NBA legend Charles Barkley held nothing back, per usual, when he called the looters in Ferguson "scumbags," while speaking to 97.5 Fanatic, a Philadelphia sports radio station.
"That's like them jackasses who are looting. Those aren't black people. Those are scumbags," TNT basketball analyst Barkley said. "There is no excuse for people to be out there burning down people's businesses, burning down police cars."
Barkley said images of black people on television and in the media are negative, so black children think they need to be "thugs" or "hood rats."
"There's a faction of black people - you know, I grew up with these guys - when you're trying to do well in school, they tell you 'you're acting white,'" Barkley said. "When you speak intelligent, they're telling you 'you're acting white.' We should have more black kids speaking correctly. We should have more black kids going to college, getting great jobs."
"We have to be really careful with the cops, because if it wasn't for the cops we would be living in the Wild, Wild West in our neighborhoods," he said. "We can't pick out certain incidents that don't go our way and act like the cops are all bad. I hate when we do that. Think about it: do you know how bad some of these neighborhoods would be if it wasn't for the cops?"
Barkley also said he is fine with the grand jury's decision to not prosecute Darren Wilson in the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. "The true story came out from the grand jury testimony," Barkley said, citing black witnesses whose testimony supported Wilson's version of events.
