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Toni Morrison: ‘I Want To See A Cop Shoot A White Unarmed Teenager’

Chuck Ross Investigative Reporter
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Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winning author Toni Morrison took a harsh view on the issue of racial disparities in the justice system during a recent interview.

“People keep saying, ‘We need to have a conversation about race,” Morrison, 84, told The (U.K.) Telegraph.

“This is the conversation. I want to see a cop shoot a white unarmed teenager in the back,” Morrison said. “And I want to see a white man convicted for raping a black woman. Then when you ask me, ‘Is it over?’, I will say yes.”

The comments come following a series of high-profile cases in which white police officers have killed black men.

Morrison, who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama in 2012, has focused almost exclusively on race and racial issues in her work. She began her literary career as an editor in the 1960s for black liberation activists such as Angela Davis and Huey Newton. In 1970, she released her first novel, “The Bluest Eye,” about a young black girl who felt inferior because she had blue eyes.

“Race is the classification of a species,” Morrison told The Telegraph.

“And we are the human race, period. But the other thing – the hostility, the racism – is the money-maker. And it also has some emotional satisfaction for people who need it.”

“They don’t stop and frisk on Wall Street, which is where they should really go.”

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