My last.fm top 10 artists from last week could easily be my all-time top 10 favorite artists, only P-Funk isn’t on there.

I’d probably suffocate if I waited for all the self-styled conservatives who acted like the world was coming to an end, or that the justice system was broken when the Duke lacrosse team was falsely accused of rape to rise to the cause of Alton Logan, a Chicago man who was convicted of a murder he didn’t commit. They might, but I’m not gonna hold my breath. The long and short of the situation, according to the Sun Times, is this:

Though claims of innocence usually fall on deaf ears, Logan’s claims ring achingly true. A growing body of incontrovertible evidence says Logan did not kill Lloyd Wickliffe, a security guard gunned down at a South Side McDonald’s in 1982.
The latest evidence is a bombshell. In January, two attorneys shared a secret they have carried since 1982: Their client, cop-killer Andrew Wilson, had confessed to killing Wickliffe. But bound by a sacred duty of confidentiality to their client, the two lawyers kept quiet.

Point blank. Innocent man wrongfully convicted. Not wrongfully-charged, not with aspersions cast, wrongfully convicted. And incarcerated. For twenty-six years. Twenty-six. I was in 3rd grade when he was convicted. And after all this time, the evidence that could exonerate him has finally come to light. I’m assuming that the governor and/or the Attorney General will take care of that soon. However, what I’m really concerned about is not the fact that the wheels of justice grind slowly. Even though race is not explicitly an issue in this case, I’m only slightly concerned about the fact that yet another Black man has spent the majority of his life after being convicted of a crime for which he was ultimately found to be innocent. (It matters, but I’m not sure whether we just don’t hear about the wrongfully-convicted white dudes, or if they just don’t get wrongfully convicted. My assumption is that it’s the former, albeit at a much lower rate.) Naw, the big problem is the predictability with which certain politically-affiliated entities seem to work. If the “victim” is white? It’s a problem. The system needs changing. Somebody needs to be held accountable for something. Otherwise, not so much. Proof? See: Duke lacrosse, any given Affirmative Action question…defenders of the confederate battle flag. I don’t even hafta name names, but you already know who I’m talking about and what they’d say.

Not like this tendency is confined to one side of the ideological spectrum. Only thing is, the focus goes from the victim to the perpetrator. In those cases, if the perpetrator is white, THEN it’s indicative of some serious flaw in the system and it demonstrates the need for dire change. Otherwise, meh. Actually, that’s not entirely accurate. There usually is some protest, but it tends to lack the level of fervency that would accompany the same situation if the offender were of a different race.

It is what it is. In something of a twist on Cobb’s post, my perception is that most people’s concern is not at all about justice. It’s about the justification of their ideological position – for whatever purposes there might be.