Are you as tired of hearing the endlessly nasty hysteria over the George Zimmerman trial as I am?
Here’s the problem: George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin are not the issue at all. They’re stand-ins for the issue: icons, if you will.
The real subject — and the one we as a nation should be addressing — has to do with the practical results of poverty, unemployment, and discrimination for Blacks and for our entire culture.
We can jump up and down and yell about the killing of Trayvon Martin until we all turn blue, but nothing that’s done about it will change the larger, horrific facts:
• Unemployment among adult Black men is still at 13.2 percent, far above the 7.5 percent rate for the population at large.
• Poverty is still widespread among Black Americans.
• Incarceration and “correctional” supervision stand at an astronomical rate among Black adult men.
• Life expectancy for African Americans lags behind that of their fellow citizens because of poor education and poverty.
• The first Black president of the United States, a man of enormous talent and accomplishment, can say with sincerity that he identifies with a kid who dresses up in hoodlum attire and covers his face with a “hoodie”; and when our president says that, he, too, expresses the pain of discrimination and poverty.
Those are the issues America should be addressing. The Zimmerman trial is a distraction.
Personally, I respect the President and hear his grief in his words. However, that doesn’t change the fact that when I pull up to a red light in a blighted neighborhood (which, because of the poverty rate among African Americans, is likely to be home to a larger proportion of Blacks than in other areas), yes: I invariably check that the car doors are locked. If I’ve carelessly left them unlocked, you bet I’ll hit the lock, and I DON’T CARE if it hurts anyone’s feelings.
On three different occasions, strangers have tried to enter my car at stop lights, once when I had a small child in the car with me. Sorry if it makes you feel bad, but my safety is more important than your feelings.
After the lynch mob settles down, those of us who do feel sorry that the present state of affairs harms a large part of our population need to work together to eliminate poverty and the crime, discrimination, despair, and blight that come with it.
That’s what people are really talking about when they carry on about George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin. White folks may not know it, but black folks surely intuit it. Together, we must face that reality.
I applaud your bravery for tackling this subject…it certainly is a hot button for many folks….and there seems to be no middle ground. My take is…we will really never know what happened that night. And it happened so fast Mr. Zimmerman probably can’t tell you with certanly what happened and in what order. IMHO what you had was an angry young man that had recently been shuffled off to his Dad because of behavioral problems with the hope that a change of scenery and some adult male supervision would help “right the ship”. Add to that Mr. Zimmerman… a frustrated citizen growing tired of crime in his community…who decided to be proactive by joining the neighborhood watch and getting a permit to carry. My thought is there is plenty of blame to go around. How hard would it have been for Mr. Zimmerman to ask if he could help Mr. Martin ….as he seemed confused and unfamilar with the neighborhood. And how hard would it have been for Mr. Martin to respond that he was visiting his Dad..had just picked up some snacks and would be OK finding his way back to his Dad’s place….and thanking Mr. Zimmerman for his concern. Instead the lack of communication leaves a young man dead…Mr. Zimmerman’s life ruined…and led a President to over step his authority by way of “the bully pulpit” to comment …even challenge a decison by the Judicial Branch” of the goverment of a sovereign state….not a fan. I eagerly look forward to Mr. Obama’s retirement…just my 2 cents….
Agreed that the movement to overturn the decision of a duly appointed jury is an attempt at lynch-mob justice, given that the jurors a) were duly appointed, b) were not corrupt, and c) evidently came to a carefully considered conclusion based on the evidence they were given.
My point is, the issue is NOT these two guys. They have rather little to do with the problem, other than representing a flash point.
The issue is the poverty and yes, the discrimination that America as a collective society just doesn’t seem to be able to address. We’ve de-institutionalized bigotry by striking down Jim Crow laws, by integrating our schools, and by (until recently) working for equal employment and housing opportunities, but we still haven’t made it go away. The fact that we all seem to think Mr. Zimmerman is “white” should tell us that, even if we’re too obtuse to figure it out from the appalling facts of African-American life.
Maybe I’m not being explicit enough about causes and effects here.
Discrimination as it is practiced in our country and elsewhere causes poverty.
Poverty is an absolute evil. It causes hunger. It causes poor health. It causes psychological illness. It causes abuse. It causes violence. It causes crime. It causes exploitation. It causes untold misery. In a country like the United States, which has been the richest country in the world for generations, there’s simply no excuse for poverty. In a country that would like to think of itself as one of the best educated in the world, there’s no excuse for mindless discrimination.
Given that we have allowed an unsupportable situation to continue for generations, it’s not surprising that large numbers of people who see themselves (correctly, by and large) as its targets should coalesce around an iconic incident to express their frustration and outrage.
All Americans of good will should be frustrated and outraged. But we misdirect our anger by aiming it at a symbol of the situation, rather than at the situation itself.
I saw a documentary the other night called “The House I Live In” …. and it really made me think. The fact is, we are ALL pawns in this country, some certainly moreso than others, but nonetheless exploited and pushed around by clueless and crooked ‘politicians’ and banksters to meet agendas that we often know nothing about.
Well, certainly those of us who do drugs and deal drugs are.
We also now have an irrationally punitive prison system that essentially dooms anyone who’s sent to jail, permanently, for the rest of the person’s life — your chances of escaping the quicksand are almost nil.
A friend’s son was forced to plead guilty to having sex with a girl who was three days under the age of consent (when he met her in a bar she was carrying fake ID that persuaded the barkeep she was 21). If you refuse to plead guilty, they charge you with a sex crime for every place on the girl’s body that you touch — he was looking at a sentence of 111 years in jail for placing his hands on 11 spots on her well-experienced body.
Having copped a plea, he’ll get out sooner, but as a convicted “sex offender” (which is just absurd), his life is ruined. And the chances that he’ll stay out of prison? Extremely low: they set up all sorts of unreasonable traps designed to send you back to jail.
This was a middle-class young man in college.
We really need to wake up to the horrific social issues this country faces…and maybe smell enough coffee to figure out that jailing more citizens than any other developed nation in the world is not the answer to those issues.
Nope, not in agreement with you, Funny.
Although, yes, I am tired of hearing about this case.
No one seems to care about the very young children murdered here in the Minneapolis area, by other blacks, or the people murdered in Chicago where your president is most recently from. Where are Obama’s tears for these dead people? Or is it only when a non-black kills that we must cry out for some trumped up definition of justice beyond a jury trial?!
But don’t you hear the meanness in this kind of language? The President of the United States is YOUR president as well as my president: he is OUR president, just as the two Bush presidents, whom I personally regarded as destructive, were OUR presidents. They were, with the exception of George the Younger, duly elected by the people of the United States. As members of a republic, we agree to go along with that.
We can’t withdraw from the republic just because we’re members of a political party that is not in power just this moment.
If we can’t work together as a people, we will never solve this country’s problems, which are getting worse as the hours pass.
I hear this kind of language every time I read the hateful comments on news reports of the Zimmerman case and every time I read the hateful comments — yes, probably posted by teenagers and mental defectives, but still expressive of a point of view — on any news article that involves someone identified as a minority or anyone with an odd-sounding name that suggests the person is Black. I hear it every time discussion of an improved health care system comes up. I hear it every time the subject of women’s reproductive rights arises.
I’m sick and tired of it.
The point I made in my post and also in my comments is that I do care very much about “the very young children murdered here in the Minneapolis area, by other blacks, or the people murdered in Chicago,” and everywhere else in this nation. Please take the time to read and think about what I said.
It’s a culture thing that started with LBJ’s new deal.
Wonder why Travon Martin’s mother had a different last name as well as the child of the girlfriend Tracy Martin was staying with in Sanford?
If they are single mom’s they get more welfare.
All Trayvon had to do was go home and mix up his skittles and watermelon drink with some Robitussin and make some ‘lean’ and get high.
Instead he chose not to and picked a fight with Zimmerman and ended up dead.
I have a few black friends that are educated and they say the ‘nigger’ got what he deserved.
The New Deal was Franklin Roosevelt’s agenda. LBJ had the Great Society. Can you clarify what you mean by “a culture thing” and explain how it relates to either of those two programs?
Unclear how the parents’ living arrangements are relevant to what went on between the two men. If Mr. Martin’s parents made their money by, say, selling sugar-laced drinks and junk food to small children or by marketing cigarettes, would that make Mr. Martin himself less suspect?
You’re probably thinking about a concoction that’s commonly called “Purple Drank.” It’s made with prescription codeine cough medicine, not with OTC Robitussin. Over-the-counter Robitussin’s only active ingredient is guaifenisen, which has no psychoactive effect either on its own or combined with sugar. Where do people get ideas like this?
Some pharmacies in some states sell Robitussin AC over the counter. This variant contains a small amount of codeine; it’s available only in four-ounce containers, and you have to prove you’re 18 or, in some states, 21 to buy it. Codeine is a Schedule V drug, meaning that in some jurisdictions it can be sold OTC. The states that allow over-the-counter sales of Schedule V drugs are Illinois, Ohio, North Carolina, Washington State, and Massachusetts. That doesn’t seem to include Florida.
Being “educated” does not give one license to use a pejorative, racist term, no matter what the color of your skin happens to be.
Other questions? 🙂
On the other paw or hoof the violence in Chicago is black on black and where are Jessie the Reverend Jackson and the Rev Al Sharpton on this issue when all these ‘gang’ members are shot every week there?
They are quiet as a church mouse. No marches, no protests zip, nada kruno, bupkis, they don’t care.
Their job is just to keep stirring the racial pot until is boils over and this is what Obama wants.
Clear your mind and study history.
“On the other paw”? Hey, is this OUR George? Dude! Where have you been all this time???
Sorry about my confusion about the new deal and the great society, both were government programs that congress set in place or fixed and then never looked back.
As for your pejorative comment, yes the educated black men I know will always call them ‘niggers’.
They guy that invented that little tooth harp thing that you floss your teeth with is one of my educated black friends.
I just wanted to point out one thing about the black culture, the unemployment rate, the black on black crime and why Al Sharpton can’t form a complete sentence when he’s on MSNBC.
As you know I’m pretty much a poster boy for being a libertarian and I do believe in a stand your ground law and if someone was slamming my head on a concrete sidewalk and if I had a knife of even (my god) a gun I’d kill him to save my life.
I’d rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6.
Guilty.
The ISP I worked for got bought by a Gordon Gecko company and they asked me to stay on for the transition. How long I asked. 6 months they said so I did the math and thought 6 months wouldn’t effect my early retirement.
That was one issue.
The next issue was their support for me. This transition was a rocky road and when I asked for anything it fell on deaf ears.
I told them, I have 1500 customers that have my cell phone number and they are calling me and I am calling you about problems and nothing is getting fixed.
They know me, know where I live.
Some is going to come and burn down my barn I told told them.
Mid July I told them to go suck on a bug. I quit, my last day is July 26.
The Mrs. also quit and that’s a good thing, I didn’t want her running out of the office with her hair on fire.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Now that’s more information that most people need to know but I have principles and I won’t work for a company that does business like this.
I had to abdicate.
Poverty may be the problem, but money doesn’t cure it.
@Anne Poverty is a problem and our president has done nothing to fix it except bail out the unions and the banks. He just goes on about his business and campaigns every day. It’s like he is so disassociated from his job he can’t see the forest through the trees or he just does not care.
He and his family will just take another vacation, costing us taxpayers millions. In my mind Eddie Murphy could replace Obama and no one would notice.
I want my country back and I hope you do also.