As the massive (and massively profitable) media push-and-pull game plays out over the dead body of Trayvon Martin and the ruined life of George Zimmerman, it occurs to me that the cries of “RACISM!!!” that are fueling the ongoing fire…accusations like Booman’s classic “negro-harasser” comment that he aimed at George Zimmerman on my recent post Rush To Judgement II-The Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman Case…are themselves racist at their base.
Why? How?
Read on.
Like this:
Here’s this guy George Zimmerman. Some people consider him a good neighbor…usually people who know him and live near him, people of all races…while others (who have had absolutely no personal contact with him) consider him a bad, bad person. Like most of us, his true nature probably resides somewhere in between those two extremes. He’s had a little minor league trouble with the law…no convictions, no jail time, a couple of push-and-shove, he said/she said affairs…but he also has helped his neighbors when they were in trouble and seems to have been very involved in trying to lessen the number of burglaries in his neighborhood. At least eight burglaries were reported over the 14 months before the neighborhood watch of which Zimmerman was a part was initiated, including one that was a forced entry situation serious enough to cause a young woman and her son the move out of the area. By comparison, I live in a working class area of da big, bad Bronx and in my neighborhood there have been zero burglaries over the past few years. Come to think of it, there has only been one break-in over the last seven years on my street, and that was when no one was home.
Now this Zimmerman fella is himself of mixed-race parentry…European ancestry on his father’s side and Peruvian (which usually means native American as well as European and quite likely African) on his mother’s side. In most exclusively white neighborhoods (Yes, Virginia, they do exist.) he would be considered non-white based on his appearance, I believe.
One of the help, come to fix the lawn sprayer or the refrigerator.
Bet on it.
But in the mixed-race, working-class neighborhood in which he lives, he fits right in. (“Twin Lakes is almost 50 percent white, with Hispanic and African-American populations of about 20 percent each.”)
The two protagonists in this yet-to-be-fully-told tragedy met up one rainy night. One died and one survived. Over the ensuing months a gradually gathering media storm built around what happened that night, and when the storm finally reached full force last week almost all of the coverage was aimed at showing George Zimmerman to be a racist murderer.
Why?
Because he was out trying to stop his neighborhood from being preyed upon by thieves.
And right here is where the unexamined “racism” of this little morality tale steps in and effectively smacks one upside the head. (Provided of course that said head is not already so full of media-induced outrage that it can’t feel anything other than what it has been ordered to feel.)
Almost the entire country…people of all races and political persuasions…has assumed that Mr. Zimmerman was looking for black people to blame for the trouble in his community.
Hmmmmmmm…
If this is not proof positive of the ultimately racist attitude of this country, I do not know what is.
This idea…and its subset, blaming Hispanics…has been presented with such force by the media of this nation that it has become assumed fact. A meme so powerful, so all-enveloping that it is not even examined by most people. Of all races.
Long ago and far away (2006) I wrote a piece called Racism. America’s Original Sin. In it I wrote:
Racism is America’s Original Sin.
The one that really dare not speak its name. Not its full name, anyway.
As in Niggerkikespicwopmickgookchinkjapragheadhunkyhonkywog.
With a further and equally criminal subdivision called BitchWhore.
And until it is fully expiated…and I mean fully, as in the universal and unremarkable recognition that indeed all men and women ARE born equal in terms of innate possibility across and throughout all races AND THE UNIVERSAL, REAL-TIME SOCIAL RECOGNITION OF SAID CONCEPT INCLUDING THE AVAILABILITY OF EQUAL HOUSING, EMPLOYMENT AND EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR ALL…until that happens (And I do not presently see even the REMOTEST of possibilities that something like that is in the works here. Precisely the opposite, truth be told. We are going BACKWARDS.), then all the rest of what we say and do is the sheerest bullshit.
—snip—
Need I say more?
I think not.
Ask not for whom the sky darkens.
It darkens for thee.
And let he who is without Original Sin throw the first stone.
Later…
AG
There it is, alla you goodfellas and nicegals.
Deal wid it.
Internally.
Or…as is most likely on all available evidence…don’t deal wid it.
Your choice, if “choice” is even an applicable word for most of us.
Y’either do it or y’don’t.
And it will play out the way it must, this story.
My own prediction?
It’s going to throw at least a small monkeywrench in the Obama re-election plans of the PermaGov. Not enough to change the result, but enough to nudge things in another set of directions.
Watch.
One thing I know for sure is this. It ain’t over yet. Not by a long shot.
Bet on that as well.
Later…
AG
Even the dead teenager appears to have assumed the truth of this racist meme. Zimmerman was stopping him…or at least paying some sort of undue attention to him…because he was a young black male.
Of course it was rainy and dark out, so maybe Trayvon’s race wasn’t immediately identifiable from a distance. But he immediately assumed that it was. And if he had been an older male…of any race…his walk would have probably given his age away. Also, if he been dressed in a $1000+ trenchcoat and an expensive scarf chances are that the only thing George Zimmerman might have found remarkable about him would have been that he was walking in that particular neighborhood at all instead of being driven in a limousine. (Yeah, I know. Geraldo Rivera’s not wrong all the time, just most of the time.) But he was dressed in a younger, less affluent style. Most working-class neighborhood break-ins are simply not committed by people who dress like Barack Obama.
Deal wid that as well, please.
The racism of this country…a racism upon which it was founded, upon which it has profited in one form or another for about 400 years, a racism that is plainly evident in its present foreign policies as well as in its domestic and financial policies…has seeped so deeply into the psyches of most Americans that they do not even recognize its existence on many levels.
And it threatens to bring this country to its knees before the story ends.
Watch.
Look in the mirror, and…
Watch, goddamnit!!!!
AG
Easy, big fella. Can we follow Jay Smooth’s advice here? http://www.illdoctrine.com/2008/07/how_to_tell_people_they_sound.html
The more we can keep this conversation on the “what he did” level and not on the “what he is” level, the better off we’ll be (in my opinion).
(And “he” doesn’t just mean Zimmerman (though obviously he’s the starting point for this case). It means the Sanford police. It means the “stand your ground” law itself. It means all of us who are participating in this conversation.)
have the slightest idea why you continue to defend this guy but I would like you to focus on the police, prosecutor, and state attorneys and not on the perp.
This has moved way beyond the facts of the case. It’s now clear that Zimmerman was not in a fight for his life. We don’t know exactly what happened but we know that the police misconduct in this case was astounding.
I am not “defending” this guy, I am taking offense at your attacks on him. Unfounded, media-sponsored attacks.
Big difference.
You say “It’s now clear that Zimmerman was not in a fight for his life.” Nothing is clear here, except for one dead teenager and a man who willingly confessed to taking his life. Witnesses and police contradicting each other and a fleeting, grainy surveillance vid made however many hours after the incident itself in which no blood shows on Zimmerman’s face? That’s not clarity, it’s just what’s going on with the media hype. One day he’s the bad guy in the media, the next he’s not so bad, then he’s a local hero and now he’s the bad guy again. That’s how they make money, fool. On the gullibility of people just like you. They spin the shit so that there’s a new sensation daily, just like they did the RatPub so-called debates. And you fall right in line on one side or the other. May as well root for someone on American Idol for all the good it’s going to do.
Lemme ask you…have you ever had a bloody nose? Was your face still bloody 15 minutes later? Probably not. Duh.
Was the police conduct to blame? Maybe, maybe not. We might actually find out uf everybody shut the fuck up and let the system do its work.
Or…maybe we wouldn’t.
Is anybody really sure about who sponsored the killings of JFK, MLK Jr. and Malcolm X? I’m not.
My point here goes way beyond George Zimmerman’s relative innocence or guilt. It goes the the endemic racism of this country up and down the societal spectrum, including right here on the leftiness side of things. Y’all have automatically assumed that he was a hater, and worse, that the hatred was of black people. ‘Cuz that’s what happens in America. So it must have happened this time too.
Prove it.
You cannot.
But the prating continues unabated.
Prate on.
You continue to prove my point.
AG
.
Say no more!
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Why? Because they will say more. Bet on it. This whole brouhaha…on the large stage of the national media as well as on the smaller stage of Booman Tribune…is a perfect picture of the utter uselessness of the so-called “left” in America. Ditto the eaually so-called “right.” Both have become simply the two sides of the Fox News coin. Asses yelling at other asses about things that only mean competition for power between the two groups. Keith Olbermann yelling at Bill O’Reilly while both make millions off of the act and justice be damned.
The whole scene has devolved into a massive con game involving millions of people, and of those millions maybe 1% of them are actually privy to the real con going on. Probably more like .01%, to be precise. The rest? They’re rooting for “their” team.
Blah Blah Blah, all of it. Simple media sickness. Kind of like radiation sickness, only it’s the souls that rot rather than the bodies. Sad to see.
I’m gonna stop looking, myself. It’s too painful to bear.
Later…
AG
From your link:
“at least eight reported over the previous 14 months–several of which, neighbors said, involved young black men. On Feb. 26, the odds were stacked against Martin: he was a young black man in a neighborhood that was feeling besieged by crime and blaming it–fairly or not–on people who looked like him.
Three weeks before Martin’s death another Twin Lakes resident arrived home to discover a kitchen window open and a laptop and gold necklaces missing. Two witnesses said they saw a young black man standing nearby, but they did not see the man break into the home, according to a police report. One witness said he believed it was the same man who had stolen his bike. The next day officers responding to a call confronted three black men and one white man on bikes near the neighborhood. The same witnesses identified one of the men as the same man they saw near the burglarized home. The officers found the laptop in the man’s backpack.
Last July a rental car was stolen from one townhome along with the car keys, which were inside on a dining room table. The resident awoke in the morning to discover her sliding glass door open. The car was eventually found abandoned. In August a PlayStation and videogames were stolen from another townhome. In September someone vandalized a townhome under construction. In December someone broke into a foreclosed townhome, stopped up a toilet and started the water running. According to a police report, the water flooded the bedroom and caused drywall in the garage to collapse.
During the months before he shot Martin, Zimmerman called police about once a month, said Kim Cannaday, spokeswoman for the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office. He called about suspicious-looking people in the neighborhood, many whom, like Martin, he identified as black.”
If not conscious racism, then there is good reason to believe that racial profiling or stereotyping was involved in this incident, a learned response to recent experiences in the gated community, and perhaps beyond. Was Zimmerman a racist, therefore? Define racism.
Precisely. A learned response to recent experiences. Thank you.
A little reductio ad absurdum argument here:
Had the neighbors and witnesses described very short people or red-headed, pregnant women as the culprits, then none of this would have happened. Unless perhaps a very short person or a red-headed pregnant woman and George Zimmerman crossed paths on that night.
Sigh.
I’m getting nowhere here, shergald.
But I do keep trying…trying to make some sense out of this nonsense.
So it goes.
AG
The real culprit is these shoot-first-ask-questions later laws that permit vigilantism against suspected criminals, which in this case was focused on young black men. Even in the old west, killing an unarmed person was considered murder.
I’m back from the mirror.
I still think George Zimmerman killed Trayvon because of his race.
I still think people who will find any reason to justify the killing of a young black kid are suspect. Don’t know if they’re racists or just opportunists or contrarians. Doesn’t matter. They are all of equal contempt in my book.
That is all.
George Zimmerman executed Trayvon Martin. He did it to send a message to all the “fucking goons” who “get away”.
He’s a terrorist, pure and simple. And no amount of your conspiracy theorizing can explain that away.
.
George Zimmerman has an anger issue and probably a mental disorder. He is no more racist than the community where he operates. I believe his ass has been covered in a joint effort by his dad, a retired magistrate of Virginia Supreme Court and the Sanford police and prosecutor. Because of the outcry of public opinion, perhaps justice will be served. A botched police investigation has severely undercut the chances of criminal charges. For a Federal civil rights action, I see no chance whatsoever.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."