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Why Manipulate the Tragedy of Trayvon Martin?
National Review Online ^ | March 25, 2012 | Heather Mac Donald

Posted on 03/30/2012 11:10:18 PM PDT by neverdem

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.



TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial; US: Florida
KEYWORDS: bencrump; benjamincrump; blackkk; blackmurderrate; blackonblackcrime; florida; georgezimmerman; heathermacdonald; hoplophobe; murderrate; nationalreview; selfdefense; sharpton; statistics; trayvon; trayvonmartin; zimmerman
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To: Cboldt

Also, do we know where the father lives or how far away from the fiance and do we know where Trayvon’s cousin in that area lives and how far away?


121 posted on 03/31/2012 10:02:07 AM PDT by Netizen (Path to citizenship = Scamnesty. If you give it away, more will come.)
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To: Candor7; berdie; Avoiding_Sulla; nathanbedford; Fred Nerks; Beckwith; LucyT; mojitojoe
This is not about Martin or Zimmerman. Its about Obama.

Per berdie at #27,

I read an article (if true) that said this started with some organization at Harvard that posts on line petitions. The petition for this event was very vague in facts and garnered the attention of some high profile individuals.

Nailed it. Which "high profile individuals"?

Please note the possible Harvard connection here.

122 posted on 03/31/2012 10:13:38 AM PDT by thecodont
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To: Netizen

Why do they go back and forth between fiance and stepmother for the father’s girlfriend? Can’t the media get anything straight?

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Watch this and you’ll see why elites don’t ‘get it right’....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBFOmUXR080


123 posted on 03/31/2012 10:18:44 AM PDT by GOPJ (Democrat-Media Complex - buried stories and distorted facts... freeper 'andrew' Breitbart)
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To: Cboldt

“The story here isn’t the incident. The story here is the MEDIA. This is a huge window into the MEDIA. It lies, it obfuscates, and it agitates.”

Exactly correct! I am not taking sides on the guilt or innocence of Mr. Zimmerman. However, this “trial by media” is just plain wrong. Plus, it is screwing up any chance of a proper trial IF one is deemed as warranted by reviewing authorities.

I know little about the law, but I doubt getting a conviction of manslaughter is even possible (or warranted) based upon the evidence.

My guess is that Mr. Zimmerman will eventually be sued for “wrongful death” like the OJ case. At worst it appears to me that Mr. Zimmerman is guilty of imprudent behavior that resulted in a human life lost. However, it is so easy for me to make such calls from my armchair.

Whatever, this case is getting way too much press, and most of the press is distorting things. Trials should be in the courtroom not the press.


124 posted on 03/31/2012 10:22:38 AM PDT by Sola Veritas (Trying to speak truth - not always with the best grammar or spelling)
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To: 13Sisters76

I believe that the police report indicated the the chamber was empty and the mag was full, probably indicating that someone was holding the barrel/slide assy when it was fired. That would point to a struggle for the gun.


125 posted on 03/31/2012 10:28:02 AM PDT by Rifleman
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To: Rifleman
I'm not so sure that was in the police report released to the public. I believe it was a media story.

So, could go either way.

126 posted on 03/31/2012 10:39:41 AM PDT by 101stAirborneVet
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To: Cboldt
Then that may not be a drug reference, but actually may refer to the products. It can be tough to tell nowadays...

I have noticed the media continue to feed the situation, as if pressuring prosecution is the 'right thing' to do.

I still think if the police and DA thought there was a case against Zimmerman, it would have moved forward.

In the absence of that, the media villifying an individual (which has been done before) nationally, and using the incident to stir up broader civil unrest may be heady stuff for the media folks, but they are playing with fire.

127 posted on 03/31/2012 10:55:31 AM PDT by Smokin' Joe (How often God must weep at humans' folly. Stand fast. God knows what He is doing)
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To: neverdem
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.

Heather Mac Donald is a moral whore.

128 posted on 03/31/2012 11:16:23 AM PDT by Talisker (He who commands, must obey.)
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To: Sola Veritas
-- My guess is that Mr. Zimmerman will eventually be sued for "wrongful death" like the OJ case. --

If the shooting is ruled a justifiable use of deadly force in self defense, then Martin's family is barred from bringing a civil suit.

But I do agree that what Martin's counsel is angling for is a trial, becuiase if there is a criminal trial, then the civil suit is not barred.

129 posted on 03/31/2012 11:21:57 AM PDT by Cboldt
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To: Cboldt

The real reason that there won’t be a civil suit is because Mr. Z is a turnip from which no blood may be squeezed. Unlike Mr. Heisman Trophy.


130 posted on 03/31/2012 11:26:52 AM PDT by Last of the Mohicans
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To: Netizen
-- I didn't see where Crump is quoting Trayvon's GF about the skittles. --

Good point - on rereading the materials, I don't see it either.

See Sourcing narrative "facts" in the Martin case at legal insurrection.

Update 3-29-2012 5:30 p.m.: The Martins' attorney never responded, but a reader forwarded an email exchange he had with a Miami Herald reporter, who said that the source of the information regarding Skittles and ice tea was the former Sanford Police Chief, although I don't believe the Herald ever attributed the information to him in any of its articles.

131 posted on 03/31/2012 11:39:32 AM PDT by Cboldt
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To: Netizen
-- do we know where the father lives or how far away from the fiance and do we know where Trayvon's cousin in that area lives and how far away? --

I don't know either one of those. I've assumed that Tracy lives at the complex where Trayvon was killed, or at least that's wehre he returned after dinner the night of Feb 26th.

I assume the cousin is a reasonable drive away, but not living with Tracy, Tracy's GF, etc.

132 posted on 03/31/2012 11:42:18 AM PDT by Cboldt
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To: Cboldt

“If the shooting is ruled a justifiable use of deadly force in self defense, then Martin’s family is barred from bringing a civil suit.”

Now I’m really curious? Do the statutes in Florida barr a civil lawsuit if/when the prosecution declines to bring something to trial? Failure to prosecute is not, in my understanding, a “ruling” of justifiable homocide. It is merely a determination by a DA that it would not be easy to get a conviction and they therefore decline to prosecute. There have been cases in other states where it was a clear cut case of “justifiable homocide” but an over zealous DA prosecuted anyway. In Mr. Zimmerna’s case no judge or jury has “ruled” anything.

However, I’m not familiar with the Florida statutes or much of the law for that matter.

I do know that in my home state of OK, at one time, a “self-defense” permit was only for that purpose. Someone on a “neighborhood watch” that carried would be in deep trouble if they got into an altercation with a person they followed and then shoot even in clear cut self defense. For one, neighborhood watchers were clearly told by police they could not “carry” while doing that - even IF they had a “self-defense” permint. Basically, you had to have the cover of being a licensed and legally employed “Security Guard” to even remotely get away with use of deadly force....even then they expected a licensed and armed guard on duty to retreat and call for law enforcement unless it was not possible. Even then you were subject to prosecution.


133 posted on 03/31/2012 11:55:58 AM PDT by Sola Veritas (Trying to speak truth - not always with the best grammar or spelling)
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To: Sola Veritas
776.085 Defense to civil action for damages; party convicted of forcible or attempted forcible felony.—

(1) It shall be a defense to any (suit against Zimmerman) for damages for...wrongful death...that such (suit against Zimmerman) arose from (death) sustained by (Martin) during the commission or attempted commission of a forcible felony (by Martin). The defense authorized by this section shall be established by evidence that the participant has been convicted of such forcible felony or attempted forcible felony, or by proof of the commission of such crime or attempted crime by a preponderance of the evidence.

I inserted names and deleted non-relevant sections to make for easier reading.

134 posted on 03/31/2012 12:04:54 PM PDT by 101stAirborneVet
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To: Cboldt

“If the shooting is ruled a justifiable use of deadly force in self defense, then Martin’s family is barred from bringing a civil suit.”

I did some reading of Florida’s law, and now understand what you were talking about.


135 posted on 03/31/2012 12:07:02 PM PDT by Sola Veritas (Trying to speak truth - not always with the best grammar or spelling)
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To: Sola Veritas
-- Do the statutes in Florida barr a civil lawsuit if/when the prosecution declines to bring something to trial? --

Yes.

Oklahoma may have a duty to retreat, but even if FL had one, the fact pattern here, as told by Zimmerman, precludes retreat. The question then becomes whether or not the use of deadly force is justified for a person in his predicament.

F.S. 776.032 - JUSTIFIABLE USE OF FORCE

776.032 Immunity from criminal prosecution and civil action for justifiable use of force.--

(1) A person who uses force as permitted in s. 776.012, s. 776.013, or s. 776.031 is justified in using such force and is immune from criminal prosecution and civil action for the use of such force, unless the person against whom force was used is a law enforcement officer ...

Zimmerman's defense lies in 776.012. You can backtrack from the link above, to the various statutory provisions.

136 posted on 03/31/2012 12:11:31 PM PDT by Cboldt
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To: Sola Veritas
Basically, if Zimmerman's attorneys in a civil suit can prove by a preponderance of the evidence that Martin got on top of him such that Zimmerman couldn't get away (as at least one eyewitness stated), we would have the forcible felony of False Imprisonment and the Martin family would be barred from recovery in a wrongful death suit.

That's my reading of the statute.

137 posted on 03/31/2012 12:13:03 PM PDT by 101stAirborneVet
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To: Babba Gi
Zimmerman's life must be hell. The media should be condemned for how they portray this. They are deliberately being deceptive - the people are not getting the right info. If it weren't for FR, I wouldn't know it either. And their deliberate lack of reporting on other crimes. There should be a ban on the media - a long over ban on them.

I imagine the author never saw anyone killed by one punch.

Martin decked him with one punch that sent him to the ground and then beat his head to the ground. Martin was a violent kid, he felt no threat because there was none. At 6'2", he thought he was all big and bad. He stupidly went into a situation without a thought or care. Who knows if there is some blood clot in Zimmerman's head because of this. He should sue his parents for letting their violent kid unchaperoned.

138 posted on 03/31/2012 12:53:48 PM PDT by presently no screen name
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To: Sola Veritas; Cboldt

“The story here isn’t the incident. The story here is the MEDIA. This is a huge window into the MEDIA. It lies, it obfuscates, and it agitates.”

You are both dead on. Now what will you do with that?

Whenever I get the chance I take a hint from Orwell. But because we are not THERE yet, I do not call it the Ministry of Truth, but the Agency of Lies. On rare occasions I will abbreviate as AoL. But normally I write it out in full and freely interchange Agency of Lies with media as much as possible.

The object is not simply to make the point, which is freaking obvious to most of us. It’s to get us comfortable when we come in contact with agents of the AoL (facetiously called reporters).

“Before I answer your questions, answer mine.

How does it feel to be an agent of the most dishonest institution on the planet?

Ever heard of Winston Smith?

Don’t you know what happens to apparatchiks?’

When you find yourself in the gulag, do you think you’ll remember these words? ‘If only Stalin knew.’”


139 posted on 03/31/2012 1:14:02 PM PDT by Avoiding_Sulla (How humanitarian are "leaders" who back Malthusian, Utilitarian & Green nutcases?)
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To: neverdem
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

23% + 35% = 60%.

So what race is the other 40%. Hispanics (or are they white now)? Mixed?

140 posted on 03/31/2012 1:15:12 PM PDT by what's up
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