Posted on 07/15/2013 6:10:55 AM PDT by shortstop
It wasn’t about Trayvon.
It was about Zimmerman.
Specifically, it was about Zimmerman’s skin.
It was white.
That’s what caused the upset, that’s what drove the charges, that’s what brought the trial.
As the president – the same president who conjectured that his own son would have looked like Trayvon – urges us to calm and reflection, we should calmly reflect upon what made this incident unique.
Sadly, it was not the shooting death of a young black man.
There is nothing unique about the shooting death of a young black man. That tragedy plays out with predictable regularity as urban America genocides itself.
The crocodile tears about the loss of Trayvon and all the years and adventures life had ahead of him don’t ring true. It does not seem likely that many beyond the poor lad’s family and friends would be particularly perturbed by his death.
I say that based on how we respond to all the others.
All across urban America, young black men’s lives are snuffed out daily. You don’t hear Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson saying much about them. There are seldom calls for prosecutions – there is seldom cooperation with police investigating the slayings.
The shameful fact is that the steady stream of slain black men is ignored by almost everyone.
So why this one?
Why do we know this one’s name?
Certainly, the others are as loved by family and friends as was Trayvon, and many are as innocent, and many are more so.
What was different about this killing?
Zimmerman’s skin.
The only variable is that Zimmerman is white.
Kind of.
His white status was assigned by the press, contrary to his own self-identification as Hispanic, but he’s white.
From a genetic standpoint, Zimmerman is just as Hispanic as the president is black. From a cultural standpoint, he’s more so. The president, after a boyhood in Indonesia, was raised in a white home in a white community. Zimmerman was raised in an Hispanic neighborhood by a mother whose English is still heavily accented with Spanish.
But to fit the narrative of the activists and the press, and to galvanize the black vote in an important election year, he needed to be white.
So white he was.
Countless young black men lose their lives to violence, overwhelmingly at the hands of other young black men, and nobody seems to notice. Jesse doesn’t come to town, Al doesn’t pound the pulpit, the president doesn’t speak from the Rose Garden.
America, including black America, looks the other way.
But not this time.
And that illustrates the hypocrisy and double standard of current American race relations.
It wasn’t love for Trayvon and whatever metaphor he represented that drove some to such upset, it was bigotry against the race of the Neighborhood Watch volunteer who shot him.
If Zimmerman hadn’t been white, there wouldn’t have been any charges in this case and there certainly wouldn’t have been a trial. And even if this mythical non-white Zimmerman were to have been arrested and tried, no one would have noticed.
Because countless trials and plea bargains go on each day. And not a one of them moves the needle.
It wasn’t solidarity with Trayvon, it was antipathy for Zimmerman. Astoundingly, large portions of the population – particularly large portions of the black population – ignore the holocaust against young black men.
And that’s what this case should point up.
There is an ongoing slaughter of young black men, overwhelmingly by other young black men, and the destruction of life is horrifying.
That’s the issue.
Not respect for hoodies.
Not rolling back self-defense laws.
Not getting more money for civil rights groups or building careers for politicians and activists.
Trayvon is the exception, legions of other young black men are the rule.
It is immoral to exploit his death and ignore theirs. And it is immoral to pretend that his death represents a great societal threat while theirs does not. Trayvon has been a diversion, exploited by activists, reporters and a president. A diversion from the troubles facing our country, and from the butchery of a rising generation by black-on-black violence.
So let’s face the facts.
If we truly care about those who are slain or endangered. If we truly want to keep more young black men alive. If we are going to be honest, we need to recognize that the greatest threat to these lads is not people like George Zimmerman.
It’s people like themselves.
People who look like the president’s son, if he had one.
And the solution, for leftists and racists,
would be for that individual to not be able to be armed or legitimately defend himself from the assault.
There is so much more to the case than the jury got to see but at the end of the day they did the right thing. So much more:
This ONE fact NEEDS to go viral!!!!
TELL ME HOW WHAT IS GOING ON TO ZIMMERMAN ANY DIFFERENT THAN A LYNCH MOB FROM THE PAST! IT IS DISGUSTING!!! WHERE ARE WHITE PEOPLE DECRYING PREJUDICE?
If I were George, I’d hit the tanning beds, don a sombrero, and begin talking with Spanish language media at every opportunity.
Give Obama and Holder maximum indigestion on their decision as to whether to file kangaroo court Civil Rights charges.
It would really open up the Black vs. Hispanic fissure that is looming for the Democrat Party.
We have a number of Black conservatives on Free Republic. It is my prayer that Freepers will not lump all blacks together. Not aimed at anyone in particular, just saying........
I think instead of saying that this was because Zimmerman has white skin, we should say that this was because Zimmerman is a Hispanic.
Because it shows that leftist liberal Democrats care far more for blacks than they do for Hispanics. Even if the very lives of the Hispanics are in jeopardy, Democrats will support criminal blacks before Hispanics.
Blacks ACCUSE whites of crimes against them. Of whites murdering blacks.
Then WHAT makes this case so unusual?
Because its one of the FEW times (not non existant) that a NON BLACK person, actually killed a black person.
At the rate young black people are dieing in the inner cities, there ought to be cases like this weekly. Instead, the news is filled with stories of black people being murdered, with no mention whatsoever of the race of the murderer.
If NON WHITES were killing black young people at the rates claimed by the black community, there would virtually need to be a caravan of cars with NON WHITES hanging out, shooting everyone in sight.
Don't you think whites in a black neighborhood are a little noticeable?
Not only “white” skin, but they thought they had a Jew. That triggered most of the reaction before all the facts became known, in my not-so-humble opinion.
Excellent writing! The white have not failed the blacks, the blacks have failed themselves. They have not taken advantage of what America was trying to offer them, instead millions of Trayvons would rather be a punk.
yep the only time a black life has any value to the black establishment is when that life can be used as an excuse to attack white people. The object being revenge for history, a history that, BTW, most blacks of today weren’t even a part of because they weren’t even born yet.
If blacks get serious about black on black violence, it will mean having to criticize what they are doing to their culture, and that isn’t going to happen. If they can’t blame white man, they won’t won’t go there.
I wonder what GZ thinks about being suddenly white. He went his entire life not being white, but let a black kid call him a cracker, and beat the hell out of him, and suddenly he is white. GZ would probably like to go back to being a brown skinned mulatto. Had George been a shade or two darker, we wouldn’t know who he is. He would have been a black man killing another black in self defense. George’s mistake was being part Jew. He should have claimed he comes from the black, Ethiopian Jews.
If anyone has a “civil rights case” to file it’s Zimmerman and it’s multiple cases against the media, the government at all levels including the POTUS and large numbers of hate filled individuals. he and his lawyers could own this country.
People are not dogs. There is no virtue in a pedigree. And people of multiple ethic origins don't need to have to pick which one to be and which others to exclude. All of your grandparents are equally your grandparent. Even if they come from different ancestry.
Our strength is not in our diversity. Our strength is in our unity. Out of many, one. There is a rendering of that which used to be taught in the schools.
In this whole mess, the attempt to deny that people have a basic right of self defense was nasty and ugly when it was displayed in public. But:
That was not even slightly more nasty or divisive as the widely displayed notion that people could shove another human being into whichever racial box they chose to make it fit their political agendas with no regard to that person's actual ancestry.
We don't need any racial purity police trying to keep people in separate groups. It doesn't matter what political faction the people attempting that are otherwise engaged in either.
If the media and black “leaders” don’t care about black-on-black crime, they care about black-on-white crime even less. Why was Trayvon such a tragedy and a big deal, and not Christian and Newsome? There wasn’t even a possibility of “self-defense” in that case. It was just vicious torture and murder.
I wonder if someone will take up a collection for a “Zimmerman security fund”. A fund not listed in any way as being part of Zimmerman’s assets, so it cannot be taken away in a court decision; but dedicated to paying for his relocation, if necessary, maybe even plastic surgery, certainly a home security system and weapons.
...”This is a well-written article”...
This is about the ideology and personal political aims of the American left..Our hijacked institutions, our media, and our governments. Thank God, our legal system worked because of six women who were not willing to enter the deceit, regardless of the pressure to do so. Mom’s and those who love their Mom’s look to what will happen beyond their time through the actions of today. Today, we might look at them kind of like they are “Founding Mother’s.” I often find comfort in music because I am a musician..This a.m., I turned to one of my favorites recorded by ‘Ol Blue Eyes, himself around 1946, and the words apply today to those of us who still love America ..Please listen in honor of those six jurors who gave us a glimpse of THE HOUSE I LIVE IN, through their decision for George Zimmerman on Saturday. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuMbIZjksn4
Nice, very good article. Very good.
The same with South Africa. Blacks there were treated better than minority tribe blacks in other African countries, but the “suppressor” were “evil whites” so that got all the attention. The world is full of simple people with simplistic minds.
they can’t comprehend the bigger picture.
I can't believe how many FReepers were unaware of this "HATE" before Zer0 came to power or at least before the Zimmerman incident.
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