On behalf of editors everywhere...
Posted on 05/10/2012 8:24:32 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Eighteen. That’s how many black people are murdered per day in America.. If you don’t have the misfortune to live near one of those eighteen, you didn’t hear about any of them.
There are nearly 7,000 African American homicides a year, but only one has grabbed us by our eyeballs and won’t let go. The Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman killing has propelled itself to the front of our national consciousness, while the others go virtually unnoticed.
Why all the attention? What so different about this case?
Nothing. It’s not about the case; it’s about the cast.
It doesn’t even matter if George Zimmerman is guilty or innocent, that’s beside the point.
The point, of course, is race. When a gangbanger bangs one out, it’s a simple, common crime. But when a sort-of-white wannabe cop and neighborhood bully kills a black teenager, a couple of strange, powerful things happen.
First, the victim becomes a choirboy by popular acclimation. It’s as if the populace couldn’t understand the narrative if the kid had a pot bust in junior high.
And second, the killer becomes a Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
Look, I don’t want to trivialize this, or offend anyone’s sensibilities, but there is a direct parallel here with the use of the N word.
Nobody likes it, but if you use it, you better be black. A black man killing another black man is an all-too-common tragedy. A white man killing a black man is an act of race war.
Our collective memories know that there is something especially heinous about this kind of crime.
We hate murderers, but not all murders are considered equal. A killing in the hood is a shame. A serial killing is an outrage. If the details are particularly gruesome we make a movie about it.
But even an interracial school slaughter like Virginia Tech, where one person killed 32, has less impact on the nation than the Zimmerman case. The murderer was a disturbed Asian boy, most of the victims white. But race didn’t seem to be a factor in that crime, and it’s the act that sticks in our minds four years later, not the perpetrator.
I’m willing to bet not ten percent of my readers can bring the name Seung-Hui Cho to mind when thinking about Virginia Tech. I know I had to Google it.
But George Zimmerman’s name will be remembered in four years; those of us still alive will remember it in forty. Whether he’s guilty or not.
My wife pointed it out; whenever they talk about this case it’s always Trayvon and Zimmerman. We know the victim, affectionately, by his first name, the killer by his last. Why? Because we take this case personally. Otherwise the wall-to-wall coverage wouldn’t be there.
Even among hate crimes, this one is special. When some homophobes kill a gay man, it’s news, it’s an outrage, we hear about it. But the coverage and concern don’t reach Martin/Zimmerman heights. The history is entirely different. Gay people have been harassed and killed for years in America, but, as horrid as that history is, cities did not burn. A civil war wasn’t fought over that issue, six hundred thousand Americans didn’t die because of it.
Race has unique, terrible power over America’s moral conscience and with good reason. When a white man kills a black man it’s something more than a crime in our eyes, it’s something unspeakably worse. Which is why we must speak about it.
White people may not want to see it that way. In our hearts we may think, we are not racist, we elected a black president, we hate not. And all that is probably true for most white Americans.
It doesn’t matter. Some lessons must be relearned whenever something terrible happens that reminds us all of our nation’s original sin.
I hope justice is done to Mr. Zimmerman. If his version of that tragedy is the truth, I hope he doesn’t suffer for it any more than he has already. If he’s lying and killed that kid on purpose I hope they throw the book at him.
But either way, I know that justice is being served by all the saturating, 24/7 coverage and conversation. I know we need to work this out slowly, one painful step at a time.
Because, to white America, this is a case, a killing, a mystery, maybe even an annoyance. But to black America it’s one six-millionth of a genocide.
This is a classic case of "no good deed goes unpunished." Zimmerman was trying to protect his neighbors--instead he may wind up being murdered before too long, or (depending on who gets on the jury) spending most of his life in prison.
That probably was supposed to be "tries", but I think "tires" works just as well, maybe better, because frankly many of us are tired about this dammed case.
;)
On behalf of editors everywhere...
“Mr. Zimmerman is 1/4 Hispanic, 1/2 white and 1/4 black...”
His cheekbones are kind of high - he might have about 1/32 Cherokee mixed in there somewhere.
I would think that once the trigger was pulled there was intent on purpose to do harm if not kill. The writer is an emotional nit-wit.
Here’s the lastest updates on who has created the Trayvon cast of characters and is twisting the story. Names are named and it’s more than just Al and Jesse:
Precisely.
The 90 year old war veteran husband was beaten and his jaw broken. He was shot in the face numerous times with a BB gun and sent to the hospital in critical condition.
The 85 year old partially blind wife was RAPED and then BEATEN TO DEATH.
Can you just imagine the pain, the humiliation, the horror that dear old lady experienced being gang raped by that pack of feral animals?
(the autopsy states she was raped. Don’t think all of these animals didn’t all participate)
And can you imagine the pain, the horror of that dear old husband having to witness this?
Mr. Strait died from his injuries last week.
There’s a lot more involved here than a home invasion and robbery.
WHERE ARE THE CHARGES OF A RACIAL HATE CRIME??
90 year old husband’s jaw broken and shot in face with a BB gun numerous times?
85 wife year old semi blind wife RAPED and BEATEN to death??
Why does it take a foreign press to enlighten America as to this henious crime?
WHERE IS THE NATIONAL OUTRAGE?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2117695/Brutal-home-invasion-Oklahoma-couple-ends-65-year-romance-meeting-blind-date.html
__________________________
Have they caught the rest of the gang of feral blacks who raped, tortured and murdered this elderly woman? Are they even looking? Not a word about it in the media.
Who the heck is that? What was the slap all about. Weird!
What the writer seems to try to prove is a white-on-black hate crime being carried out by a "white"; when in fact and in deed it seems to be a black-on-"white" hate-the-honky crime being carried out by the black participant/hater/assailant, and finally prevented from finishing the job.
(OR....maybe to Trayvon it was not race at all? Maybe his intent was just pounding on another interfering civilian for hindering him from whatever he wanted to do -- maybe "casing" the neighborhood?)
And when four black thugs rape and murder a young white woman, and rape and murder her white boyfriend, there’s no outrage, nary a peep from the media.
Wrong daddy there 2nd division.
Obama looks nothing like Obama SR.
He does however bear s striking resemblance to Malcolm x
As part of the anger over Trayvon, they held a rally in Stockton California complaining about all the blacks killed by police. Their best example was a man who had shot one policeman in the stomach before he was killed by another policeman. And yes, he had also killed a civilian in the area before this confrontation.
All evidence suggests that Zimmerman killed Martin in self defense, without regard to race. Allan Goldstein can wring his hands and (many, not all) African-Americans can get all wee-weed up over a false narrative, but people with brains must refuse to buy into it. Conflating self-defense, police shootings, and the occasional crime into “incremental genocide” is absurd (and you better believe that this is part of the Democrats’ agenda).
A large segment of the black population, along with many whites, lack analytical skills, have emotional needs, and choose to believe idiotic things. Does that obligate the rest of us to play along? No thanks — we cannot afford to further indulge the weak-minded. Our “government” obviously disagrees.
Statistical breakdown on the 18, by race of killer, and circumstances, would be very useful. Any info for this?
Killed by:
Blacks
Whites
Hispanics
Other
Circumstances:
Gang-related, including bystanders
Drug/other crime-related
Suicide
Personal disputes
Domestic (killed by spouses, exes, girl/boyfriends, parents, transvestite nannies)
While victim of robbery, rape, etc.
By police in self-defense
By civilians in self-defense
By racially-motivated hate groups
But I'm not sure we will ever know for sure and even if we do, why ObaMao thought a slave trading Kenyan heritage would make a better narrative than his real daddy (if Davis was) who would have created no ambiguity on U.S. citizenship.
I'll stand by my original theory that ObaMao just wants to prove that he is bigger than the U.S. constitution.
It’s not about color. It’s about party.
The writer made a grotesque composition error in writing,
“...has grabbed us by our eyeballs and won’t let go...”
This is called “compositions from the slush pile” by editors of truly bad writing submitted for publication. Some other examples of slush pile errors:
“His organ began to beat so hard he thought it would pop out of his chest.”
“Thoughts flew like spaghetti in my brain.”
“I knew I had a bestseller in me—all I had to do was plumb my depths and out it would come, like some literary bowel movement.”
“Carlotta’s eyes dropped to the handkerchief in her hands.”
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