Appearing on “The O’Reilly Factor” on FOX News, Professor Donald Tibbs said there is no evidence that recent isolated acts of violence in the U.S. represent a reaction to George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. 

Tibbs said in the Sept. 11 interview that violence is troubling regardless of the cause, but that racial tensions have persisted in the U.S. for varied reasons.

“The racial animus has never gone away,” Tibbs said. “I don’t think we are eliminating racial violence, and as a matter of fact our refusal to talk about race and racism and the systemic aspects in which race is institutionalized in America is causing more animus between black and white and brown and other.” 

Reilly argued that the dissolution of the traditional black family is causing violence to increase, but Tibbs said African Americans feel “more disenfranchised in a post-civil-rights era as a result of not receiving some of the benefits that were supposed to be part of the civil rights movement.” 

Tibbs is an expert on the overlapping issues of race, law, civil rights and criminal procedure.  He is the author of “From Black Power to Prison Power: The Making of Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners' Labor Union,” published in 2012.