why would I kill? You know, it's exactly wrong. Wrong is wrong, you know, it's like it doesn't matter. I'm not going to resort to the level of killing somebody because I feel that there's been an injustice, so that's totally wrong."
Turnipseed appeared Monday on "America’s Forum" on
Newsmax TV, where he discussed continuing protests and flaring racial tensions arising out of the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City, and his book,
"BloodLine: You Spend Enough Time in Hell and You Get the Feeling You Belong."
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While Turnipseed was in prison, his 3-year-old son was beaten to death by another man.
Twelve years later, gang bangers ambushed another son, shooting him 17 times, Turnipseed told host J.D. Hayworth. Turnipseed promised God that if he allowed his son to survive, Turnipseed would clean up his life of drugs and crime. And that's what happened, he said.
"From that time that I changed my life, I was a drug addict before that, I haven't touched any drugs, I was a criminal before that and used to commit numerous crimes every single day, haven't committed one crime and I've tried to be the best person I possibly can be. Change happens immediately."
He suggested that there needs to be a cultural shift
— God and family
— in order to restore racial harmony in America.
"In my community, one of the things we desperately need is the grace of God," he said.
"That's what we need, and we need a belief system that relies upon that. Also, we have to get back to being family. When Martin Luther King Jr. was marching, his biggest influence was the families that were marching behind him. Right now, the breakdown of the family has cost America a tremendous force of change. The culture of America has to change. We have to get back to being family with all of us."
The country desperately
needs a leader who does more than "just throw the big, ugly finger of blame on everything."
"Lead by offering solutions to the problems that we're facing today," he said. "A lot of it requires putting some of your own personal feelings aside and think about what's best for the nation right now. Going ahead, moving forward and not being a racial nation is what's best for the nation right now."
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