Former Rep. Allen West has rushed to the defense of basketball great Charles Barkley, who's under fire for entering the Ferguson debate and calling out African-Americans who say white police officers set out to shoot blacks.
"Charles Barkley is known for being a very straightforward, upfront type of person, and this is what you get when you swim against the tide of the narrative that the race-baiters want to put out in the black community," West said Wednesday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
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In an interview on CNN, West said he found it "ridiculous" when people say white police officers set out to shoot African-Americans, although "everybody wants to protect their own tribe, whether they are right or wrong."
Barkley, who was a power forward for the Philadelphia 76ers, Phoenix Suns and Houston Rockets in the National Basketball Association and is now a basketball analyst for Turner Sports, also called protesters who have destroyed businesses in Ferguson "scumbags."
He also complained that some successful African-Americans like himself are degraded by the community for not being "black enough," adding, "We as black people, we have a lot of crooks. We can't just wait until something like [the Michael Brown shooting] happens. We have to look at ourselves in the mirror."
"Charles Barkley is spot-on, and the people that are out there destroying businesses, this is not furthering the cause, this is not helping to heal the pain out there in Ferguson," West said.
"People are not talking about the consequences of the actions of Michael Brown, [the] felonies that he committed, to rob a store, assault a store owner, assault and attack a police officer, and unfortunately, it ended in his tragic death.
"So, why aren't we talking about better education opportunities instead of these failing schools we see in the black community . . . about how do we restore the black family . . . about better business opportunities?"
West said Barkley was merely "articulating his frustration with what is going on and that no one is talking about the real issues."
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