Land says activists using Trayvon Martin

Southern Baptists top public-policy spokesman said on his radio program March 31 that black leaders are exploiting outrage over the shooting death of a Florida teenager to help President Obama get re-elected.

Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, described activists Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton as “racial ambulance chasers” who are fomenting a “mob mentality” over the recent shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by a neighborhood watch captain in Sanford, Fla.

Land said President Obama turned it into a national issue when he said if he had a son, he would look like the young man targeted as suspicious while walking through a gated community wearing a hooded sweatshirt.

“The president’s aides claimed he was showing compassion for the victim’s family,” Land said. “In reality he poured gasoline on the racialist fires.”

“He put the presidential spotlight on Trayvon Martin’s death and thereby bolstered the burgeoning protest,” Land said. “I believe Mr. Obama’s comments were misguided, and I think they were harmful. No one knows what his son would look like. The statement was meant as a sign of racial solidarity. Martin is black, so by extension Mr. Obama shares the victim’s racial identity.”
Read the rest here