If Charles Barkley wanted to rile up the African-American community with his comments over the Ferguson incident, he succeeded.
A day after Barkley dismissed the notion that white police officers shoot black people as "ridiculous" and said sometimes racial profiling is OK, Ashley Yates, co-creator of Millennial Activists United, fired back at Barkley.
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"You'd be hard pressed to find anyone whose comments are less valid than Charles Barkley's," Yates told CNN. "I find it incredulous that people would try to gauge the black community by Charles Barkley's comments. He definitely does not speak for the community in which I exist. He definitely has not been to Ferguson. He has not reached out or spoken to protesters or organizers who are actively working to change our community.
"I just find it very curious that people are now wanting to comment on something that we have been experiencing for 117 days," she added. "I find it very curious that people who want to comment on a sociopolitical climate that has occurred refuse to comment on why that actually happened."
A day earlier, Barkley said he agreed with the grand jury's decision against indicting Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for fatally shooting Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager.
"We never discuss race in this country until something bad happens," he said to CNN. And even then it usually reflects a tribe mentality. Everybody wants to protect their own tribe, whether they are right or wrong."
Barkley went on to say that too often, communities expect the police to clean up crime in neighborhoods, only to allege racial profiling when an incident occurs.
"We as black people, we have a lot of crooks. We can't just wait until something like (the Brown shooting) happens. We have to look at ourselves in the mirror," Barkley said of people in black communities. "There is a reason that they racially profile us in the way they do. Sometimes it is wrong, and sometimes it is right."
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