Why Manipulate the Tragedy of Trayvon Martin?

The fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin last month by a neighborhood-watch volunteer was a sickening and — unless new facts come to light — unjustified loss of an innocent life. Unless Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman, had reason to believe that Martin was armed, shooting him was a grossly disproportionate response to a fistfight, even leaving aside the fact that Zimmerman had initiated the encounter. If such a shooting is justified under Florida’s broad self-defense law, that law has licensed violence that goes far beyond legitimate self-defense. Every American shares the despair of Martin’s family over this heartbreaking tragedy and supports a fuller investigation (though the entrance of the Feds at this point is premature, absent evidence of Florida’s incapacity to conduct a fair inquiry).

But is the Martin shooting emblematic of a larger problem? Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and the mainstream media here and abroad certainly are portraying it as such. That larger problem, of course, is lethal white racism and a criminal-justice system allegedly indifferent to the killing of blacks. At a rally Thursday night in Sanford, Sharpton said that “Trayvon represents a reckless disregard for our lives that we’ve seen for too long,” and warned that “they,” presumably whites, would try to trick black protesters into violence by “send[ing] in provocateurs.” “Blacks are under attack,” said Jesse Jackson on Friday from Chicago. “Targeting, arresting, convicting blacks, and ultimately killing us is big business.” MSNBC analyst Karen Finney claimed that “racist rhetoric” used by Rush Limbaugh and several Republican presidential candidates was responsible for Martin’s death.

So determined has the New York Times been to fit the shooting into its favored racial story line that it has been referring to the Zimmerman as a “white Hispanic,” contrary to its usual practice of referring to Hispanics without any additional racial characterization. The fact that Zimmerman’s father is white does not explain this departure from the Times’s racial protocols; the Times’s one-drop rule still applies to Barack Obama, who is, according to the Times and every other media outlet, America’s “first black president.” (The Grey Lady referred to Zimmerman for the first time on Friday simply as “Hispanic.”)

Times columnist Charles Blow dealt with the complicating factor of Zimmerman’s ethnicity with a simple duality: “Trayvon is black. Zimmerman is not,” he wrote last Saturday, presumably conferring on Zimmerman putative white status. The Rainbow Coalition has apparently broken down.

Blow went on to claim that it is the “the burden of black boys in America” to be at high risk of being shot by non-blacks: “This is the fear that seizes me whenever my boys are out in the world: that a man with a gun and an itchy finger will find them ‘suspicious.’”

Blow is right about one thing: Black boys do face a much higher chance than non-blacks that they will be shot when they are “out in the world.” Black males between the ages of 14 and 24 were seven times more likely to die of homicide in 2007 than white and Hispanic males of the same age group combined. But the danger they face comes overwhelmingly from other black males, whose homicide offending rate in the 14 to 24 age category was nearly ten times higher than that of young white and Hispanic males combined. (The federal government’s crime data puts Hispanics and whites in a single category of “white,” thus overstating the non-Hispanic white offending and victimization rates). Most homicides are intraracial, but the chance of a black being killed by a white or Hispanic is much lower than the chance that a white or Hispanic will be killed by a black. Seventeen percent of what the FBI calls “white” homicide victims in 2009 were killed by blacks, compared to 8 percent of black homicide victims who were killed by “whites.” There were two and a half times as many white and Hispanic victims of black killers in 2009 as there were black victims of white and Hispanic killers, even though the black population is one-sixth that of whites and Hispanics combined. If Hispanics were removed from the category of “white” killers of blacks, the percentage of blacks killed by Anglo whites would plummet, since a significant percentage of what the FBI calls “white”-on-black killings represent gang warfare between Hispanic and black gangs. (Needless to say, there is no reason to think that racism plays a more frequent role in white-on-black killings than in black-on-white killings.)

Blow’s fear that his children will be blown away by a white is particularly ludicrous in New York City. Blacks commit 80 percent of all shootings in the city — as reported by the victims of and witnesses to those shootings — though they are but 23 percent of the population; whites commit 1.4 percent of all shootings, though they are 35 percent of the population. Add Hispanic shootings to the black tally, and you account for 98 percent of all of the city’s gun violence. In New York, as in big cities across the country, the face of violence is overwhelmingly black and Hispanic.

No evidence has yet surfaced to support the charge that the failure of the Sanford police to arrest Zimmerman results from racial bias, as opposed to ambiguities in the application of Florida’s self-defense law and the absence of eye-witnesses to the killing. But if such evidence of racial indifference does emerge, it would be not only shameful but also a great exception to the practice of police departments across the country. Far from showing a “reckless disregard for [black] lives,” in Sharpton’s words, it is the police and prosecutors who are the most reliable responders to black victimization, trying relentlessly to put together a case even when the witnesses to crime refuse to cooperate. Most police chiefs will say that they could solve every inner-city killing if the people who saw the crime or know the perpetrators came forward, instead of obeying the “no snitching” code.

And it is the concerted efforts of police departments across the country to bring safety to urban neighborhoods that have played a central role in the 50 percent drop in the black homicide victimization rate from 1991 to 2008. In New York City, over 10,000 minority males are alive today who would have been killed had homicide rates remained at their early 1990s highs; the largest cause of that crime drop is the New York Police Department’s policing revolution, which has created an unprecedented sense of urgency about protecting lives. The NYPD’s weekly meetings at police headquarters, known as Compstat, focus relentlessly on one overriding question: How can we save more people — overwhelmingly minorities — from being victimized by crime? Many an NYPD commander has lost his post because he has not had an adequate answer to that question.

The protesters in Florida and across the country are right to demand an explanation for the decision not to charge Zimmerman. A critical examination of Florida’s Stand Your Ground law is absolutely warranted. But the racial storyline that has been imposed on the shooting does not fairly represent contemporary America. That storyline is not just wrong, it is dangerous, because it only feeds black alienation and anger. Family breakdown, not white racism, is the biggest impediment facing blacks today, producing such casualties as the 18-year-old gangbanger who fatally shot a 34-year-old mother picking up her child from school in Brownsville, Brooklyn, last October. Sharpton and the national media didn’t show up for that killing, just as they don’t for the thousands of other black-on-black killings each year. By all means, demand justice for Trayvon Martin. But when that justice comes, as it most surely will, perhaps some small part of the energy devoted to securing it could be redirected towards stigmatizing black criminals and revalorizing the role of fathers in families.

Editor’s Note: This post has been amended since it was originally published.

While the Zimmerman/Martin ‘white’ on black killing is covered 24/7 on the MSM with an outpouring of rage and charges of a racial hate crime, where is the concern- where is the rage about the home invasion, torture, beating, rape and murder of the elderly white couple by a gang of feral blacks in Oklahoma just a few weeks ago?

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?

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 outrage?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2117695/Brutal-home-invasion-Oklahoma-couple-ends-65-year-romance-meeting-blind-date.html

Are you familiar with Heather MacDonald?

No.

Did you read the whole essay?

Yes.

The violent crime statistics in this essay are jaw dropping.

It' a good essay further down. Not my point. Scan the rest of the comments in this thread and notice there is good indication many never got that far solely due to her opening paragraph.

She frequently writes a very anti-crime and pro-police agenda as well as anti-illegal immigration essays.

So you're something akin to a fan? That means you're resistant to my advice; but it's advice worthy of consideration. Explain that opening paragraph that sounds way too disapproving of self defense. It looks like an incrementalist type introduction to whittling away at self defense. (That relates to another discussion I had with EV and so I used it as an example) Pro-police has a tendency to look askance at self-defense at any level for sometimes good reasons For example, police coming on a scene will find it difficult to identify good guys from bad during an ongoing tussle. No police authority on earth wants to confront that dilemma. Still, your have a right to self-defense. This is my longer point neverdem: "progressives" have gotten as far as they have in taking down our rights through incrementally employing "what-if" dilemmas such as that. The ideas expressed in that opening paragraph destroys the urge of many readers to read further. And as you point out, there is good info afterwards. Thus, as an introductory paragraph -- perhaps meant as nothing more than a CYA to her police buddies -- this opening paragraph sucks.

I never saw her push a gun-grabbing agenda.

Look, it's not a full-blown anti-gun nor anti-self defense salon piece --it's only in the anteroom so to speak. My criticism was to demonstrate the way incremtalists have been so successful. When "be wary" becomes a bad thing to advise, we are way far gone.

Also, who ever expected Ann Coulter to back Romney, or in the manner she has? I, who have a long history of defending Dennis Prager, never thought I'd be so disapproving him. Over the years at Salem Broadcasting he's turned into a Medhead -- and he STILL can't add. Things change. Welcome to Obamanation: it's not just a pun any more.

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