Professor Johnson Comments on Recent Incidents of Racism

THE DAILY CARDINAL (UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN, MADISON) -- “It’s not about whether or not the shooter is racist. It’s about how poor black boys are treated as problems, well before we’re treated as people,” said Javon Johnson, an assistant professor of communication studies at San Francisco State University, in a 2013 National Poetry Slam piece, “cuz he’s black,” that addressed the country’s institutionalized racism. “Black boys, in this country, cannot afford to play cops and robbers if we’re always considered the latter. Don’t have the luxuries of playing war if we’re already in one.”