White People, You Will Never Look Suspicious Like Trayvon Martin

I was surprised that it was hitting the headlines so long after the horrendous incident.  At least the MSM are covering the fact that Zimmermann was never booked or jailed and that the police messed up the crime scene.   God help us. It's bad enough with the police on the loose, and people with PTSD  hallucinating they're surrounded by enemy soldiers. Now the  vigilantes are out there too.

Martin's grades are irrelevant. His cheerful personality is irrelevant. 

What's relevant is systemic racism kills men and women of colour, with impunity, over and over again.

A white resident could not imagine or conceive that a young Black man could be allowed to walk about in his (gated) community.

It doesn't get much clearer than this.

P.S. I read that excellent blog from the OP and posted it on my Facebook wall. It's excellent.

milo204 wrote:

this is pretty much the same thing as the klan.  A bunch of armed, aggressive racist white guys hunting down and murdering innocent black people.  

Back then theyd say he looked at a white girl, now they just say he's "looking about"....

Actually, there's another take on this story.  George Zimmerman's mother is a Latina immigrant. 

When I googled his name and "latino" (since I thought he looked Latino) I was instantly directed to the Conservative Citizens Council site (neo-KKK, neo-nazi), where contributors went out of their way to express indignation that he was identified as "white" and indulged their anti-Hispanic racism.  This is interesting because in Florida there have been numerous cases of African Americans being shot or abused by Latino policemen, who enjoy relative impunity. There have even been calls for the investigation of the  mayor of Miami for his reluctance to address the issue.

  I wouldn't even venture to guess at the reason, but  anti-Black sentiment seems to be high among Latinos.  "Euro-American" racists enjoy the spectacle of minority-on-minority violence.

Anyway, Zimmerman strikes me as being a rather disfunctional person, with identity problems of his own that he takes out on African-Americans.

The story (democracynow.org, March 20) is appalling for various reasons, from the failure of the police to detain Zimmerman and their failure to use Martin's cellphone to trace his identity, leaving his body in the morgue for days while his parents filed a missing persons report, to MSM giving credence to Zimmerman's father's story of his 250-lb son being pursued by an unarmed 160-lb 17-year old.   The  FBI and the Justice Dept. are on the case, finally.  Let's see how it plays out.  I'm afraid it's a lose-lose situation, as the white racists will go out of their way to play up Zimmerman's Hispanic/immigrant background.

Even in the States, the Klan types going on about Zimmerman being Hispanic is extremely marginal. Most people will never even hear it.

The story just oozes out racism. [And the denial that goes with it- but not that nutty stuff.]

On the 911 tapes, Zimmerman (known hereafter as RP (racist prick)) admitted that Trayvon was running away (most likely alarmed at being followed by a cop wannabe yahoo) and then ignoring the 911 dispatchers advice, RP chased him down.  He went out of his way to provoke a confrontation, contrary to what RP's father tried to say.

One of the 911 tapes is very chilling and horribly sad.  The female caller was reporting the struggle behind her house.  You can hear Trayvon pleading for help, crying, begging "no, no, no", followed by a gunshot and then silence.  The female caller seemingly realized what had happened and started to cry.

The witness reports indicate that the guy on top during the struggle was wearing a white shirt - not what Trayvon was wearing.  One of the witnesses claims that RP had risen to his feet when he shot Trayvon who was still laying on the ground.   RP suffered some facial lacerations, etc., because undoubtedly Trayvon knew he was fighting for his life, so one could surmise that a very pissed off RP could very well have stood up and executed Trayvon.

The story has been in the news for a while but at first there was more information coming out about Trayvon's background than anything else - i.e. make excuses for the RP.  So what if Trayvon had been suspended from school for a few weeks???  I was a straight A student and I was suspended a few times and expelled once - one time for calling a teacher a hypocrite, another for smoking pot, another for having fun in the bathroom with my beau, etc.  Being suspended does not indicate violent tendencies or anything along those lines, despite the initial spin was that the suspension may have been for a violent incident, drug use, etc.  Even if those allegations were true, that does not give RP the right to execute a young man.

One (or more) congressional representatives are trying to get the US deparment of justice involved to force the hand of local authorities to lay charges.  Supposedly the local DA is reviewing the case and will render a decision in a few weeks.  One wonders why the decision will take a few weeks.  Certainly there is more than ample information to issue an arrest warrant, or at least there would be enough information for an arrest if the shooter were a young black man.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/20/justice/florida-teen-shooting/index.html?h...
"The Seminole County Grand Jury will convene April 10, State Attorney Norm Wolfinger said in a statement."
Finally a step in the right direction.
Also interesting is that Trayvon was on the phone with a young woman at the time RP confronted him. She might have some really critical information to offer.

Maysie wrote:

This is not about Zimmerman.

I agree with you, Maysie... up to a point.

The racist fringe wants to make it about him, and I hope they don't manage to.  Some Blacks might pick up on the fact that he is one more Latino who had it out for them, like the Mayor of Miami and the police (I'm talking perception here, in the context of a string of Latino on Black attacks over the past several years).  And it might well become about Zimmerman once it gets to court and the psychiatrists start duking it out about his insecurity and his own identity problems... I'd bet that the defense will try to come up with an argument along those lines... But you're absolutely right:  this is not the time to speculate about what will be made of Zimmerman, but to mourn for his victim and to condemn the heinous crime and the heinous conduct of the Sanford police.

How did this yahoo get a license for a semi automatic handgun in the first place?

Here's another interesting article on this case from John McWhorter about "What the Trayvon Martin Case Tells us About Being Black in America"The very nature of being black in the United States is now marked insidiously and essentially by the perceived reality of constantly being forced to deal with malevolent police forces. Indeed, a representative example of the black condition is what black journalist Deborah Mathis, in her syndicated column in 1997, called "Blackmotheritis": "a nervous disorder afflicting millions of black women with adolescent or teenaged children, particularly the mothers of boys." Mathis explains how she told her son:

Keep your hands out of your pockets. Don't reach under your shirt. If there's an itch, just live with it. In winter, keep your jacket open.
Mathis wasn't kidding:

The other day, on a brief shopping foray, Joseph popped his hand beneath his shirt to rub a mosquito bite. "Joseph!" I shouted. My son's name fell hard from my mouth as if it were a pain to say it. "Get your hand ..." "Okay, Ma," he said impatiently, then muttered something that seemed, at once, mad and sad. "I just don't want ..." I began, ruefully. "I know, Ma, I know. I'm sorry."

http://www.tnr.com/article/101840/trayvon-martin-race-injustice?google_e...

Rebecca West wrote:

Remember, this is a state that has drive-through liquor stores....It's beyond fucked up.

Surely not because of that.

Assassinations At Home and Abroad - by Jenina Pierre

http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/assassinations-home-and-abroad

"The rule of law is everywhere in retreat. Racist vigilante justice trumps Black's right to life in Florida and a growing number of 'shoot first' states, while the US president claims the right to kill at will, internationally. 'The Florida laws are the local articulation of a US foreign policy that deploys murder and mayhem at any sign of a threat.' Eric Holder, the nation's top lawman, can order assassination without trial, yet is now tasked to investigate Trayvon Martin's murder.."

[url=http://www.hudsonstarobserver.com/event/article/id/46750/][White]Homeowner won’t be charged for killing [Black] 20-year-old hiding from police[/url]

Quote:

No charges will be filed against a homeowner in Slinger, Wisconsin, who shot and killed a 20-year-old man who ran into an enclosed porch to hide from the police.

Washington County District Attorney Mark Bensen said the unidentified homeowner acted in self-defense under [b]Wisconsin’s new “castle doctrine” law.[/b] It assumes that homeowners are justified when using deadly force against intruders.

Bo Morrison of West Bend was among those scampering from a nearby underage drinking party the police raided on March 3.

Washington County prosecutors said Morrison tucked himself between a dresser and refrigerator in the homeowner’s porch. When the resident asked him what he was doing there, Morrison reportedly stood up, raised a hand and took a step toward the homeowner. That’s when the owner shot him in the chest and told his wife to call 9-1-1.

Authorities said the homeowner was the one who called police about the drinking party. He had confronted a couple people in car with loud music, according to authorities.

You got a problem? Well, now you do.

Quote:

Trayvon Martin had it coming, or so we will soon be led to believe. The surely unattractive details of his short life as a black man in America will tumble forward—his troubles in school, the weed baggie that got him suspended, the altercation in which police and George Zimmerman claim he was the aggressor. He was a maladjusted, Negro man-child, so ferocious he could kill an armed man with his bare hands. He had to die.

Yesterday, local law enforcement offered a preview of this old, familiar narrative when someone leaked Zimmerman’s account of the night to the Orlando Sentinel. According to the Sentinel, Zimmerman had given up his hunt of Martin and was returning to his SUV when the 17-year-old caught him by surprise. Do you have a problem, Martin is said to have asked, before answering for himself, “Well, you do now.” He reportedly began pummelling Zimmerman, leading the armed man to shoot and kill.

Sadly, it’s necessary to point out that there isn’t an imaginable scenario in which an armed man can shoot an unarmed child to death and it be okay. But set that obvious fact to the side. Trayvon Martin did in fact have it coming. He was born black and male in the United States and was thus marked for death. The cruelness of our economy and of our criminal justice system isn’t reserved for men or for black people. But there is a particularly gendered and particularly racist way in which black men are set upon in this country, most acutely those who don’t have the resources to push back. And it has a very long, still relevant history.

Quote:

Like I said, Trayvon Martin was marked for death already, statistically at least. As a black infant, he was more than twice as likely to die as his white peers. In his teens, he was at least one and a half times as likely to meet an early death as his white peers. Homicide is the leading cause of death for black men his age, and comes at a rate many times every other racial or ethnic group. If he had reached his 20s, he had a 1 in 8 chance of going to prison, because that empty bag of marijuana he had at school would have meant something very different for him than it does for the middle class white kids who use drugs at higher rates. He’d have gone on to live in a country in which nearly 4 in 10 black children live in poverty, in which 1 in 4 black households lack food security.

The fact is the U.S. often seems like it’s built to kill black people. This is not to say racism is equally lethal today as it was even a single generation ago. But it is to say that the same set of deeply ingrained ideas about what black people have coming to us justified the brutality of yesterday and today alike. And one particular manifestation of those ideas routinely leads to the early death of men like Amadou Diallo and Sean Bell and Oscar Grant and Trayvon Martin.

Read the whole thing.

Hoodies, Hijabs and Homicides

Quote:

Just one month after 17 year-old Trayvon Martin was murdered on the public streets by a vigilante in Sanford, Florida, a 32 year-old Iraqi woman named Shaima Alawadi was beaten to death with a tire iron in her home in San Diego. Alawadi was a Muslim woman who wore the hijab. A note by her body read, “Go back to your own country you terrorist.” Inferior minds, poisoned with racism, have attributed Martin’s death to the hoodie which he was wearing. But attacks on Blacks which focus on their attire extend from the hoodie to how low they hang their pants off their butts, how they wear their baseball caps, & whether or not their garb signifies gang membership--because clothing has become the symbol of racist hatred. The imputation against Muslim women is that they are coerced (since women can’t have religious commitments or ideas of their own) by men & religion to wear the veil. While the dominant culture encourages women to “flaunt it if you’ve got it”, more modest women are vilified as victims &/or terrorists & freedom of religion is reduced to confetti. While the perpetrators of these murders bear full responsibility for their crimes, the media has played a central role in creating hostility & hatred against Blacks & Muslims & in whipping up hysteria against their attire. Every time we see another report or article with such imputations, we should take out our poison pens & make our voices heard & we should protest, as hundreds of thousands are doing now in support of justice for Trayvon Martin.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/03/29/trayvon-martin-george-zimmerman-police-video.html

Self defence my ass. No sign of a broken nose, no sign of injuries to the back of his head - no sign of anything.

It's Racism 101, Mr Tea. As American as apple pie.

Black man in a hoodie = dangerous. No exceptions.

Bobby Rush gets kicked off House floor for wearing a hoodie for Trayvon

Yes, laine. This photo was circulating on FB that expresses exactly that.

C'mon, don't failsafe the "other"

What do you think? At least "manslaughter"? No? I'm out. So sad. I dun know what to choose? Forever Young? Thinking...

[url=http://socialistworker.org/2012/03/29/what-all-black-men-must-learn]What every Black man in America must learn[/url]

Quote:

The murder of Trayvon Martin in a gated community in Florida has dramatized the depths of racism in U.S. society. Trayvon was young, Black and male--that was enough for neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman to decide he was "suspicious," to stalk him and eventually to pull the trigger.

African American families understand that Trayvon's fate could happen to their own children. That's why so many young Black men remember the time they had "the talk"--when family or friends tried to prepare them for dealing with racism in general and the police in particular.

Here, SocialistWorker.org contributors Derron Thweatt, Khury Petersen-Smith and Brian Jones remember their own experiences with "the talk"--and how the experience of racism shaped their lives.

White Supremacy - An Interview with Davey D

http://www.voxunion.com/white-supremacy-an-interview-with-davey-d/

"..It is a system that is predicated upon the dehumanization of all those who are not white. It is a system used by the elite; the folks in control of politics, commerce and society - global society. They're able to do that by systematically pitting us against one another, colonizing and the whole nine. This keeps it in place..."

So a hispanic male shoots a black youth and it is automatically a racial issue? People need to leave their agendas at the door. Did this youth deserve to get shot? No. Did the person GZ do the right thing? No. Should he have been charged with murder? YES. Was it a racial shooting? NO. It was a dumbass with a gun who wanted to play cops and robbers.

I find it funny how no one has mentioned that one of Mr. Zimmerman's best friends is back. This is a guy who made a very bad desicion and should pay for it. It is not a black and white isuue as the Rev Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson would like everyone to believe to promote their own agendas and get face time in the media.

It's unfortunate that the racial angle is overshadowing this tragic event.

Hahahaah @ F55. Anyway, bigguy1 has become the latest in a long line of sacrifices on this, the most holiest of days. Prayer service can now cntinue as usual.

George Zimmerman is charged with 2nd-degree murder in Trayvon Martin shooting

omit dp

Hoodeet wrote:

milo204 wrote:

this is pretty much the same thing as the klan.  A bunch of armed, aggressive racist white guys hunting down and murdering innocent black people.  

Back then theyd say he looked at a white girl, now they just say he's "looking about"....

Hoodeet (JW)

Actually, there's another take on this story.  George Zimmerman's mother is a Latina immigrant. 

This is a red herring.  Anyone with an understanding of racial politics in Florida wil understand that having a Latino background might be a contributor to the racist profiling Zimmerman did. 

In Florida, where the Hispanic population is, or is descended from, right-wing anti-Castro supporters of Batista, Latinos are members of the economic and political ruling class.  They have a great deal of influence in Congress and the Senate, and run much of South Flordida.  At a more grassroots level, the animosity of Hispanics towards African Americans is well-documented and supported by the Republican government in that state.

This is not East L.A.