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.
Oops, meant DC?
"President Odinga".
'Nuff said.
I found all my information on Face Book, so it has to be true! /s
Actually, I think this is correct. IIRC, it came from one of the better FB sites.
Come to Pittsburgh PA and take advantage of the Pittsburgh Promise program for inner city students who attend the Pittsburgh Public Schools. Guaranteed $10,000 a year college sholarship for four years for students who attended since kindergarten and maintain a 2.5 grade average and 90 percent attendance. $7500 a year if you started later than kindergarten. Supported by business contributions. Suburban students not eligible even tho their parents buy from those businesses. Nobody gave me a free $40,000 scholarship and none of my relatives either, we live outside the boundaries. They gotta pay full price.
I think there are rules about barf alerts for lies of this sort.
I am an Angry American.
Like anybody gives a shit about that.
News bulletin, FRiend: there already IS an irreparable race divide. Because Odinga wants it that way.
It will guarantee his third term.
LOL
I don’t FB :)
It’s a powerful stat to have with a good reference link.
I’m itching to use that graphic elsewhere, but not without statistics backup.
“How old were his parents when he was born?”
At a very minimum, 64.
They care not about the real facts or the rule of law.
Tuff titties to this idiot. Ignorance on display is an ugly thing.
Speaking ebonically.
I am glad he is 84 instead of 24 that gives him less time to spew his bull crap.
If my calculator & I did the zeros correctly, that would be $7,000. Did she want the Federal government to put all $7,000 in one bank, or is the author using the new math that allows him to be born to former slaves?
"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."
No, but it might have caused a lot of people to laugh at the prosecution team!
"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?"
Umm...because the hoodie was entered as evidence, and it didn't have any significant blood on it, and Martin was WEARING it! Even the inner shirt Martin was wearing didn't have very much blood on it:
">
Ancestry has a Joseph DeBro, Jr., born in Mississppi in 1929 and a Joseph DeBro, Sr., born in Mississippi in 1908 or 1909. There is another Joseph DeBro listed in Mississippi who was born circa 1860, so his field hand days were short lived, lol, if they even existed.
Let’s do the math. The Civil War, and thus slavery, ended in 1865. Let’s say his parents were born just before it ended. He is 84, so he was born in 1929.
This means that both of his parents were 64 years old when he was born. So unless he was adopted, or his parents were the slaves of Arabs in Africa, he is lying.
Who said that they were slaves in the United States - a Muslim country perhaps.
If his parents were babies at the time of the civil war and even assuming they were still reproducing at the age of 48, he would have reached 84 in the 70s and would now be over 100. Maybe he meant grandmother. I sat down and figured out that my alleged great great grandmother would have had to have had my great grand father at the age of 58 for the time line to fit. My theory is that his birth mother died during the potato famine and his father remarried an older woman to take care of the four boys.
A number of Confederate vets remarried very late in life to considerably younger women to pass on their meager pensions or to be “proper” if these young ladies were their live in caregivers. Could be this guy’s father did the same and still had a bit of spry in him.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/aug/18/maudie-cecilia-hopkins-93-confederate-widow-dies/
I’m not buying this “son of slaves” malarkey.
If he is 84, he was born in 1929. The emancipaiton proclamation took effect in 1863. In order for him to have been born the son of slaves, his parents would have had to have been born into slavery in 1863 and had him when they were 66 years old. That’s the LATEST this could have happened, and his parents would never have remembered their one day of life as slaves.
“Grandson of slaves” wold have been a bit more believable, but would have also required that the average age of both his parents and grandparents have been 33 when they had children.
I strongly suspect that he is the GREAT grandson of slaves, given that the average age of first childbirth of slaves was 20 years old according to the University of Houston (source: http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/slav_fact.cfm). But being three generation removed from slavery doesn’t make for nearly as compelling a diatribe, now does it?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.