Different Day, Same Shit.

It was a hot Sunday morning last July when, right on schedule at 6:30 a.m., 61-year-old Johnny Lee Butts left his rural Mississippi home on his morning ritual, a 4-mile walk.

His neighbor, Otis Brooks, says Butts, a Sunday school teacher, waved as he passed his front door wearing a blue T-shirt.

Brooks remembers that his neighbor's skin tone was easily visible that morning. "You could tell he was black; you could see his arms." The point would become important later.

At nearly 7 a.m., about an hour after sunrise, three white teenagers were barreling down Panola County Mississippi Highway 310 in a white Monte Carlo. Two of the three teens later admitted they had been heavily drinking vodka and smoking marijuana all night. They were headed right toward Butts.

The two teen passengers said they and the driver, 18-year-old Matthew Whitten "Whit" Darby, spotted a man walking on the shoulder on the opposite side of the road.

In statements to police and also in statements given to a grand jury, all obtained exclusively by CNN, the two teenagers, a then-15-year-old and 18-year-old Tony Hopper Jr., described what happened next.

"We see a walker on the side of the road. The complete left side of the road while we are on the complete right side of the road," the unidentified teen told a police lieutenant. "And I pointed out to say, 'watch out there is a walker there...'"

The unnamed teen continued his story: "Whit slightly turns the steering wheel and I saw him. 'Watch out, don't do nothing stupid' and then he just keep turning the steering wheel and eventually before we knew it he ran him straight over."
"He didn't slow down," Hopper said in a statement to a deputy sheriff.
The deputy asked: "He never hit his brakes?" Hopper replied: "No sir."
"Do you think he hit him on purpose?" asked the deputy.
"Yes, sir, I do," said Hopper.

Butts was hit from behind by the Monte Carlo, which was traveling somewhere between 55 and 70 mph, according to the documents. The car violently tossed him into the air, slamming him into the windshield, and his head struck the rear windshield. Butts' body hit the car with such force that the windshield collapsed into the car, bending the steering wheel back sharply. His leg was nearly severed.

Butts' body was found lying in the road, 172 feet from where the car hit him, the documents show.

Darby stopped his badly damaged car. His two passengers told police they got out and looked at Butts' pummeled body. Then they got back in the car and Darby sped away. Darby drove them to a house where they'd been partying, according to the documents, and the two teen passengers tried to sleep. Darby left the house alone and drove on to his grandmother's home.

Much later that day, the two teen passengers turned themselves in to police. Darby was arrested, telling police exactly what the two other teens said he would say, that he hit a deer. Darby denied he was drinking or smoking marijuana.

Right about now, the average "race realist" would be in a fury over the "they hit him because he was black" angle. Then again, this is Mississippi, a land where deep pools of racial antagonism lurk underneath a thin veneer of civility and Southern hospitality. It's a place where some people still think it's well within their rights to fuck with black Americans minding their own business just because they can.

Local law enforcement aren't willing to call this a hate crime, nevermind how there's plenty of evidence that points in that direction:

Champion told CNN that there is "no evidence at all" that Darby killed Butts out of hate, or as a hate crime. One reason a hate crime has been ruled out, Champion said, is that the teens in the car that morning could not see whether Johnny Butts was black or white.

But that is not true, according to the statements given by one of the teens in the car. In grand jury testimony obtained exclusively by CNN, Tony Hopper Jr., who was riding in the back seat, testified that he could see Johnny Butts was black before the teens hit him.

"Could you tell whether he was a black man or a white man before ya'll hit him?" Hopper was asked by the grand jury.

"Yes," Hopper said. "I could tell that he was black."

Hopper said the same thing on the day after the killing, when a sheriff's deputy asked him: "Did y'all know if he was black or white?"

Hopper answered: "I could tell he was a black man."

The 15-year-old passenger in the car, riding in the front seat, says in his statement he couldn't tell whether Butts was black or white. CNN's policy is not to identify juveniles in criminal cases.

The FBI is currently looking into the case. In the meantime, I'll leave you all with this wonderful gem from Panola County Sheriff Dennis L. Darby (no relation):

Sheriff Darby told CNN on the phone they had looked into the incident with the boys on the road and found nothing. "There's nothing to this report," he said, "it's all hearsay," and "he-said she-said." Sheriff Darby told CNN he would not give a copy of the report to the network. Then the sheriff warned CNN not to "stir up trouble in my county." He warned if the network pursued the story, "I'll be coming after you."

So much for Southern hospitality. You know, this place could do with a little "outside agitation." And Sheriff Darby could do with a nice, shiny federal boot wedged up his hindmost parts.

Today marks the 40th day of George Zimmerman's fugitive status. Yes, I said "fugitive." As far as I'm concerned, the man is on the run from justice. The FBI began its own investigation into Zimmerman's culpability for Martin's death and whether his actions were racially motivated. The state of Florida has yet to bring charges against Zimmerman.

Anyone who's being let off the hook for killing another person should count themselves "lucky" and book the nearest flight out of the country. I wouldn't be surprised if Zimmy did just that. Meanwhile, I'm not surprised that most white Americans see Zimmy as a misunderstood guy who just "made a mistake," or worst still, didn't do anything at all. Only in America can killing a black person be called "doing nothing."

Understandably, black Americans are pissed. Unfortunately, that tends to scare some white Americans. In response to uneasy tensions and the New Black Panthers spoiling to do something stupid, Neo-Nazi groups have taken it upon themselves to maintain the safety and integrity of whites in and around the Sanford, FL area. Just what we need most: more white guys* with guns spoiling for a "threatening" encounter with blacks. Meanwhile, some nutcase has taken it upon himself to conduct a round of ethnic cleansing in the Tulsa, OK area. Whoever he is, he needs to be stopped, whether with handcuffs or with bullets.**

Needless to say, some of the comments that followed the Neo-Nazi story in the Miami New Times disgusted and it frustrated me to no end, because there was no way I could counter such abject stupidity without losing my patience and fulfilling the stereotypes they've come to expect.

Then I read Abagond's latest blog post. It sheds a bit of light on the so-called "fear" that some people have when being around black Americans. Many white Americans use personal experience, media exposure, crime stats, learned prejudices or just abject jealousy and cowardice to convince themselves that they need to fear black Americans, to keep them at bay, to vanquish them at every turn or harness them for their own means, kinda like those mythical dragons in D&D or some other fantasy Sci-Fi game.

This "fear" is very much evident in this country's basic framework. Sometimes that fear morphs into hatred, aided by jealousy and translated into murderous actions and intent. It's happened at countless points of this nation's existence.

In essence, this "fear" is institutional, whether anyone wants to admit it or not. America's implicit acceptance of the peculiar institution, its continuance in denying black Americans full acceptance into the national fabric and its overall disregard of any worth affixed to black American life has rendered a karmic balance that has yet to be paid off. In other words:

Wanda Sykes said it best when she quipped [and I'm paraphrasing], “What you’re afraid of isn’t called reverse racism. What you’re afraid of is called karma.”

White Americans live in collective fear of a day when the shoe is on the other foot. They expect black Americans to treat them with the same sort of abuse, ridicule and disregard, under the subconscious belief that, after all, they had it coming. They expect vengeance and retribution. We don't want that. We just want to be left alone.

That's what the Greenwood section of Tulsa, OK and Rosewood, FL was all about. Black communities that sustained themselves, with black Americans going about their own business. Jealousy and hatred essentially put an end to those communities.

The Neo-Nazis in Sanford, FL are capitalizing on that fear of vengeance and retribution by positioning themselves as a "savior" and "friend" to fretful white Americans. Some already share their views and beliefs while others are only an unfortunate encounter or a convincing, self-validating argument away from subscribing to such views. Either way, just like the chumps in black liberation garb, the chumps in Aryan cosplay garb* are making a horrible situation that much worse, by providing enough dry straw for a firestorm of epic proportions. All we need (or don't need, really) is a spark.

Seriously, white America, why can't you just let us be? It would have saved Trayvon and his family a lot of grief.

*Zimmerman is about as Hispanic as a Taco Bell $2 meal deal. Live with it.
**Ever notice how when these nutbags target victims, they never seem to target actual thugs, gangbangers and the like? Because unlike that 49-year-old woman, 54-year-old man and the other 31-year old man, those young "g's" and "young bucks" are often armed and have no qualms against shooting back. It also explains why those Neo-Nazis who "patrolled" the U.S./Mexico border probably took great pains in avoiding cartels or "narcotraffacantes" who also have no qualms against shooting back. I doubt a Neo-Nazi vs. Zetas gunbattle would last long.