On Tuesday, The Talk co-host Sheryl Underwood unleashed an emotional condemnation of the alleged racial profiling of law enforcement officers around the country. She said white people don’t have anything to worry about, while blacks can’t even drive their cars without being shot.
The deep-seated outrage stemmed from the recent shooting of an unarmed black man, Terence Crutcher, by a white female Tulsa, Oklahoma police officer, Betty Shelby. An investigation is ongoing but video taken from a helicopter above the street his car was stalled on appears to show Crutcher walking away from Shelby and several other officers with his hands in the air. As he approaches his vehicle, his hands seem to drop towards his waist. As the angle changes, he is suddenly on the ground and bleeding from a gunshot wound. It’s unclear exactly what happened or what orders were being given to the man.
But as facts in these types of cases matter nothing to the Black Lives Matter crowd, emotions are running high, and Underwood had a lot to get off her chest. Her co-hosts took turns expressing their more calm outrage, including fellow black co-host Aisha Tyler, who concluded Crutcher “was complying” with his hands up (again, that’s not absolutely clear). She then added, “This is hard stuff to talk about but we have a legacy of racism in this country, and if we don’t start calling it racism, then we can’t fight it.”
Tyler began listing what she believed would rectify “systemic racism” in law enforcement, including training cops differently.
“You don’t have to train the police not to shoot white people. Why you got to train them not to shoot us?” Underwood interjected, looking exhausted from frustration.
Tyler attempted to clarify using an example of a recent multi-county, high-speed car chase in L.A. involving a “Caucasian” woman ramming into cars in her attempt to flee the pursuing officers. Tyler said, “When they took her out of the car, they gently removed what looked like a cellphone, and gently handcuffed her. If that had been a black man, he would’ve been face down on the pavement without one second of conversation.”
“Racism and fear of black men, specifically, drives these shootings,” Tyler added. “We have to change fundamentally as a nation.”
With a commercial break looming, Underwood quickly unleashed her pent-up rage, saying these shootings need to be considered hate crimes and those officers who pull the trigger need to lose their jobs, their livelihoods, and their freedom.
“But remember,” she added, “there are good police officers out there. The ones that are not, they need to go to jail.”
As the tears began to flow, Underwood forgot that it was Tyler who suggested training as she shouted, “And don’t tell me this, ‘We got to train…’ Y’all white, y’all drive all the time and don’t nothing happen to y’all. And we black, and I’m afraid to drive my damn car, because if they don’t know who I am, I could be shot!”
Pointing to the audience, Underwood proclaimed, “Until y’all feel that, this ain’t never going to stop. Until you all that are not black feel it and stand with us, this is not going to stop.”



