About 30 people came to hear local NAACP leader Dr. Rick Turner speak in Charlottesville on Sunday evening about racial discrimination. WMRA’s Jordy Yager has this report.
[Applause]
As president of the Albemarle-Charlottesville branch of the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Dr. Turner spoke to a mixed audience at Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church. The church’s lead minister, Rev. Erik Wikstrom, asked how he, as a white man with white privilege, could help fight racial discrimination.
TURNER: The most important thing is to show up, to show up and to voice your opinion. You’ll be listened to because you have that kind of power. You’ve always had those kinds of benefits. But it’s not benefitting the nation. With all the power that you have, we want you to do something for the nation.
Turner has also called for more scrutiny of law enforcement, specifically looking at the Charlottesville Police Department’s stop and frisk data, which has shown that black residents are as much as three times as likely to be stopped by police as white residents.
TURNER: I believe that if more whites and more blacks would stand up and protest the police in these communities —you can’t stop massive numbers of people from talking, from standing up, for peacefully standing up. You can’t stop them.
Turner sat on the committee that considered candidates for Charlottesville’s next police chief. On May 23 former Lexington Police Chief Al Thomas, takes over Charlottesville’s department as its first African-American chief. Turner called Thomas, quote, “probably the most engaging, smart, respectful man that I ever met.”