Posted on 08/04/2013 2:18:00 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
I am an 84-year-old angry Black man. I am Mississippi born, Mississippi bred and Mississippi fled. I am the son of former slaves. My parents and I rode in the back of the bus. We rode in the front of the trains. We drank from water fountains designated for coloreds only. We picked cotton in fields owned by White people.
My parents attended separate but equal schools in Mississippi. I attended separate but equal schools in Mississippi and in Oakland, California. My wife was educated in Oakland public schools and at the University of California at Berkeley. She could not get a job teaching in Oakland Public schools in Oakland in 1954. I hold an undergraduate and a graduate degree from the University of California at Berkeley. I was profiled at a Washington, D.C., hotel in 2010, forced to sleep in a homeless shelter overnight.
I saw nothing in the Zimmerman case that surprised me. The system worked as it was intended. Zimmerman, a White man, was tried by a White justice system for killing a Black boy. The outcome was predictable. Many White people saw this as a non-racial event.
The O.J. Simpson jury found for the defense. The jury found reasonable doubt. The George Zimmerman jury found for the defense. The six White women on the jury found reasonable doubt. Zimmerman admitted that he killed Trayvon Martin. Simpson denied that he killed anyone. The press excoriated the Simpson jury. The Zimmerman jury was praised.
In both cases, the state presented weak cases. There are lessons to be learned from both cases. Laws are made to control the actions of people who can’t afford to break them. Both Simpson and Zimmerman bought as much justice as they needed. Their jurors were presented with reasonable doubt.
In the Zimmerman case, there are some facts that concerned citizens should understand. George Zimmerman is White. The juror of unknown ethnicity is White. The police who refused to arrest Zimmerman and who testified for him were White. The judge, and the prosecution were White. Every critical function carried on in that justice system was performed by a White person. Such is the case in almost every trial or plea bargaining case involving a Black man in this country.
George has been described as Hispanic. That does not mean that he is not White. The term Hispanic is a political designation that describes national origin, not race. Hispanic is a protected designation under our civil rights laws, but the term is not racial. I would guess that George Zimmerman, on his driver’s license under race, is designated White.
The most important fact to know is that the prosecution worked as hard for George Zimmerman as they did for the state of Florida. The prosecution did not challenge the lack of Afro Americans on the jury. The prosecution did not present its own theory of the case; it reacted to Zimmerman’s story of the case.
The prosecution’s case should have been presented on the theory that the wounds displayed by Zimmerman were self-inflicted. Zimmerman inflicted those wounds on himself. Zimmerman knew enough about the law to know he needed such wounds. Such a prosecution theory would have forced the defense to defend against this theory, and it might have caused Zimmerman to testify.
Instead, the prosecution introduced a tape made by the Zimmerman defense. The prosecution should have fought to keep that tape out of the trial. In a just world this prosecutor would be disbarred for malpractice.
The second worst flaw in the prosecution’s case was their failure to challenge Zimmerman’s voice recognition by his friends and relatives. The prosecution needed to recode several voices saying what Zimmerman was alleged to have yelled on the 911 tapes, replay them and ask each of the witnesses to identify the Zimmerman voice.
The third flaw by the prosecution was to bring in a skinny dummy. They should have brought in a live person of the same height and weight as Zimmerman and required that person to pull his gun with Trayvon on top of him. The prosecution should have punctured a heart with Trayvon on top to test blood spatter. If Zimmerman had a broken nose, who repaired it?
Finally, if Trayvon was on top of Zimmerman when he was shot in the heart, why was there no blood of Martin’s on Zimmerman’s clothes? Why was this question not asked at trial?
The justice system worked as it is designed to do. The system exonerated a White man who admitted killing a Black boy. The Justice Department will not bring an action in this case. Just because the man who heads it is Black does not mean he runs it. DOJ is a system that runs the same no matter who is at the top.
Racism is structured into most of the important systems in this country.
1.Communications – 99% of the TV, radio and print media properties are owned by White people.
2.Construction – 99% of the construction in this country is done by White people.
3.Education – 99% of all educational resources are allocated by White people.
4.Transportation – 99% of all transportation is controlled by White people.
5.Justice – this system is 99.9% controlled by White people.
6.Financial – this system is 99.9 % controlled by white people.
When Congresswomen Maxine Waters asked that 0.000001 percent of the $700 billion bailout money go to banks owned or controlled by descendants of former slaves, they tried to put her in jail.
If we think that we get fair treatment in any of these systems, we must re-examine our definition of fairness.
As an angry old Black man I have seen the diminution of racism in my lifetime. We are not there yet. It is unlikely that we will get there in the lifetime of my grandchildren.
****
Joseph Debro is president of Bay Area Black Builders and of Transbay Builders, a general engineering contractor, former director of the California state Office of Small Business, co-founder of the National Association of Minority Contractors and a bio-chemical engineer. He can be reached at transbay@netzero.com.
Case in point re “It’s up to you.”
I had a friend, older than I, who died last year. He was originally from S. Korea and arrived on the left coast with $9.00 in his pockets.
During one of our early encounters I asked him about a fancy college-looking ring on his right hand. When I asked about it he took it off and handed it to me. It was his Ph.D ring from Stanford. He was retired from his position as a professor at Georgetown......and the best part was that he was a Reagan loving Conservative. Dr. Leo Min.
A person can be as successful in this Country as one has gumption enough to WORK for......Granted Mr. Min got help along the way, simply because he was a minority student. But look at all that’s available to be showered upon blacks, and yet most of THEM p!$$ it away protesting and pursuing meaningless crappy curricula!
He writes well. I guess those separate but equal schools actually gave him an education. If he had gone to an integrated school today he wouldn’t know how to read and write. Especially in cursive.
In the first place there was no such thing as “separate but equal” schools in CA at any time. CA had neighborhood schools in the 1950s in every jurisdiction, and he would have gone to the school that served his neighborhood.
Did you see the links to FR?
My advice. GET OVER IT!
His mother would have to have been around 64+ if she was born in 1865. That’s according to White math though.
Many who did own slaves only had one or two and they were more like apprentices in small businesses, many of them used their skills to have their own business after being freed. The slave owning master of a large plantation with a village of slaves was an incredibly small number.
more likely Obamma mamba jamma lenin Khomeini on one of his schizophrenic normalities..
and even a few of them were black
Couldn’t find a room in a city where a majority of residents are black?
So Zimmerman and OJ Simpson are comparable? Self defense and cold-blooded murder become the same through racist glasses?
That kind of anger cannot be assuaged by any word, deed, or law. His accusations are fueled by racism. He cannot see that HE is the racist here because he has never gotten over the slights or misdeeds against him during HIS life.
Sad.
Same here. Mother was raised in Georgia. She picked cotton, too. I guess my mother and I are victims of white racists and deserve lifelong money.
Why is it that many blacks cannot make it without white man’s money?
Both he and his wife have degrees from UC Berzerkly.
They are two very lucky black people if what he says is true.
Sounds as if he's doing pretty well for himself. How did the white man let him become so successful? Some of our best racists weren't able to stop him!! /sarc. He's doing better than a WHOLE lot of white people.
What has he done to teach his secrets of success to black kids in school? Has he ever gone into the schools to see the way the black kids act?
Perhaps his parents were 20th century slaves in Africa. I have read that African slavery today is larger than worldwide slaver in the 18th century.
So, his grandparents had to be in their mid 40’s when they had his parents, and have been infant slaves, to even make his grandparents slaves.
So what this 84 year old man means when he says that his “parents were slaves” is that his great grandparents might have been slaves, but that his great great grandparents probably were, and that his great great great grandparents almost certainly were.
WOW! that is some testament of bonafide blackness.
As far as I can tell, it's called the "Army Corps of Engineers", not "Engineering".
When people get small details wrong, it is sometimes a sign that they are lying.
Thanks, very good article, thanks for sharing it with us.
Well... He didn't say his parents were slaves in Amerixa. Given that there are slaves today in Muslim countries, and in Africa....
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