A Tale Of Two Killings

It was the worst of times…

We don’t know why two white men decided to go to the black side of Tulsa, Oklahoma this past Friday on a shooting spree to randomly kill black people.  Nineteen year old Jake England and thirty two year old Alvin Watts climbed into their pickup truck, took a quick drive to the north side of town, and shot five unarmed black men.  Three of the five men were fatally wounded.  The two men have been charged and are expected to face three counts of first degree murder and two cases of shooting with the intent to kill.  The two men were arrested at their home on Sunday following an anonymous tip.

The three dead black men have been identified as forty nine year old Dannaer Fields, fifty four year old Bobby Clark, and thirty one year old William Allen.  None of the victims are believed to have known each other or the assailants.  All of the victims were simply out walking, minding their own business, when the two white men drove up and shot them.  Although the reason for the shooting has yet to be determined for sure, Tulsa police have said that based on Jake England’s Facebook postings he may have been seeking revenge for his father’s death two years ago.  On Thursday, Jake England posted an update that blamed the death of his father, Carl England, on a black man.  Jake also used a derogatory racial slur to reference black people.  Alvin Watts was Jake’s roommate.

Because some people might think that black people will use any excuse to protest, it should be noted that nobody from the black community is marching in the streets looking for national attention to help shame the authorities into doing their job to bring the perpetrators of this crime to justice.  It looks like the police are already doing their job and need no prompting from anyone.  Tulsa Police Chief Chuck Jordan promised that his officers would do whatever it took to apprehend those responsible for these vicious and cowardly attacks.  The police have their suspects in custody and the investigation is continuing without any signs of abating three days later.

Now compare that to the investigation of the Trayvon Martin killing that happened more than six weeks ago in Sanford, Florida.  On Sunday, February 26th, the Sanford police arrived at the site of nineteen year old Trayvon’s murder with his killer George Zimmerman still on the scene with a nine millimeter pistol in hand.  Less than eight hours after Trayvon’s death, George Zimmerman was told that he was free to go home and he could take his murder weapon home.  The authorities in Sanford, Florida made public statements that the investigation was concluded because there was insufficient evidence to contradict Mr. Zimmerman’s claim that he had to defend himself when the young black teenager lost his mind and used a bag of Skittles and a can of iced tea to attack the man holding a pistol.  The police wrapped their investigation up in a record seven hours and some change.

In response to the authorities’ rush to acquittal, the family of Trayvon Martin started asking questions, and the answers that were given simply didn’t add up.  It wasn’t until the recordings from Mr. Zimmerman’s calls to the emergency operators were made public weeks later did we become fully aware of the travesty of this injustice.  And the authorities in Florida continued to drag their feet and dismiss any call to reopen the investigation or to bring charges against Mr. Zimmerman.  Recognizing a possible case of racial disparity, protests led primarily by the black community erupted in Sanford, in Florida, throughout the country, and around the world.

In response to the protest, supporters of Mr. Zimmerman accused the black community of its own special brand of racism.  Black people were only using the death of Trayvon Martin as an excuse to inject racism into a case that has nothing to do with race.  But it is hard to accept that preposterous contention given America’s history of racism in matters of law.  When was the last time a black man was allowed to go home with his murder weapon after he told police that he had just killed someone?  Long before Mr. Zimmerman picked up his cell phone to report a black suspicious character walking down the street this case oozed with racism.

Six weeks after George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin, the police in Tulsa, Oklahoma nabbed two white men suspected of killing five black men.  This appears to be another obvious case of white on black crime.  Except that this white on black crime isn’t being augmented by the criminal collaboration of the authorities trying to aid the perpetrator by claiming there isn’t enough evidence to charge anybody with anything.

The people in Tulsa obviously recognize a crime when they see one.  And people in the black community recognize justice being done and when it is not.  Even though some really sick and hateful white people went on a rampage to kill black people, the black community is more than willing to let justice do its thing.  We may not like the result, but that’s part of the risk of our legal system and justice system.  Even though it clearly favors white people with its heavy hand against black people, we have no choice but to go along for this racially disparate ride.  We accept that.

But when people who are trusted to uphold the law, when our authorities actively do their best to keep the wheels of justice from working, when people in the black community see a return to the days when people who are charged to protect us would look the other way while black people are being murdered right before our eyes, everyone with a reasonable sense of fairness, law, and order should be concerned and demand that justice be given a fair shot to set things right.  It’s not a black and white thing.  It’s a right and wrong thing.

Payback

“O.J. Simpson” – by Scott in a response to the article, If Zimmerman Was Black

Scott didn’t say why he felt the need to reply with the name of O.J. Simpson.  I can only make an assumption.  So I’m assuming that Scott wants to say that because Mr. Simpson was charged for the death of his wife and his wife’s associate just five days after their murders were discovered, when he went to jail and stayed there until his murder trial was over, faced a jury of his peers, and was eventually found not guilty, the injustice in Sanford, Florida with George Zimmerman being allowed to go home with his murder weapon in hand after police showed up at the scene of Trayvon Martin’s death and declared the case closed after less than eight hours of investigation is somehow justified.  The racial context is self evident.  White people felt that a black man got away with murder so it’s only fair that black people now feel that a white man is getting away with murder.  White people felt robbed of fairness eighteen years ago.  It’s only fair that black people get robbed today.  It’s only an assumption, but I do believe it is an appropriate one.

Six weeks and counting, George Zimmerman is walking around free as a bird and is amassing a group of supporters to counter the protest for his arrest that’s being led primarily by the black community.  Because so many black people are outraged over the fact that Trayvon’s murder was dismissed so quickly by the authorities as they tried to sweep everything under the proverbial rug, a number of white people have taken up the defense of Mr. Zimmerman.  Black people are accused of trying to inject racism into the picture.  But people conveniently forget that the picture in question is already painted on the landscaped canvas of America already covered thick with brush strokes of racism from industrial grade sized rollers.

Mr. Simpson wasn’t a man who lived as a member of the black community.  He spent his life amongst the people who loved him most, the white community.  These were the people who made Mr. Simpson a football star, who then decided to put him into their movies, and bought all of his high priced football paraphernalia that made O.J. a member of the well to do.  When his wife was murdered, the people who supported him for so long attacked him for his otherness.  He was a black man privileged to live well in the upper crust whites and the white community felt betrayed by him.  A black man isn’t allowed to kill a white woman no matter what may have happened.  Mr. Simpson could’ve pleaded all day long that he was just trying to defend himself, but that defense would’ve held up like wet tissue paper on the ass of somebody suffering from dysentery.  Mr. Simpson was charged, tried, and not convicted.

Let’s say for the sake of argument that Mr. Simpson did get away with a crime he committed.  Even if that may have been the case, what does that have to do with Trayvon?  As far as we know the young black teenager didn’t even know O.J. Simpson.  So why would so many people who were outraged at the injustice of Mr. Simpson getting away with murder be pushing for the world to accept the injustice of George Zimmerman getting away with murder?  At least O.J. Simpson was charged.  We are still waiting for George Zimmerman to face his day in court.  Some people want to argue that the murder of Trayvon was justified despite the fact that the teenager was walking home unarmed when Zimmerman decided to get out of his car with his nine millimeter, chase Trayvon down even though he was told not to, and pulled the trigger shooting Trayvon to death under very suspicious circumstances.  But even if that is the case and the murder of Trayvon was justified according to law, let Mr. Zimmerman be judged by a jury of his peers in a courtroom like O.J. Simpson was.

We already know that the judicial system is unfair.  We have lived with the racial disparity of our courtrooms for years.  It’s one of the reasons that so many black people felt vindicated when Mr. Simpson was declared not guilty by his peers.  It may not have been right.  But after so many generations of black people being unfairly convicted in court in so many different reenactments of To Kill a Mockingbird, it was a surprise to see a black man emerge from a courtroom a free man when so many white people wanted his conviction.  The white community gave O.J. Simpson all the tools he needed to obtain some semblance of justice.  The white community made O.J. Simpson a very wealthy man with notoriety that he used to his advantage.  It may not have ended the way all of us may have liked.  But the man had his day in court and was found not guilty.

It is intolerable for people to think that it is okay for Zimmerman’s crime to go without prosecution because of what happened with O.J. Simpson almost two decades ago.  The only thing Trayvon Martin and O.J. Simpson have in common is the color of their skin.  In fact, O.J. Simpson has more in common with George Zimmerman.  But of these men were suspected of committing crimes.  And both of them need to go to court, explain themselves, and face the judge and jury.  Mr. Simpson faced that music eighteen years ago just five days after the murder he was suspected of committing.  It has been six weeks and George Zimmerman is still a free man.  Even if people didn’t think justice was properly dispensed eighteen years ago, it is not an excuse to circumvent justice today.

And lastly, if we are going to say that a black teenager’s murder is payback for O.J. Simpson eighteen years ago, then people from the white community should never complain about the injustice of holding America liable for the enslavement of black people and the denial of justice that has led to the unfairness of America today with respect to the black community.  If you can argue that Trayvon’s murder is payback because of the unfairness of O.J., if Trayvon must pay the price because of what somebody else has done back in the day, then it should be acceptable for America to pay the price of what America did back in the day to the black community that has led to the racial disparity that allows some of us to actually support the murder of our young black people.  And we all know that’s never going to happen.

Just A Coincidence

A few months ago when conservative presidential hopeful and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich was enjoying a resurgence in popularity and was looking forward to a real chance to win the Republican nomination, Mr. Gingrich made the comment that he would be happy to go to the NAACP convention to tell black people why they should want a paycheck instead of food stamps.  Many people in the black community took exception to his statement and it briefly became a hot topic in media circles.  A high profile white conservative was asked her opinion on the matter.  She dismissed the issue as nothing important.  In her opinion, people were always trying to inject irrelevant issues into politics.  There were more important things to discuss than black people’s feelings.

The racial divide in America is wider now than it has been in many years.  Too often people in the black community are given the impression that their concerns aren’t worth examination by the larger national community.  An insinuation is made that black people need to change their focus from getting government welfare and instead focus their invention on developing a decent work ethic.  From a black perspective Mr. Gingrich’s suggestion is a clear indication of a potential racial prejudice.  What is he saying about black people?  But to many people, there is nothing to see here.  It’s not like Mr. Gingrich said all black people needed to develop a work ethic.  His statement about black people was only aimed at black people who want to be career welfare recipients.  Nobody said that all black people are lazy and are waiting for a handout.  The resemblance to a nationally recognized negative racial stereotype of black people is supposed to be purely coincidental.

But it is worth noting how many times conservatives appear insensitive to issues pertaining to the black community.  Out of the final four conservative presidential contenders, three have made blatant racially prejudiced statements against black people.  We’ve already talked about Newt.  When he was in Iowa, Rick Santorum stood before a predominantly white audience and said that he didn’t want to make black people’s lives better by taxing hardworking people.  And Ron Paul published a newsletter that regularly trashed black people with comments like black people will only stop rioting when it is time for them to pick up their welfare checks.  Too many white people and others who are insensitive to issues pertaining to black people won’t give a second thought to such racism.  In fact, they’re more likely to support such racially charged assertions through tolerance or outright agreement.  These are the types of people that will accuse people in the black community of trying to inject race into things that don’t even remotely look racist.

The latest example of such racial insensitivity comes with the murder of the unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin by self appointed neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman and the potentially bungled investigation by the authorities in Sanford, Florida.  Citing Florida’s stand your ground law, the police allowed Mr. Zimmerman to go home without being charged or held in custody because a lack of evidence to counter his claim that the dead black teenager had attacked him and Mr. Zimmerman shot the young man carrying Skittles out of fear for his life.  The Sanford police had wrapped up their investigation and nothing was going to change their conclusion.  But a lot of evidence has come to light that supports charging Mr. Zimmerman with a crime and having him face a jury of his peers.  Yet, almost six weeks later, Mr. Zimmerman remains a free man.  The local police have proven themselves worthless in determining exactly what happened the night that Trayvon was shot.

Many people in America are outraged over the lack of justice for Trayvon Martin.  In fact, many people around the world are horrified over the injustice in Sanford, Florida.  And yet, too many conservatives not only defend Mr. Zimmerman and the inaction of the Sanford police, but blame the people in the black community for trying to make the killing of Trayvon Martin a racial issue despite the fact that from the very first call Mr. Zimmerman made to emergency operators the moment he saw Trayvon the night he was walking home and wound up dead, George Zimmerman admitted that he had no reason to suspect Trayvon of anything other than the fact that he was black.

Almost six weeks after he murdered Trayvon Martin and the police closed their investigation with a conclusion of a justified homicide, the black community is seriously pushing hard for justice.  A young black man was murdered and a known murderer walks amongst us.  And it is hard to ignore the fact that if Trayvon was as white as Opie Taylor and George Zimmerman was as black as O.J. Simpson, somebody would have been in jail a very long time ago despite some law that says it’s okay to kill people if there is even a remote perception of danger.  But that’s just another attempt to inject race into a matter where race is not relevant.  It’s just a coincidence that a white man goes untried for the murder of a young black man.

For way too many people, the problem isn’t that a man who admitted killing someone is walking free and has yet to fact their day in a court of law.  The real problem is that black people want to convict Mr. Zimmerman in the court of public opinion.  But these people forget that if the Sanford authorities had done their job the way they should have, the subject would be moot because there would be no anger over a man who was given a free pass for his crime.   These same people who will say the wheels of justice turn slowly and people need to just be patient.  But in this case, it looks like the wheels of justice have rusted and lay on the ground busted after falling off their axle.  It’s just a coincidence that those wheels fell off the very moment black people came to America in chains as white people’s property.

Just like some people can see issues of race and figure it’s just a coincidence, maybe it’s just a coincidence when black people look at the identical situation and see injustice.  It must be only a coincidence that black people come to the defense and/or aid of other black people whose rights have been and are being trampled by white people.  Because if truth is to be told, here in the United States it just might be coincidence that so many people have such a negative view of black people.  And when that happens it would be fair to say that it is only a coincidence that other black people have to step up to the plate to make sure those broken wheels of justice get repaired and start turning again.

If George Zimmerman Was Black

Ever since the murder of seventeen year old Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman managed to capture the attention of the nation, and possibly the world, the majority of the people in the black community have expressed concern and apprehension.  We have yet another case of a senseless shooting death of a young, unarmed, black teenager minding his own business and the white murderer is allowed to go home without spending a single night in a jail cell, and he’s even allowed to take his murder weapon with him.  While George Zimmerman was home chilling with his trusty nine millimeter, Trayvon’s body sat in the morgue for three days before his family is notified.  Trayvon’s body was subjected to blood test and analysis while Mr. Zimmerman was never asked to submit to anything.

It is only natural that people would worry about this lack of justice with this incident that has yet to be determined a crime.  Since the victim is a young black male and considering how America’s supposedly racially generic culture that is predominantly controlled by white people has developed a seriously awful history of tolerating the slaughter of unarmed black people by white people, it is only natural that the black community leads the charge for an investigation into the circumstances that would lead a white man to shoot a black teenager who was doing nothing more than walking home from the convenience store.

There is plenty of evidence to support the contention that the white man’s behavior was criminal.  There is the recording from Mr. Zimmerman’s call to emergency operators to report a suspicious black man walking down the street.  We hear Mr. Zimmerman describe his actions as well as the actions of Trayvon as he stalked the teenager from his vehicle.  We hear Mr. Zimmerman give chase as he described Trayvon trying to run away from the man following him.  We hear other 911 recordings from people calling the police to report somebody in trouble and crying for help and the single gunshot from Mr. Zimmerman’s gun.  We have heard people tell the story of what they heard the night Trayvon was murdered.  There are videos of the people in the neighborhood who called 911 that night saying that the police never contacted them to get their accounting of what happened the night Trayvon was killed.  We have seen the video of Mr. Zimmerman arriving in handcuffs at the police station with no hint of a scuffle between him and Trayvon as he claimed.

There is nothing to support Mr. Zimmerman’s claim that he was struggling for his very life when he was attacked from behind by Trayvon as while walking back to his car.  But somehow, the police were helpless to hold Mr. Zimmerman in custody because Florida has a law that allows people to kill other people when they feel threatened despite the circumstances that led to the killing.  An unarmed black teenager is murdered and even though we all know who the killer is and all the evidence that support the fact that a crime has been committed, George Zimmerman walks free more than a month after he killed someone in cold blood.

Mr. Zimmerman’s supporters mock black people saying that with all the black on black crime that winds up with somebody dead, why are black people so upset over this crime?  Black people kill each other every day and you never hear a peep.  Why get bent out of shape over this one incident?  The contention is that if Mr. Zimmerman was black this wouldn’t be an issue.  And I could not agree more.

If George Zimmerman was black Sanford’s finest would probably have shot him on site.  A black man standing over a dead body is an open invitation for one of those contagious police shootings that has taken down so many black men.  Perverted justice served and case closed.  If the black Mr. Zimmerman’s body wound up with forty bullet holes after he had shot somebody else who wouldn’t think that justice was served?

But for the sake of argument, let’s say that the police who showed up managed to hold back their natural urge to shoot our fictitious black Mr. Zimmerman.  Does anybody think a black man would be taken into custody only to be released for shooting another black man?  When was the last time that happened?  Does anybody think the police would make press statements defending the black Mr. Zimmerman by telling the world that a black man was defending himself and therefore was never taken into custody?  It would never happen.  If there is even the remote possibility that a black person committed a crime it would have to be sorted out after dude was safely behind bars.  It’s standard procedure.

But let’s step back even further.  If George Zimmerman was black, chances are he would have never made a call to emergency operators to report a black man walking down the street and looking suspicious.  If George Zimmerman was black odds are pretty good that he wouldn’t be following anybody walking down the street out of fear that somebody would call the police on him for the crime of stalking.  If Mr. Zimmerman was black he would mind his own business because the odds are just too high that he’d be the one getting questioned.  And then let’s not forget that he had a loaded pistol with him.  A black Mr. Zimmerman would think twice and conclude it best to leave well enough alone.

If George Zimmerman was black, there are plenty of real life scenarios to play that would assure he would be charged for any crime he would have committed.  People who want to point a damning finger at the black community for their desire for justice in the murder of Trayvon Martin have their criticism misplaced.  But then again, if George Zimmerman was black, these people wouldn’t give a damn about Trayvon or Zimmerman.  It would be little more than another case of black on black crime.  The people who criticize black people for all the attention being brought to this case would go back to doing whatever it is they do.  If these people really cared about black on black crime, why wait until we have a case of white on black crime to bring it up?  It really looks like somebody is trying to play the race card in a situation that has race written all over it.

The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games is a story centered around sixteen year old Katniss Everdeen, who lives in a future world after an undisclosed apocalyptic event. She lives in the country of Panem in what used to be North America. Panem is a technologically advanced society. The Capitol is the seat of Panem’s brutal totalitarian government and is located in the northwestern Rocky Mountains. The Capital has absolute control of the twelve outlying districts. Panem holds an annual event called the Hunger Games where one boy and one girl, aged twelve to eighteen years old, from each of the districts are selected by a lottery system to compete in a publicly broadcasted battle in which only one participant can survive.

The author, Suzanne Collins, says that her inspiration for the story came from channel surfing on television. On one channel she observed people competing on a reality show and on another she saw the news with footage of the invasion of Iraq. Ms. Collins says that the two events began to blur in her conscience in a very unsettling way and the genesis for the story, the first in the Underland Chronicles, was formed.

The perpetual starvation and the constant need for resources that the people of Panem suffer create a sense of social dependence that the characters participating in the competition have to suppress in their fight for survival against each other. Katniss, the main character, has a proficiency with the bow and arrow that developed from her need to hunt in order to help provide food for her family. This results in a skill that gives her a competitive advantage in the life threatening competition. With a combination of skill and a sense of independence that gives her the courage to challenge the rules of the game when they are arbitrarily changed during the competition, Katniss survives the competition and is treated to a hero’s welcome. But she is warned by one of her mentors that she has now become a political target after defying Panem leaders so publicly.

In interviews, Ms. Collins said that the Underland Chronicles touch on issues such as poverty, starvation, oppression, and disparity. The story focuses on the struggle for self preservation that an entire society of people faces in their existence in the districts and the Hunger Games in which they are forced to participate. Ms. Collins also cites the Greek myth of Theseus, in which the city of Athens was forced to send young men and women into a labyrinth in Crete to face the Minotaur. As a child, Ms. Collins said she was impacted by the ruthless of a people who would force children into such a situation. She understood that Crete was sending a very clear message that if the people defy their government the government would do something worse than kill the people, they will kill the people’s children, and the people will be powerless to stop it.

The people of mythological Crete may have been cruel, their ruthlessness pales in comparison to a society of people who would subject a race of people to a perpetual existence of poverty, oppression, and social disparity. We might watch the Hunger Games and react with some sense of outrage at the cruelty of the authoritarian rule of the fictional Panem’s government and how it subjugates the people.  But then we come away from this work of fiction to see the reality of our society that was founded under the deception that black people are inferior to white people and how it subjugates black people. It was written into the very document that established our national government that black people were not fully human and were deemed white people’s property. And when black people finally and openly defied the white people who were oppressing them, there was a clear signal from the dominant culture that black people have incurred the wrath of the white oppressors and black people will be targeted. Imagine the wrath of a society that was founded under the idea that they have the right to deem black people not human and deny them the right to pursue happiness. What kind of games would such a society design for its retribution?

Today, black people are forced to compete in our own games of employment, business, education, healthcare, justice, government representation, and everything else that we require as a people to live as a collective. All too often black people have to prepare for these games with inferior equipment and inferior facilities.  Our future depends on overcoming these hurdles for our very survival.  And if that’s not enough, we have our law enforcers and our judicial system ready to come down hard on black people when there might be a case of a black person defying the unwritten rules that require black people to submit no matter what.

And if that’s still not proof of the cruelty of a society that was developed with racial disparity written into its founding documents, a society that has a history of targeting black people for their defiance and for fighting back against racial oppression, this is a society that constantly reminds us all with the clear message that it will do far worse than kill black people, this is a society that will allow black children to be hunted and killed in cold blood, and will expect the black community to be powerless to stop it.  Is it any wonder that George Zimmerman remains free even though we know he murdered Trayvon Martin?

How It Happens

When it comes to race relations this country is truly in a psychotic hell.  What happened with Trayvon Martin is just the latest nationwide example of how bad things have gotten.  In the twenty first century we continue to manifest obvious racial disparity in our law enforcement system, our legislative system, our legal system, and our judicial system.  And the fact that we are so willing to tolerate this racial disparity shows how much our social system is so rooted to the idea that black people are inferior and are not entitled to the same levels of consideration and respect for our very lives as white people.

First we have act one.  An obviously white man kills a black teenager trying to run away because the white man is stalking him and so the white man feels justified to run the boy down and kill him for the crime of looking suspicious.  The white man saw the black teenager walking home and that was all it took to initiate an unfortunate set of events that wound up with the boy dead.

Act two is the behavior of the police.  They show up at the scene, see a dead black boy, see a white man with a gun in his hand and they do nothing.  Open and shut case of another black thug that probably got what was coming to him.  White guy is allowed to walk away with his murder weapon while the police start looking for any evidence that the boy was no good.  They check for the boy’s record and he doesn’t have one.  They couldn’t be bothered to find the teenager’s family, so they let his body sit in the morgue for three days before his parents are notified.  When people start asking questions, the police throw impartiality out the window and start to defend the white shooter during one of the resulting press conferences.   The police say that Florida’s “stand your ground” law prevents them from charging the shooter with a crime and that there was no evidence to counter the shooter’s story that he was trying to defend himself.  But since this law was enacted there are many instances of black people in Florida being taken to jail and are convicted for their use of deadly force to defend themselves.

Act three is the legislatures that pass such ridiculous gun laws.  It wasn’t enough that Florida already has laws that allow people to defend themselves.  We have to have a lackadaisical and irresponsible law that will give police departments the discretion to say whether or not there’s enough evidence to take someone into custody until it is proven that there is enough evidence to take someone into custody.  The police don’t even have the responsibility to take a perpetrator’s murder weapon.  And it is interesting that the threshold of what constitutes enough evidence is so much lower whenever the perpetrator is a black person, which leads to act four.

Act four is our judicial system that is far from blind.  Too many judges, juries, and prosecutors that have some psychosis that makes them see the world only through the eyes of a white mindset people and refuse to see things from another perspective.  These are the people that will allow police to shoot a man trying to go home one his wedding day only to die in a hail of deadly bullets.  These are the people that allow police to shoot a black man for making the fatal mistake of identifying himself when he surrounded by four undercover officers with their guns pointed at him scaring him out of his wit.  And because they protect police for their heavy tactics against black men we have to put up with the Joe Horns who will take his shotgun outside to kill, tell the emergency operator on the phone that he’s going to go kill somebody, and then plead self defense after shooting two burglars as they tried to run away.  This is why a police officer feels that it’s okay to use a taser on a black man lying face down on the ground with his hands in cuffs behind his back, only the dumbass pulled out his service piece instead and fatally shot the man in the back.  These are the people who give passes to SWAT cops when they fatally shoot a black woman as she held her infant son who was also injured as one of the bullets passed through his body on its way to kill his mother.  We tolerate that shit because we provide are act five.

Act five is the rest of our society that does everything it can to minimize, demoralize, demonize, ostracizes, and victimizes black people.  We see it in our entertainment that makes black people the background to white people’s foreground.  We see all the detective shows and police shows and sitcoms and reality shows that revolve around white people’s world with a few black characters to serve at the edge of the story’s periphery to add a little color to a particular scene.  The black character is far more likely to be portrayed as the betrayer or the comedy relief or the incompetent sidekick buddy instead of a real hero.  White guy is more apt to be the playboy and drive the Ferrari while the black guy makes due with a twenty year old Cadillac that looks like a pimp’s ride.

We watch television shows that often portray young black people as violent and uncontrollable out for no good and with no redeemable value.  Our local news television program tells us all about black on black crime and how it’s the biggest contributor to misery in the black community and yet white on white crime is a phrase we have never heard.  We see a black person in the news in handcuffs doing a perp walk to the court house for an act considered a criminal that would never even register on somebody’s crime scope if it was Opie Cunningham or Greg Brady.  And this is what leads to act six.

Act six is the deviant part of our society that is more susceptible to the racial programming that operates at the fringe of such a racially polarized society that was founded on the pretense that black people are inferior and can be owned by white people as a commodity.  A society that has never done anything to actually reverse the damage that was inflicted on itself by the black subjugation, but instead pretends that ever since black people stopped being referred to as property, ever since black people were allowed to vote like their white peers, ever since we passed laws that made blatant, in your face, it’s because somebody used a racial epithet or wrote a memo about how they hate black people, types of racism was considered illegal everything is now fine.  It is not.

We have a society that gives an obvious white guy the idea, fueled by the obvious racial disparity that we tolerate as a whole, the impression that if he killed a black guy fleeing for his life, the white guy would be justified and held up as a hero for stopping a character that represents a problem in our collective, the typical young black male.  It would have worked have worked if Trayvon Martin was one of those character we have been taught to see as the definition of blackness.  But that is not the case.

Trayvon Martin wasn’t a character rooted in somebody’s single minded portrayal of black people.  He was the real deal.  He was smart.  He worked hard.  He stayed out of trouble.  The only problem Trayvon Martin had was that he happened to fit a stereotype of what one delusional man thought was the very epitome of trouble.  That’s just a quick description of the basic way our society operates when it comes to looking at the way we condone and feed our racial disparity.

Please Do Not Hold For A Call From The President

On February 29, 2012, conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh initiated a series of degrading, insulting, and scandalous remarks about Georgetown University Law Center student Sandra Fluke.  Based on Ms. Fluke’s statements in her speech to House Democrats in support of mandated contraceptives for women, Mr. Limbaugh came to the conclusion that Ms. Fluke was a slut.  In a fantastic leap of logic, Mr. Limbaugh concluded that the fact that Ms. Fluke wanted insurers to provide no cost contraceptive coverage meant that Ms. Fluke wanted to be paid to have sexual intercourse and that made her prostitute.

For three days Mr. Limbaugh used his globally syndicated radio show to make his vicious verbal attack against Ms. Fluke.  On the third day, in an interview with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, Ms. Fluke announced that she had received a call from President Barack Obama just before she appeared on the program.  Ms. Fluke said that Mr. Obama gave her words of encouragement and support and thanked her for exercising her freedom of speech about the concerns of American women.  Ms. Fluke was understandably touched.  She admitted that what was really personal for her was that Mr. Obama told her to tell her parents that they should be proud.  It meant a lot to Ms. Fluke because Mr. Limbaugh had used his show to pose the question whether or not her family would be proud of her.  During a trying time she appreciated the gesture so very much.

The White House said that Mr. Obama made the call because he wanted to offer his support and express his disappointment to Ms. Fluke that she had become the subject of such an inappropriate personal attack.  The President thanked her for speaking out on public policy as a private citizen.  When White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was asked what Mr. Obama thought about Limbaugh’s comments, Mr. Carney said that the President found it reprehensible that those kinds of personal and crude attacks.

On February 26, 2012, three days before the thirty year old Ms. Fluke verbally assaulted by Mr. Limbaugh, a seventeen year old Trayvon Martin was confronted by twenty eight year old George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida.  The confrontation turned deadly and Trayvon was killed when Mr. Zimmerman pulled out his nine millimeter Kel-Tec pistol.  According to reports, Trayvon Martin was murdered by a single bullet wound to his chest.  Despite a series of 911 calls made by people in the vicinity of the killing where Trayvon could be heard in the background pleading for help before being shot, and Mr. Zimmerman’s own emergency operator call where he says that Trayvon was trying to run away from Mr. Zimmerman, despite the fact that Mr. Zimmerman admits that he was chasing the young black teenager and initiating a confrontation, Mr. Zimmerman claims he was being attacked and fatally shot Trayvon in self defense.

The police took Mr. Zimmerman for his word claiming there was no evidence to contradict his story.  The only other eyewitness to the sequence of events had died.  Mr. Zimmerman went free as Trayvon Martin’s body went to the city morgue and sat for three days before the police gave his parents the horrible news of what happened to their son.  To this day, there has been no indication of any call from President Barack Obama to the parents of Trayvon Martin to convey his disappointment about a fatal attack on a young black teenager and the cover up by the Sanford, Florida police to hide at best their ineptitude, at worse their blatant racial bias that prevented a thorough investigation of a possible crime of murder.  Chances are pretty high that Mr. Obama will never make that call.

President Obama rarely injects himself into matters of race that pertain to black people.  The majority of times Mr. Obama would probably do so would be to defend his self from accusations and insinuations that he is racist against white people, like all the times it was suggested that he went to Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ to hear anti white propaganda even though many of the people who fervently pushed that suggestion are the same ones who would accuse him of being a Muslim.  The only other time Mr. Obama spoke of matters of race was when he used his Father’s Day address at the Apostolic Church of God in 2008 to berate black fathers for their lack of responsibility to support their family.  Otherwise, Mr. Obama appears to be under the assumption that issues of race just aren’t all that big a deal here in America.

It is well understood that if black people would just do the right thing and keep their nose clean they too can achieve the American dream.  If Mr. Obama had made that call to Trayvon’s parents, he’d probably chastise them for their inability to keep their son under control.  Just like black men with children have a reputation for being irresponsible, young black men have an even greater reputation for irresponsibility and criminal behavior.  Everybody knows that if there is an altercation between a black male and just about anybody else that the black man is guilty until proven innocent well beyond the most unreasonable doubt.  That rule holds even when the black male is a teenager with nothing more deadly than a bag of candy in his hand.

In fairness to Mr. Obama, the altercation between Rush Limbaugh and Sandra Fluke had political implications that could be used to help Mr. Obama in his bid to win reelection.  For many people, the President looks good when he offers his support to a white woman being defamed by a conservative windbag.  He’ll score some political points.  There are no points to be gained from the President injecting his self into the senseless murder of a black teenager gunned down by an armed self proclaimed neighborhood watchman for walking home late at night and the resulting cover up from the botched police investigation.

Mr. Obama knows that it is rare for the murder of an innocent black teenager to garner national attention.  On a national level there are many other cases that match the senselessness of Trayvon’s murder.  Trayvon’s murder is far from being a rare event.  Black men are constantly being confronted at the drop of a hat but then will be accused of being the aggressor when they wind up injured or dead.  It’s why people like the ones who serve at the Sanford, Florida police department don’t bother to lift a finger to do a thorough investigation when a black man is murdered.

If Mr. Obama says anything he will be lambasted by his opponents.  But then again, he gets lambasted by his opponents no matter what he does.  Mr. Obama was thoroughly criticized when he called Sandra Fluke.  He was willing to take that battle on in order to ingratiate himself to the women of America as the one most likely to support and protect women’s rights.

You would think the black Mr. Obama could relate to a black teenager minding his own business and only trying to get home when he was accused of being threatening.  Not too long ago Arizona Governor Jan Brewer made headlines when she stood on the tarmac under Air Force One and pointed her bony finger at the President not too long after he descended from the plane.  Later, when she was asked what circumstances led to such a blatant disrespect of the President, Ms. Brewer said that she had felt threatened.  Lucky thing for Mr. Obama Ms. Brewer wasn’t the Governor of Florida.  Just imagine what could have happened.

But there is nothing for Mr. Obama to gain as a supporter of black people.  Mr. Obama already has the majority of black people in his favor.  From a political perspective there is nothing to gain from him reaching out to the parents of a murdered black teenager.  In fact, he’d probably open himself up to a can of political whoop-ass that would cost him far more than he would gain.  It’s just the way our national collective responds to issues of race when it involves black people.

The Police Of Hazzard County

The more the public learns about the case surrounding the shooting of seventeen year old Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman in Florida.  Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Mr. Zimmerman claims he was in fear of his life and was only practicing self defense under Florida’s stand your ground law which gives people the right to use deadly force if they so much as feel like they are being threatened.  There are witnesses that say they heard the black young man pleading for his life and begging for help before hearing a single gunshot from Mr. Zimmerman’s nine millimeter gun.  We hear Mr. Zimmerman ignore the 911 operator’s instructions to stay away from the young man walking down the street and minding his own business.  We hear Mr. Zimmerman tell the operator that young Trayvon was trying to run away from him.  We know that the wannabe T. J. Hooker got out of his car in order to confront Trayvon.  When exactly did the tables turn and the young black man become the aggressor and made the fateful choice to attack Mr. Zimmerman with a bag of Skittles and a can of iced tea?

But what’s even more horrendous than the behavior of Mr. Zimmerman was the behavior of the police that showed up at the murder scene.  Not very many of us have ever served as a police officer.  I’ve never, ever entertained the thought of being a servant of the public so I won’t even try to pretend that I speak from experience or anything, but would it not have been a standard professional police protocol to at least do a thorough investigation of a possible murder scene?  The first police officer on the scene should have apprehended the guy with the gun in his hand, standing over the guy bleeding face down on the ground.  I think it would have been smart to cease his gun as possible evidence.  I think it would have been professional to have listened to his explanation of the sequence of events that led to a possible murder.  When he was finished I would put him in the back of my police car while I took a closer look at the crime scene.  He is my main suspect in a possible crime.

I think it would have been standard procedure to ask the people in the neighborhood milling about if they heard or saw anything.  I would have listened to their stories.  I would have listened to the stories of the people in the houses nearby.  I would want to know if what they told me corroborated or contradicted my main suspect.  I would have taken pictures.  I would have taken measurements.  I would have noticed that the dead young man was unarmed and had nothing but candy and a soft drink.  I would have noticed that the dead teenager’s body was faced down with a gun wound in his chest.  After getting all the information I need from the scene I would take my suspect back to headquarters for further questioning and processing.  I would like to know if he had a criminal record or anything in his past that might be suspicious.  I would want a lab test on his metabolism.  I would tow his car back to the station and search it top to bottom.  I would do what I think would be a thorough investigation to get a complete understanding of what may have happened to cause someone to wind up dead.

But Instead of doing anything professional the local cops acted more like Cletus, Enos and Roscoe from Hazzard County on a bad day in one of their worse episodes in the perpetual pursuit of the infamous Duke boys.  And just like on the television show, it is unfortunate that they let the perpetrator get away.  Their investigation amounted to a little of nothing.  They asked the only eye witness at the scene what had happened and all the guy had to say was that he was defending himself.  With that, the man that was holding a gun in his hand and standing over a dead body was able to talk his way out of being investigated and walk away.  The police didn’t even take the murder weapon into custody.  They focused their complete attention on the dead body.

Instead of putting their energy into investigating the man who did the killing, the police put all their energy into finding all the secrets of the man who was killed.  They searched for all the evidence that would prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Trayvon Martin was the typical black teenager that was good for nothing and confirm Mr. Zimmerman’s story that he was the victim here.  They drew the dead young man’s blood and did the lab tests.  For three days his body sat in a morgue as the police waited for the lab results.  They didn’t bother to call any of the numbers from Trayvon’s cell phone.  While young man’s body sat in a refrigerator to keep it from decaying, Mr. Zimmerman was allowed to continue his life without worry.  And after three days of finding nothing, the police finally had to relent and called the young man’s family to tell them where they could collect the body of their son.  When the parents asked what happened, the police could only say what they were told by the boy’s killer, the entire extent of their professional investigation against a murder suspect.

When asked why the perpetrator was still free the police say that Florida’s stand your ground law meant they could run the risk of opening themselves up to legal action if they infringed upon Mr. Zimmerman’s rights.  There were no other witnesses so they had to take the killer’s word as to what happened.  But that’s such bullshit.  Police have the authority to take a person in for questioning when his/her name comes up as a possible suspect for jaywalking.  The police have the authority to hold people without charge for so many days and/or hours before they are required to release.  They had plenty of cause to suspect a crime was committed, if they only cared to do their job.  But Trayvon was just another black kid and they had to get back to chasing those Duke boys for Boss Hogg.

The police that showed up at the scene of Trayvon Martin’s murder should be investigated as accomplices.  At the very least they should lose their jobs for their utter incompetence.  A young man is killed and they sit on their hands and act as if they’re the ones who are helpless.  Even if the fucked up Florida law that allows people to shoot each other based on nothing but a perception of a threat is true, it’s not the police’s job to decide when and if that law is applicable to any given situation.  That decision is usually left for a district attorney, a jury, or a judge.  It’s not the police’s job to say when and if a crime was committed.  Their job is to help people whenever a crime might be or may have been committed.  They collect all the pertinent evidence and make sure they have the suspect in custody so that a judge can determine what’s necessary to keep this guy available if he is to be prosecuted for a murder.  It is sad to say, but if Trayvon was black there is little doubt that the police would have had a totally different take on what they could have and could not have done, what they should and should not have done, under Florida law.

Who Really Threatened Who?

Another unarmed young minority man is murdered in a mysterious altercation with an armed white man who found the young black man suspicious.  And in all too typical fashion the white murderer is allowed to go free, go home, and go live his life while the family of the black man is left wanting for answers and justice.  Where have we heard this type of thing before?

Three weeks ago seventeen year old Trayvon Martin took a walk to the corner convenience store for snacks and a can of iced tea.  He decided to take the jaunt during the half time break of a televised basketball game.  As he was walking back home, twenty eight year old George Zimmerman spotted the young black man with the hood of his jacket up walking through his neighborhood and looking suspicious.  Mr. Zimmerman was driving through the area as part of a neighborhood watch program when he decided that the young black man walking alone at night was trouble, so he used his call phone to call the police.

A recording of the call to emergency operators show that Mr. Zimmerman had no reason to suspect the young black teenager of anything.  Mr. Zimmerman said that he was following the young black man who he referred to as an asshole.  The operator told Mr. Zimmerman that a patrol car was on the way and that he should stop following Trayvon and he should definitely not get out of his car.  Mr. Zimmerman did and not long afterward young Trayvon Martin lay dead face down of a gunshot wound to the chest.  The dead black teenager had a bag of Skittles.  The neighborhood vigilante was armed with a smoking Kel-Tec 9mm pistol.

George Zimmerman was never arrested nor charged with anything.  The police say that there isn’t any evidence to contradict his story that the young black man attacked the armed patrolman that was following him.  The only witness to what actually happened was Mr. Zimmerman and his dead victim.  And since the dead black guy isn’t able to contradict anything Mr. Zimmerman said, his word is as good as gold.

According to Mr. Zimmerman, he is the victim of this tragic incident.  He had to defend himself with deadly force after he had admitted that he was stalking and following a young black man who was doing nothing but walking home.  We heard the tapes of the operator telling Mr. Zimmerman not to follow the guy.  So we know for a fact that he disregarded instructions and was bent on creating an altercation that would lead to a young man losing his life.

While it is true that there were no other witnesses to what exactly happened between George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin, many neighbors have come forward to say that they heard a male voice pleading for his life and calling for help before hearing a gunshot and then hearing the voice calling for help go silent.  We heard another 911 recording from a neighbor talking to the operator.  In the background of that call we could hear the pleas for help.  We heard the gunshot and we heard the following silence.  But Mr. Zimmerman claims that was him crying for help as he was pulling the trigger.  The police must’ve heard all of this evidence and decided that is was reasonable to mistake Trayvon’s Skittles as a weapon and ruled it an open and shut case of self defense.

According to police Florida law has a “stand your ground law,” which allows for the use of deadly force if someone feels reasonably threatened.  The problem comes with the laws application.  What constitutes reasonably threatened?  Was it reasonable for the neighborhood watcher to feel threatened at the site of a single black man walking down the street at night?  For a lot of people, based on the social programming that constantly paints young black people as little more than thugs and lowlifes looking for an opportunity to commit crime, a single black man walking in the dark wearing a hooded jacket is a frightening sight and so it’s okay to shoot to kill.

Now let’s try and look at this from the flipside.  Let’s say that a young man knows that he will be mistaken as a good for nothing cretin hell bent on crime simply because he’s black.  He’s walking along minding his own business when he notices he’s being stalked by a white guy in a car.  After a few minutes of being followed, the white man gets out of his car and starts to walk up to the young black man.  The white man is carrying a pistol so at least one of his hands is in his pocket ready to pull the gun out at a moment’s notice if necessary.  The black youth has nothing but his snacks.  It’s dark.  Would it be reasonable to assume that the black youth is being reasonably threatened?  Who actually started threatening who?

The police say there’s no evidence to contradict Mr. Zimmerman’s claim that he was only defending himself.  But we know for a fact that while he was armed and dangerous he instigated an altercation with someone that he was stalking and he ignored instruction to leave it alone.  We know that his Kel Tek was fired.  We know that Trayvon is dead with a bullet from Mr. Zimmerman’s gun.  We know that Trayvon was unarmed.  Who decided to attack who?

Trayvon committed no crime and had a good reason to be where he was.  He never bothered to arm himself to attack anyone.  Who really made the decision, who took the steps to put themselves in a situation that was bound to go wrong based on assumptions without any foundation other than an appearance?  What made Trayvon Martin so suspicious that Mr. Zimmerman had to put himself into a situation where he knew he could wind up killing someone?  But based on his appearance of being black and being male and being too dead to contradict the word of a murderer, the local police department says there’s nothing criminal here, pat Mr. Zimmerman on his head and send him away to live the rest of his life.

But really, who is surprised?  We saw Joe Horn get away with the murder of a couple of minorities robbing his neighbor’s house after he called 911 and reported something suspicious.  Mr. Horn was instructed not to get involved by the operator.  He ignored what he was told.  The man took his shotgun outside and confronted the burglars.  We heard him tell the burglars that if they moved they were dead and then we heard two shotgun blasts not two seconds later.  He said he was in fear of his life and that’s why he killed them.  He was never charged with a crime.

We saw a group of seven boot camp guards surround and beat the teenaged Martin Lee Anderson until the young black man’s lifeless body slumped to the ground.  It was his first day at the camp and within hours of his arrival he was dead.  An investigation ensued and, surprise, the guards were acquitted of any criminal wrong doing.

Twenty three year old Amadou Diallo was shot by four New York police officers when he was sighted walking home with a couple of bags of groceries.  When he was confronted by the police who thought he was acting suspicious, Mr. Diallo reached for his wallet to identify himself.  His mistake was trying to identify himself when it was already identified as being black.  The police didn’t put their guns away until they had fired forty one times.  They were found not guilty.

So now we have another incident.  This time we have a young black man minding his own business when somebody felt that his life wasn’t worth leaving him alone or leaving him to be questioned by the police.  We have a neighborhood watchman say that he found the man suspicious and based on nothing but his appearance initiated a confrontation that wound up with death.  He didn’t have the right or the responsibility to say anything to the teenager let alone pull his gun out to kill him.  But police say that Florida law gave him a green light to kill because he was so scared.  If dude was such a pussy, so easily panicked, why was he out stalking people with a gun?

Three weeks ago a black teenager was murdered in cold blood.  Odds are pretty good that eventually Mr. Zimmerman will get off without so much as a slap on the wrist.  The parents of Trayvon will have to learn to grieve without justice.  All the propaganda that paints black people as nothing more than criminals waiting for an opportunity will continue.  Nothing will change.

Rick Santorum Wears His Racial Prejudice On His Sleeve

Just before the Thanksgiving holidays I was given a series of audio CDs on the power of positive thinking.  Audio CDs aren’t really my thing.  The only time I’d listen to something like that is in the car and I’m usually using that time to catch up on news or listening to NPR.  But after putting the CDs off for a few days and then a few weeks in order to deal with the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, I discovered a two hour documentary based on the information on the CDs.  And one evening, instead of listening to all the analysis of what’s about to happen in the Iowa caucus from the conservative perspective, I finally got a chance to listen, and watch, the message I was given.

In a nutshell, what I got out of the documentary was the theory that we are going to receive what we think.  If we focus our thoughts on negativity we can anticipate our environment to respond with negativity.  But if we focus on positive things, we should expect our personal universe to respond with positivity.  It might sound like it shouldn’t take two hours to put that message out there.  But the documentary was actually pretty entertaining and I got the message.

That was just before the New Year.  After watching the documentary I started to think about my blog and how I have a very cynical outlook on this country’s race relations, our social makeup, disparity, and so many other things that are so unfairly distributed.  Maybe all the suggestions from people who respond with comments to my blog saying that I should focus on the good things that are happening all around me and leave the negativity alone, I would actually see that things aren’t as bad as I think they are.  I actually thought about making a late New Year’s resolution to change the focus to all the positive things that are happening in my life and in the lives of the people around me and leave all that cynicism behind.

Not too long after watching that documentary, I saw a video clip of conservative presidential contender Rick Santorum talking into a group of supporters when he made a comment about black people and the state of welfare.  During a campaign stop in Iowa, Mr. Santorum said that he would work to eliminate welfare for the country because he doesn’t want to give black people other people’s money just so black people can live better.  Mr. Santorum elaborated saying that he wanted to give black people the opportunity to go out and earn their money and provide for themselves and their families.  And just like that, so much for my plan to focus on posi-fucking-tivity.

Mr. Santorum wants to improve his political appeal to Iowan conservatives by telling them that they don’t have to support the black community if he becomes President.  Mr. Santorum wants to operate under the implied illusion that only black people are on welfare, forgetting the fact that the majority of people on welfare are white people.  Like many high profile political conservatives, they point a damning finger at black people and other minorities for the piss poor condition of our national economy.  In a state with a white population that exceeds 96% and only 2% of the population is black, it’s easy for some of the people in the majority to relate to America’s national perception that black people don’t pull their own weight and we are a national burden.

Personally, I think it’s commendable to give everyone more opportunity.  But to promote such a lofty goal with the taint of racial prejudice is a problem.  Would all those Iowans be willing to listen to Mr. Santorum if he were to go to the black community and tell a bunch of black people that they shouldn’t be paying for white people to stay on welfare?  I’m pretty sure if Mr. Santorum was to do such a thing his poll numbers would fall like the proverbial rock that symbolized the cratered campaigns of so many of his conservative competitors for the White House.

This is a constant problem with each and every one of the conservative presidential contenders.  Whether it’s Rick Perry going to Camp Niggerhead, Ron Paul’s newsletter saying that black people will stop rioting when it’s time for them to pickup a welfare check, Herman Cain saying that black people are brainwashed, Newt Gingrich saying that there is a total lack of work ethic that is not associated with criminal activity in poor neighborhoods, or Michele Bachmann saying that our forefathers fought tirelessly to end slavery even though they are well documented as participants in the slave trade, conservatives refuse to take black people and conditions in the black community seriously.