Capehart Responds to Racial ‘Abuse’ over ‘Hands Up, Don’t Shoot’ Column

Washington Post writer and MSNBC contributor Jonathan Capehart has been getting barraged on Twitter for his column stating, quite definitively, that “hands up, don’t shoot” was based on a lie. Capehart, guest-hosting Hardball, responded on-air tonight to the abuse he’s been getting.

Capehart wrote this week that the narrative Michael Brown had his hands up when Officer Darren Wilson shot him was incorrect, arguing, “We must never allow ourselves to march under the banner of a false narrative on behalf of someone who would otherwise offend our sense of right and wrong.”

On MSNBC, Capehart brought up how actress Ashley Judd is planning to press charges against her Twitter trolls and pivoted to his own Twitter trolls:

“I get abused on the issue of race. The rage towards anyone who dares to enter that arena and say something that defies the conventional wisdom also lurks perpetually.”

He brought up some of the racially-charged abuse he’s been getting (people calling him a “house negro” or only writing it to get white people to like him more) before saying, “I did it because it was the right thing to do. And like Judd, such taunts won’t keep me from speaking my mind.”

Watch the video below, via MSNBC:

[image via screengrab]

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Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac

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