Smart Talk Monday: Black people feel under siege after recent violent deaths and incidents

• Scott LaMar
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  Scott LaMar has worked in both radio and television for more than four decades.
  
  Currently, LaMar is the Host and Executive Producer of the daily Smart Talk news and public affairs program on WITF-FM, 89.5 & 93.3 in Harrisburg, Pa.
  
  Previously, LaMar was WITF TV’s Sr. Public Affairs producer and produced the station’s award-winning weekly public affairs TV program Smart Talk.
  
  LaMar was a regular contributor to BBC World News TV before and after the 2020 U.S. Presidential election.
  
  The American Society of Civil Engineers honored LaMar with their national Excellence in Journalism award in 2020. LaMar was the only recipient of the award nationally. He has won more than a dozen Pennsylvania Associated Press Broadcast Awards since 2000 and has been nominated for five Mid-Atlantic Emmy Awards.
  
  LaMar and Smart Talk have been recognized throughout the Central Pennsylvania community including ADVOZ Lancaster’s first “Dignity in Dialogue Award”, the South-Central Assembly’s “Regional Citizen Award” and was named a “Humanitarian Hero” by The Humane Society of the United States/Pennsylvania.
  
  A native of Coatesville, Pa., LaMar has also worked as a broadcast news anchor, sports play-by-play announcer and manager.

The death of George Floyd, who died after a Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck as Floyd said repeatedly that he couldn’t breathe, has set off a wave of protests and outrage across the country. The anger has escalated into violence in Minneapolis and dozens of all cities across the country over what protestors see is ongoing police brutality against African-Americans.

It’s not just incidents of police involvement either. A black jogger in Georgia was shot and killed in a struggle with a white man, who armed himself after he and his father thought the jogger could be a suspect in a string of burglaries. A white woman called the police saying she was being threatened by an African-American man, who was bird watching in New York’s Central Park. The man he had nothing more than telling the woman to follow the park’s rules and put her dog on a leash.

These three recent incidents have raised questions about racism and why black men especially are often the victims of violence — sometimes at the hands of the police and in American society as a whole.

It’s the topic of our discussion on Monday’s Smart Talk.

Appearing on the program is Sandra Thompson – a York area attorney and president of the York County chapter of the NAACP. Ms. Thompson was one of five African-American women playing golf at a York County course last year when the owner called the police after a dispute over slow play arose. Also on the program are Rev. Dr. Frank Hairston-Allen, President of the Harrisburg Area NAACP, Chief Dean Esserman, National Police Foundation Senior Counselor, and Dr. Todd Mealy, founder of the Equity Institute for Race Conscious Pedagogy, and the author of Race Conscious Pedagogy: Disrupting Racism at Majority White Schools.