Rev. Al Sharpton responded Thursday to calls for him to address the Oklahoma murder of Australian student athlete Chris Lane, saying he is not protesting because the killing was not racial and “the system worked.”
Sharpton addressed the question in the Reply Al segment of his show, “Politics Nation,” on MSNBC on Thursday, when a viewer asked if he would be issuing a statement on Lane’s murder.
The civil rights leader, who was a leading voice in the protests over Trayvon Martin’s death, told viewers that police said Lane was chosen at random and there was no racial motive to the killing.
“I protest when I’m called in and when there’s an injustice. The three were arrested, there was nothing to protest. The system worked there, and racial? Not only did the police not say it was racial, one of the three were white,” Sharpton said.
Sharpton decried critics who have been saying his lack of outrage is hypocritical.
“That doesn’t stop my friends over at Fox and Donald Trump and others say, ‘Why isn’t Al Sharpton protesting this?’” Sharpton said. “You have people feeling that I wouldn’t go in because it was three blacks that killed a white and no justice was done. If you get your information from the wrong source, you blame President [Barack] Obama for the response to Hurricane Katrina.”
Sharpton was referring to a poll released this week that roughly equal numbers of Republican Louisiana voters blamed President George W. Bush and Obama for the response to Katrina, despite it occurring more than three years before Obama was elected president.
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