Posted on 08/17/2013 3:24:17 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
There is no question that George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin. There is no question that things would have ended better if Zimmerman had heeded counsel from 911 personnel and restrained himself from following Martin into the bowels of the residential complex. There is no question that Zimmerman had juiced himself into fear and hysteria on the speculation that Martin was “on something” and was necessarily “up to no good,” but a bag of Skittles and a can of Arizona iced tea is hardly loot from a terminating burglary.
However, there is big contention about what happened when Zimmerman caught up with Martin. Martin was dead from a single gunshot wound, and Zimmerman had a bloody nose and a bashed head back when the melee was over.
Did Martin mouth off to Zimmerman and Zimmerman collar him? Did Martin respond to the contact by coming out swinging and taking Zimmerman down, a position from which Zimmerman believed he had to shoot to survive? Like so many things, we will never know the answer to these questions.
Of course, because of Stand Your Ground and the instructions to the jury – that if Zimmerman even believed that his own life was in danger he was fully authorized, under SYG, to take Martin out. One busted nose and a bashed in head back later, Martin is dead on the ground, and there was nothing the jury, the judge, the prosecutors, the governor or riled up, disgusted and frustrated middle-class people could do about it. Zimmerman could not be convicted of even illegal parking. This is the reality – racial patronage, platitudes, sentiments, appearances, and opinions be damned.
In fact, we know now why Zimmerman was not even arrested that squally night in April 2012, and less sentimental and platitudinous thinkers are also realizing that the trial was the saber-rattling product of a voyeuristic media yearning for the days of OJ, Rodney King and a racial judicial showdown that makes good main course for Court TV and riveting courtroom drama. Newspapers must sell, and the Nielsen ratings cannot wait until tomorrow.
Trayvon was not killed because Zimmerman hates black people. Fact is that Zimmerman is just as white as Barack Obama. Zimmerman cannot claim privileges for his whiteness anywhere in America. White people have made sure that you are not white in America until both your parents are born white. In fact there was a time when you were only three-fifths of a person if you were not white. Zimmerman would have been a three-fifther – hands down.
So, without a race-based murder or a hate crime, it could well have been self-defense. Where does that leave us?
It leaves us with context. The context that Zimmerman, like millions of other Americans, might have been terrified of a young black man he met up in the dark, even as he carried the responsibility of a neighborhood watchman to find out who Martin was and why he was in the complex. If you have ever been burglarized, you would want Trayvon Martin stopped and frisked, and you would not take kindly to Zimmerman’s cowardice.
Some have pointed out that Zimmerman profiled Trayvon, but that is not news. Everyone profiles young black men because if you do not, one could make you real dead. It is how you decide if you should call the police when a battery of them loiter in your neighborhood. It is how you determine if you should hustle to your car and get out of Dodge when one with menacing countenance, disorganized dreadlocks, and gravity-controlled trousers is friend or foe.
We are left with the context that neither was Trayvon a buttoned-down A student, or at 17 years was he free of all the prerequisite calling cards of young black men who are headed to their first armed robbery.
It has become clear that Trayvon’s parents were failing to sensitize him to the dead-end life of thugism, multiple school suspensions, ganja chic, pornography, gun-modeling rabble-rousing, racist diatribes and all the other stuff that the society depends on parents to stop and stop cold – no pun.
These two parents were failing Trayvon. That is a fact. Love and parenting do not end with hugs and facilitative visits. Those are important, but surely not the whole story of child raising. Every African-American knows Trayvon Martin before he committed his first serious felony. So, why do we pretend that in America, today, the die had not been cast for Zimmerman to have serious misgiving about Trayvon’s presence in the community – even withstanding the instructions from 911?
Do not forget that the backdrop to Zimmerman’s intensity was a rash of community burglaries, from which young black men were seen running away.
Do we chalk it up as bad luck if we go out to march for Trayvon Martin and come back home to find that young black men, like Trayvon Martin, have ransacked our homes looking for flat screens, jewelry, cash, and Xboxes?
Do we say “this is different,” if we go out and march for Trayvon Martin’s memory but are carjacked by young black men, like Trayvon Martin, as we pump gas?
The answer lies in getting real about the context of Trayvon Martin’s death.
There will be more Trayvon Martins as long as we continue to avoid these contexts.
The author
You don’t “reach people” by re-enforcing their misinformation. The only way these people will be reached if for the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons to stand up and say “George Zimmerman did nothing wrong.”
I wonder what actually did happen at that store. Did I read that TM met with kids outside the store after he made his purchases, and exchanged some bills?
Good essay. Author is sure to be denounced by his bruthuhs.
Exactly.
“St. Tray shoulda called 911 on Zimmermann instead of talkin’ to his “GF”
May be off topic, or maybe not. But, after a couple of bad results, I no longer call the cops. Seems to do more harm than good. Folks need to be responsible for themselves and their loved ones. Just an opinion. Ya’ll can take it for what it’s worth. Lot’sa luck.....
I was being facetious. There's no way druggie Tray was going to call the popos on himself. But it would be the leftist Politically Correct response (get the gov't to take care of you).
Best to throw that thinking back at The Left.
Trayvon himself is also responsible for his choices and his behaviour and his crimes. Who knows, Trayvon could've killed Zimmerman. He could've gone on for a long and violent criminal career. That was his life trajectory.
Chances are, Zimmerman would still have been found not guilty without the Stand Your Ground law.
SYG was not a factor.
Zimmerman was on his back with Martin on top pummelling his skull into the pavement.
How the Hell could he have retreated?
if Zimmerman had heeded counsel from 911 personnel and restrained himself from following Martin into the bowels of the residential complex
I saw a comment that claimed the housing complex was NOT located between the store and Martin’s father’s house. In other words, Martin had to go out of his way to pass through this area.
Is there any truth in this?
Tray's Bio Dad lived in Miami.
His alleged GF was living in Zimmermann's complex in Sanford.
Remember that St. Tray's bio Dad has a 1-yr old boy by some (yet another) woman. Great family life.
I think the 3/5ths rule was a yankee born way to keep the number of representatives in the house of reps in check and lower the number from the Southern states when suddenly they had 4 million new citizens in a country of 20 million residents.
That sounds a lot like how the Democrats want to count illegal immigrants in the Census.
“So what if they’re criminal invaders; they deserve representation!”
“I was being facetious. There’s no way druggie Tray was going to call the popos on himself”
Yea, I know. And I was probably off topic. Just kinda FYI for those, and they are many, who believe calling the cops actually solves your problems. It doesn’t. Just ask George. Or me...
The author makes quite a few ignorant statements, but this one is his worst: “In fact there was a time when you were only three-fifths of a person if you were not white.” What the Constitution said was that persons who were neither free nor indentured servants (in other words, slaves) would count as 3/5 pf a person for allocation of Representatives (and electoral votes). That was an *anti-slavery* provision that was a compromise struck after Northern states wanted slaves not to count towards apportionment, while slave states wanted slaves to count the same as all other persons. Bottom line, free persons and indentured servants, irrespective of race, counted the same for apportionment, and the 3/5ths clause was an anti-slavery provision.
There is no question that things would have ended better if Zimmerman had heeded counsel from 911 personnel and restrained himself from following Martin into the bowels of the residential complex.
I bet a lot of other people did, too. It wasn't "counsel" (Although that's better than the usual "ordered" that usually goes here), it wasn't 911 personnel and he was already "in the bowels of the residential complex" when he was told he didn't need to follow.
That's a spew of three lies in the second sentence. Gotta be a useless article. A quick scroll to the Posting link revealed the picture that makes the uselessness a certainty.
Heh. I posted before I saw yours.
Well written. Good analysis. The author keeps it real.
You need to re-read it. He meant Zimmerman’s “cowardice” if he hadn’t investigated an intruder like Trayvon.
Try again, the article as a whole is really quite amazing.
He only “followed” him (not into the depths of anything) because he was trying to tell 911 which way he was going and the house number. Then he turned around and it was when he was walking back to his car that St Trayvon attacked him.
But aside from that, I think if Zimmerman had seen a skinny, shaven-headed white kid with tats on his neck (typical white gang-banger down here in Florida) wearing a hoodie and checking out the windows, he would have called 911 as well.
Color had nothing to do with it: it was behavior and general appearance, and in the case of Martin, both of those looked pretty typical of somebody up to no good.
Or perhaps fortunate for Zimmerman that the race based lynching didn’t take, in part because of his mixed heritage, his history of tutoring black students, his community activist work trying to achieve some degree of accountability for the local police department that assaulted a homeless man.
It would be nice if race didn’t matter. Let me know where such a place is.
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