Killing Stirs Racial Unease in Texas

In Paris, Texas a man named Brandon McClelland was killed by two of his friends after an argument. They had been drinking that night and ran him over with a pickup truck. McClelland was a black man and the guys that killed him were white men, it is for this reason that the black and white races of this town are having issues with each other.
On September 16,2008 McClelland was run over and dragged about 40 feet by the pickup. The two guys left the scene , went to McClelland’s house and told her that they left him on the side of the road to walk home. They had lied of course and police found body tissue that matched McClelland’s on the bottom of the car. The two men are now waiting to be tried on murder charges.
It turns out that this isn’t one of the men’s first killings either, Mr. Finley was charged for manslaughter in 2003, he had shot one of his friends(who was white) in the head three times while in a pickup. He said that he was trying to shoot two armed robbers and shot his friend instead. He served a year in prison. McClellan had lied to a grand jury in Finley’s trial about where he was the night of the shooting,. McClellan served more than a year for doing that. The police think that because the two had already been through that with each other, that the killing most like was something other than race.
McClellan’s mom thought the investigation wasn’t investigated as well as it could have been. If it wasn’t for civil rights advocates protests the case might of never went to court.
There was another event that led to protest a year earlier, a 14 year old black girl was sentenced to juvenile prison for just shoving a hall monitor, but a white girl who had burned her house down only got put on probation a few months earlier. Protestors said that it was unequal and harsh treatment. The judge said that it wasn’t harsh, that the girl had had previous disciplinary problems. Her mom said that the school had been treating black and white students differently. But officials said that everyone in that town are close to each other “a good-old-boy” system.
The mayor of the town says that there is a “lack of communication ,”and if they start communicating the problems will shrink.
Black people are complaining that the town’s justice system is doing them wrong, white people on the other hand are complaining that there is to much crime and drugs in the neighborhoods. The found of a racial equality group says that that town is stuck in the past at the moment.
It has gotten so bad that the Department of Justice sent a team down to mediate and talk about problems/solution s. 100 people of different races went to a fair ground to complain about the situation. The federal mediators took note and tired to keep the piece. Just a short statistic: there are 26,000 people living there at the moment and about 5,700 of them are black.
Here is my Opinion:
I don’t really think the situation between McClellan was race related, it seemed that they had been through a lot of bad things together and most likely McClellan knew something about Finley, so Finley killed him. This is just my opinion though, I mean he killed a friend before…he could easily do it again. But I do think that the town of Paris does have some racial problems, even if it isn’t the government of the town who has the problems( I really don’t know if they do or not….they do seem to be giving some people the short end of the stick), it seems like the people have some deep seeded issues with each other that need to be smoothed down. If people can’t get out of the past how will the future of the town ever improve? I also want to say that I have never experienced any kind of harassment of any sort so I can’t say that I know how it would feel to be judged, my words in this are just the way I try to say how I am thinking without offending anyone.

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