White man shoots unarmed Navajo

Video: Fatal Shooting Inside Walmart Store in Chandler

By Matthew HendleyThe Chandler Police Department has released the surveillance video from a fatal shooting that took place inside a Walmart two weeks ago.

Kriston Belinte-Chee, 36, was shot and killed by 25-year-old Cyle Quadlin on February 16 after the two got into an argument at the service counter that escalated into a physical fight.

Police say Quadlin told investigators he was on the losing end of the fight and "was in fear for his life" when he pulled out his gun and shot Belinte-Chee.

The surveillance appears to show Belinte-Chee instigating the confrontation at the service counter and also shows Belinte-Chee attacking Quadlin after following him to an exit.

The shooting can't be seen clearly from the surveillance footage, as it takes place at the edge of the frame from a few different angles. At one angle, you can see that Belinte-Chee started to run away, but it's hard to tell whether he'd already been shot at that point.

Belinte-Chee was hospitalized but was pronounced dead later that day. Quadlin wasn't arrested in the case, as Chandler police said the case was submitted to the Maricopa County Attorney's Office to review for possible charges.I posted an earlier version of this story on Facebook with a heading like, "Another white man shoots an Indian." Facebook friend Cx took me to task for implying the shooting was racially motivated. Because the Navajo victim attacked the white killer, one could call the shooting self-defense.

Cx sent me this follow-up article, which included excerpts from the Walmart videos. She may have thought it proved her point, but I'd say it proves mine.

Analysis of the shooting

Posting this article on Facebook led to an analysis and discussion with FB friend Brad:

)

Let's go to the tape, as they say:

1) We can't tell what started the argument. But Quadlin stepped directly to the counter rather than getting in one of two visible lines. That could've been it.

Not that that justifies any subsequent violence, of course.

2) Belinte-Chee shoved Quadlin and then twisted him to the ground. I didn't see any punch thrown in the initial tussle. And Quadlin had something in his right hand as he was falling...possibly his gun.

So someone wrestles you to the ground...and that's your justification for fearing for your life? That's your justification for immediately pulling a gun? Hell, *no*.

3) A couple of views suggest the shooting happened almost immediately. Quadlin was back on his feet, holding his gun and walking away, within 3-4 seconds. After he suffered nothing worse, possibly, than being knocked down.

Where's the prolonged battle necessary to instill a fear of death? In fact, where's the slightest threat to life or limb, other than perhaps a scraped knee from hitting the linoleum? Answer: nowhere. It didn't happen.

So any time two youngsters wrestle at school or in a park, and one of them falls down, the "victim" is justified in shooting and killing the "aggressor"? I don't think so.

In short, the carrying of a gun led to the unjustified shooting of an Indian. Exactly as I said when this subject first came up.It's pretty hard to tell but it almost looks to me like he's already got the gun in his hand when Chee attacks him. It would make sense too since I don't see anywhere he could have easily gotten it out during the melee. That would change things significantly wouldn't you say?You mean before Belinte-Chee pushed him? I didn't see that. Yes, that would change things significantly.

I'd say that if he pulled a gun anytime during the initial push and fall, he has no self-defense justification.Of course we'll probably never know what happened in the final moments before the physical altercation started but it got me wondering if he was even threatening him with the gun before he even pulled it out. If Quadlin pulled out a gun or threatened to, it would make the attack make a lot more sense.

They were walking, stopped and were exchanging words, then suddenly Chee just jumped him. I know some people do have tempers that short, but what would cause him to suddenly fly into a physical rage like that. If someone pulls a gun on you, attacking them to try to get the gun and avoid getting shot makes a lot more sense.Yes, or even if Quadlin just showed the gun in his waistband or wherever. Belinte-Chee could've taken that as a threat and responded with the push.

As the Navajo Nation said in a statement, the authories should've investigated this incident. Unless the circumstances are a lot clearer than in this case, that should be mandatory.

In other words, no one should get away with a "self-defense" shooting automatically. It should lead to weeks or months of investigation. That's the mildest "penalty" you should suffer after killing someone over your imaginary fears.

Wrestling = death threat?

A woman named Sophia chimed in with a lot of talk about how wrestling and fighting can lead to death. Brad and I responded to one comment:"...and the level of perceived threat is subjective...if you have not experienced a lot of trauma, you may not perceive much of anything to be a threat..."

That's an excellent point. That's why we shouldn't leave such subjective decisions up to individual people with guns. And why determining the correctness of such a decision should be made AFTER an investigation and most importantly WHILE the shooter is in police custody.

And it's possible investigators have gotten a better look than we could, but it appeared to ME in the video that the shooter fired AFTER he was already free, not while the victim was holding him on the ground.Right. You may feel your life is in danger while someone is sitting on you, hitting you, or choking you. But you don't get to make that determination, and and shoot someone, when he's merely tackled you. Or when he's tackled you and you've managed to get free. Your life is not in imminent danger in either of those cases.

Oh, and a note from the article: "Chandler police said the case was submitted to the Maricopa County Attorney's Office to review for possible charges." That's not the kind of investigation I'm talking about. I'm talking about the police investigating it using the full resources of law enforcement.

As a rule, district attorneys' offices don't do criminal investigations. They receive more or less completed investigations and decide if the evidence warrants charges. That's not an investigation, it's a review, as the article correctly labels it.

The Navajo Nation agrees:

The Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission Responds to the Shooting of Kriston Charles Belinte CheeThe Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission office issued a news released after learning of Kriston Chee’s death and Quadlin’s claim of self defense.

Leonard Gorman, NNHRC Executive Director states:

“Claim of self defense are very subjective. Based on the recent Florida cases (Zimmerman and Dunn), it is clear that no duty to retreat is confusing and require substantial investigation.”

“It’s disappointing to learn that Mr. Chee’s family is left with the notion that his death is okay, no crime committed,” Gorman further stated.

The Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission is at dismayed by the quick ruling and acceptance of self defense. When a person’s life is taken the remaining family members deserve a full investigation.Kill or be killed

As far as I'm concerned, this case nicely ties into the George Zimmerman and Michael Dunn cases, where a white man also shot a brown man for no good reason. In an interview, the author of Suspicion Nation: The Inside Story of the Trayvon Martin Injustice and Why We Continue to Repeat It makes some excellent points:

Zimmerman, Dunn and what went horribly wrong: Author Lisa Bloom talks to Salon

On how the police and prosecutors accept the white man's "Stand Your Ground" laws, and don't push back hard against them:I want to ask what you think explains how the prosecutors went so wrong, without falling into the same sort of biased, suspicious thought processes you criticize.

Many people ask me, do I think the prosecutors intentionally threw the [Trayvon Martin] case? And I don’t think that. I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I think the prosecutors wanted to win the case, but they didn’t believe that they had a winnable case. And remember, they didn’t want this case. This case is very different from every other case they had because 25 days went by and they didn’t charge Zimmerman with any crime. Why? Because they didn’t believe that there was a crime. They believed the self-defense story.How we use invented, imaginary fears to justify the racist status quo:One more thing: One reason that we demonize people is to justify stealing everything they’ve got—their land, their labor, their lives—without feeling that there’s anything wrong with it.

I think that’s a really perceptive comment and you’re absolutely right that dehumanizing is the key to discriminating against populations and making that OK, right? That’s why I wanted to really dig deeply down into that stereotype, which was the issue in the trial in the Trayvon Martin case and it was at issue in the Michael Dunn case. And just to talk about that for a brief moment: Michael Dunn shoots into a car of unarmed black kids, he says that he saw the gun, there was no gun, the kids never owned a gun, according to their families never touched a gun; witnesses rushed in and there was no gun that anybody saw except for Michael Dunn who saw the magical invisible gun.How the same thinking applies to all our "enemies": terrorists, Commies, unions, immigrants, et al. Going all the way back to "the Indians are on the warpath!"One last thing that was fascinating to me: You were talking about the relationship between 9/11 and “stand your ground.”

That goes back to our suspicions and fears. Why do “stand your ground” laws start taking the nation by storm in 2005 and thereafter? Right? People have asked me was there some precipitating event? And I really know there wasn’t. There wasn’t a whole group of people who said, “Wow! I was in a violent altercation on the street, I extricated myself and retreated, according to the law, and I don’t like that, and now I’m going to go to my legislature and make sure the next time that I’ll be empowered to take a gun and shoot.” No one was saying that.Comment:  For more on the subject, see America's Dual Justice System and American "Justice" Protects White People.

Dunn trial shows America's pathology

Some commentaries on the jury hung over the murder charge in the trial of Michael Dunn, who killed Jordan Davis over "loud music":

Like George Zimmerman, Racist Laws Let Michael Dunn ‘Get Away With Murder’

By Ryan DensonAfter escaping what should have been a 2nd degree murder charge, Michael Dunn is in, “disbelief and it has not sunk in yet.”

I hope for your sake, Mr. Dunn, that is a positive disbelief and you aren’t weeping in self sorrow while a boy lays six feet under, because you avoided death row. At least for now.

I’m just waiting for the NRA to say “stereos don’t kill people, PEOPLE KILL PEOPLE!”

It’s also strange, these Stand Your Ground Laws, because everyone knows they are racially targeting blacks. How do we know? Well the Urban Institute recently found that Whites who kill Blacks in Stand Your Ground states are 354% more likely to acquitted, or not even charged.

The jury did not find Dunn guilty of killing Davis, plain and simple. They found him guilty of shooting at the other kids in the car, as if Davis was never even there, or even a person who had lost their life. It seems that, in Florida, a black boy is expected to obey a white man, and if he doesn’t, then the white man is entitled to shoot him to to death. That is the intent of the law. It has nothing to do with self-defense. Self defense was already a viable defense before Stand Your Ground laws were ever implemented.Michael Dunn’s sick license to kill: The hot-blooded murder of Jordan Davis and Florida’s perverted justice

Dunn created the confrontation, then made it deadly. Under Florida's insane laws, the prosecution was still limited

By Paul CamposConsider how these laws work in the context of Dunn’s actions. Dunn chose to create a confrontation with a group of four young males. He is a middle-aged computer programmer. A middle-aged man who chooses to start a verbal altercation with four teenage boys in a convenience store parking lot on a Friday night knows that he is running a non-trivial risk of suffering great bodily harm, or in non-technical terms, getting his ass kicked.

But because this is America, Dunn has a trump card: the nine-millimeter handgun in his glove compartment, with 10 bullets in the clip, which he has every legal right to bring to the confrontation he chose to start.

And because this is America, the fact that Dunn is white and the teenage boys are black–black boys playing loud “thug” music, to use Dunn’s description–makes it seem “reasonable” to him that the confrontation he started is about to escalate to a point where he will suffer great bodily harm. (In America, being a black teenage male playing loud “black” music in an SUV in a convenience store parking lot on a Friday night makes you a fearsome figure to a middle-aged white man like Dunn).

Furthermore, because this is America, it’s reasonable for Dunn to fear that the scary black boys playing the scary music are armed. After all, there are more than 300 million non-military firearms floating around out there between the purple mountain majesties and the amber waves of grain. That’s no doubt one reason why Dunn has gone to the trouble of securing at least one of them for himself, and (again, perfectly legally) sticking it in his glove compartment, so that it’s within easy reach should he choose to get into a war of words with some black teenage boys in convenience store parking lot on a Friday night.

Choosing Whiteness or Humanity: Jordan Davis and the Minimizing of Black Pain

By Tim WiseSure, despite all of this, some jurors might have believed that Dunn acted out of a genuine concern that his life was in danger. Some people, after all, cling stubbornly to their belief in unicorns, and the idea that the Earth is only 6000 years old, and that God fabricated and then planted all those fossils (which are, shall we say, quite a bit older than that), solely as a way to test our faith. And a full 1 in 4 believe that the sun revolves around the Earth. Some people, in short, are so painfully imbecilic as to suggest that they should never be allowed anywhere near a jury room, whether in Florida or anywhere else.

But then again, it is also possible that the jury hung because although all agreed the shooting was unjustified, some refused to accept that Dunn’s act constituted first-degree murder, while others refused to go along with the notion that it was anything less. Given the defense’s painting of Dunn’s character as generally placid and kind—and given the state’s refusal to impeach this image, by introducing the overtly hateful and racist letters written by Dunn while awaiting trial, or testimony from a neighbor who said Dunn was racist, violent, and had actually approached him to solicit help with killing someone—one can imagine some being unable to see the man in the Mister Rogers’ sweaters (and for that matter, with Mr. Rogers’ voice) premeditating Davis’s death. This, despite the fact that premeditation under Florida law can be formed in an instant, so that it matters not whether Dunn had attended his son’s wedding that night, all the while secretly plotting to kill a black teen at a gas station. That notion of premeditation is a decidedly Hollywood version. It has nothing to do with the law. But perhaps some jurors couldn’t see that. So be it, and the state will get another chance to make that case. Hopefully they will make it better, and this time fully eviscerate the desiccated character of this rancid little man, so that the people of Florida will know: you cannot kill black people simply because you don’t like their music and because they back-sass you when you ask them to turn it down. But if you do, you will be found solely and entirely to blame, and punished accordingly.

Beyond the Xs and Os, however, and beyond the question of what should be done with “Stand Your Ground” laws—which were implicated in this case because of the way Dunn’s attorneys made their self-defense argument and because of the jury instructions—there is another matter, at once more abstract and yet far more important. It is the question of what it might ultimately take for black life to be realized as fully human by some (indeed many) white people? And what it might take for black pain to actually matter? To be seen as worthy of concern, and more than concern, worthy of being seen as equal to white pain, without reservation or hesitation?

I ask this not because whites did in this case what most did in the case of Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman—namely, line up behind the killer of the black child and presume that the latter had it coming—for it appears that the racial fault lines were not so neat and tidy this time. Most whites, or so it appears from what is most assuredly an unscientific observation of social and other media, view the killing of Jordan Davis as far less justifiable than the killing of Martin. So there’s that, one supposes; a small peg of progress upon which to hang one’s hopeful hat, for what it’s worth.

But it probably isn’t worth much. After all, even if most white folks actually agree this time with black people, and are appropriately horrified by murder (a type of progress about which one can hardly become too animated, since condemning murder hardly requires much moral fortitude), there are still plenty of us who are not. Too many of us—millions upon millions no doubt—still find it possible to give equal consideration to a white man’s paranoiac and racist hallucinations as to a black man’s life; to believe that the former is just as worthy of our indulgence as the latter, maybe more so.

America founded on race

Some thoughts on what the non-verdict says about race in the US:

The Souls of Black Folk and the Shame of the Dunn Verdict

By Susan Brooks ThistlethwaiteIt is clearer and clearer that in the United States African American lives are not of equal value, especially in states with "Stand Your Ground" laws where a jury was unable to reach a verdict of murder in the shooting death of unarmed, 17-year-old African American Jordan Davis by Michael Dunn, who is white and who has a carry concealed permit.

The unequal value placed on different human beings, according to race, is not exactly new. I have been re-reading W.E.B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk for a class I am teaching, and it is staggering how contemporary his analysis is today.

"The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line," said Du Bois in 1903.

But in the twenty-first century, with the addition of "Stand Your Ground" laws, as was clear in the Zimmerman case, the "color line" has become a "shooting line."Michael Dunn and open season on black teenagers: The onslaught of white murder

Since Florida cannot defend black life against white fear, the question now is: How should black people respond?

By Brittney CooperMany white folks believe that black criminality has produced white fear and that white fear in the presence of black masculinity is therefore always justified. But the opposite is true. White anxiety and fear and racism have produced the myth of pervasive black criminality. Intraracial black violence is a problem, but white racism has produced the concentrated structures of poverty and lack of access to education that give rise to violent behaviors.

Our national inability to tell the truth about this will only lead to more black victims.

In his famous essay “The Discovery of What It Means to Be an American,” James Baldwin wrote, “Every society is really governed by hidden laws, by unspoken but profound assumptions on the part of people, and ours is no exception.”

The truth we need to be telling is that the myth of black male criminality is foundational, not incidental, to America’s national identity. Even if there were no black male criminals, to riff on professor Hortense Spillers’ work, they would have to be invented. The presence of black criminals justifies white male rage, white women’s fear and subsequent white male violence.

More from Tim Wise:Ultimately, it is their allegiance to the ideological strictures of whiteness that makes their demise necessary; and it is indeed whiteness that calls forth their inability to fully feel the pain of so-called non-white peoples, and causes them to shift the discussion and the burdens of proof to black and brown folks, whenever harm comes their way. It is whiteness—a paradigm of thought that relies upon the presumption of cultural superiority for those of us called white in this society, and which presumes that we better understand the problems faced by peoples of color than they do, which must be demolished.

In short, for America to live, whiteness must die. Not white people but whiteness. You may not know the difference, but if not, that is your problem, not mine.

Do not misread me here. This is not, dear Nazis who so readily regale me with hate mail, a call for “white genocide.” I do not assume, as do you, that whiteness is an inherent essence of people of European descent. I contend it is a sickness foisted upon us by men who sought to maintain their power and control, and needed some among the Euro-peasantry to help them do it; and so they resolved to make us part of their racial team, even as they had maintained us in poverty for generations in England and Ireland and Italy and France and everywhere else from which our people come.

And so they told us to fear them, and to hate them, and to place our boots upon their necks so that they, the elite, could go about the business of accumulating great wealth at the expense not only of those people over there, but us too.Based on this article:

On the Killing of Jordan Davis by Michael Dunn

Facebook friend Brad asked:What do you think? Has America just "grown up" racist?This led to a discussion of what the Dunn verdict says about America:

Yes, you could say we've grown up racist. I think that the genocide of Indians and the enslavement of blacks are fundamental to our core mythology. Which goes along the lines of, "God gave the American wilderness to the white man to conquer, tame, and develop. Anything that happened along the way was just an unfortunate byproduct."So you'd agree with the author then that "devaluation" of black lives goes back to that?Yes. Basically America wasn't an experiment in creating a melting pot of multiculturalism. It was an experiment in setting up a continent ruled by a cult of white supremacy.

Only since the beginning of the 20th century have the two philosophies--white supremacy vs. melting pot--come into real conflict. We're somewhere in the middle of a transition that might take a few centuries. By the time the "Star Trek" era arrives, we may actually achieve the "Star Trek" ideal.

In short, I concur with the others who say racism is fundamental to America.

P.S. This thread alone would disqualify me for political office if I ever wanted to run. Oh, well.



Blacks are the new Indians

Not "new," exactly, but they face the same problem originally faced by Indians. Namely, that their existence confronted the American mythology of white Christian exceptionalism. How is America the "greatest" country if we have to kill and enslave people to become it?

In other words, this isn't simply a black-white problem, as Gyasi Ross explains:

Celebrating Killers: Yes, Natives Should Care About a Dead Black Teen

By Gyasi RossNative Mothers and Fathers: your brown skin little Indian boys’ lives are in danger. Teach them that their beautiful brown skin and powerful long, dark hair puts them in danger. Tell your beautiful brown little Indian girls that they’re a target to be sexually assaulted just for being them—it’s a fact. Let them know that their attackers—both the boys and girls—will never be punished. In fact, they will be celebrated. Hold those powerful descendants of the first people of this continent close. Tell them that you love them. Every single time they go outside or to the store or to the mall, there is a possibility that they can be tried, convicted and executed of being too brown, too scary, too virile. "Their hair is too long." "They have too many tattoos." Treasure their time—their lives mean nothing to America. In fact IF, God forbid, they were to be tragically killed, there are many who would celebrate that death.

Little Indian boys like thug music, too. Like Jordan Davis. Little Indian boys wear hoodies, too. Like Trayvon Martin.

They are no different than these little Black boys who keep getting killed for being Black. Their crime is the color of their skin; they are tried and convicted in the blink of an eye. Now, I know that there are Natives who don’t like Black folks, and Black folks who don’t like Natives, therefore we see each other as "different." "It’s just those ghetto Black boys getting killed." or "It’s just those damn Indians getting killed."

White supremacy doesn’t see any of as any different. At all. How do I know this?

Because white supremacy celebrates those who kill us.

Killer Michael Dunn was somehow convicted of attempted murder, but not murder. Killer George Zimmerman will have a reality show at some point and was already scheduled to be in a celebrity(!!) boxing match, profiting from the name he made while killing Trayvon Martin. Bernhard Goetz—pre-reality TV—became a semi-celebrity and had people willing to pay his legal defense. The point? People celebrate when white people kill young Black men.

As MLK pointed out, celebrating those who take brown lives ain’t nuthin’ new.

Christopher Columbus. Kit Carson. The 20 Medal of Honor winners of the Wounded Knee Massacre. Abraham Lincoln—the Great Emancipator, Honest Abe—ordering the largest mass execution in US History when he ordered 38 Natives killed in Mankato, Minnesota.

We’re in this together. These murders affect us. My son carries the royal lineage of chiefs and spiritual healers and protector/warriors, yet he is a suspect each and every time he goes outside because of his powerful brown skin. Just like the little Black boys. Just like every other brown man in this Nation. We gotta stop lying to ourselves that we’re somehow different and protect our babies together.The huge amount of violence against Natives, especially Native women, is part of the same problem. From curtailing the safety net to blocking immigration to hyping crime, white America devalues brown lives in innumerable ways. It's all about maintaining the Puritan vision of a select group of Euro-Christian Americans as God's chosen people.

For more on Trayvon Martin and related matters, see America's Dual Justice System and Zimmerman Verdict Shows America's Pathology.

Below:  1890: Chief Spotted Elk lies dad in the shnow after the massacre at Wounded Knee. Twenty soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor for their deeds."

Stop-and-frisk = controlling minorities

Ever since George Zimmerman profiled Trayvon Martin as a hoodie-wearing black criminal, racial profiling has been in the news. A prime example of this is New York City's controversial stop-and-frisk policy. Here a columnist tells us what stop-and-frisk is really about.

Memo to police: No, you’re not making us feel safe!

Racial profiling and stop-and-frisk are meant to make black and brown people feel safe? Here's what it really does

By Brittney CooperAs depicted in “Fruitvale Station,” Grant was a 22-year-old unarmed man, murdered by a police officer in Oakland in 2008. The officer, who served two years in jail for Grant’s murder, claimed to be reaching for his taser instead of his gun. There is a scene near the end of the movie–it’s not a spoiler, because we all know the end at the beginning–where the police confront Oscar and his friends. The officers yell at the young men, demand their silence, resist having their actions questioned and insist upon their right to detain these people simply for asking clarity on why they are being detained.

This weekend, “The Butler,” a film about race and the American presidency, made a splash at the box office. But in Silver Spring, Md., moviegoers in this largely African-American suburb were subjected to watching the movie at a Regal Cinema with armed police officers present. I went to see the movie over the weekend where I live, and nothing about it says public safety hazard. Those police were not there to protect or to serve. They were there to maintain order, because apparently middle-class African-American moviegoers are always out of order and cannot be trusted to watch a film about race without misbehaving.

We should be outraged when citizens are profiled, intimidated and treated in this manner. But we have come to believe this is how things have to be.

America is a culture of law and order junkies. Myself included. I am personally addicted to the show “Law & Order,” although just about any crime procedural will do, and it seems there is a “Law & Order” rerun or marathon playing at any hour of the day. I’ve even taken a gander at “Law & Order: UK.” I love watching because at the most basic level, the good guys win and the bad guys get what’s coming to them. But somehow, I know our national, almost pornographic obsession with these shows, both scripted and reality-based versions, feeds an unhealthy narrative that there is someone there, lurking in the shadows ready to do us harm. We believe this, even though violent crime started falling in the early 1990s, long before Bill Clinton and the GOP-led Congress engineered the makings of the Prison Industrial Complex.

These shows about the ever-present threat of violent crime have helped to feed a culture of fear. White people fear black and brown people. The police, no matter their color, treat us as a credible threat not only to white people, but to them, and to each other. Therefore, black and brown people fear the police. These fears are only exacerbated by neoliberal economic policies, a shrinking middle class, declining global reverence for American imperialism, and the global policing of brown people through the Obama administration’s use of drone warfare. These shows point us away from this broader set of logic and make us believe that we are in a simple cops-and-robbers fantasy. Every time we see the bad guys go down, we believe a little more in upholding the law and miss the ways that this has become about maintaining order.

The obsession with order is precisely why Mayor Bloomberg and police commissioner Ray Kelly can almost explicitly advocate for racial profiling in the use of stop-and-frisk, predominantly toward black and brown men. Black and brown people moving freely through public space upsets the order of things. Profiling them is viewed as a necessary evil that leads to the greater good of safety for all some. The same logic is used to profile Muslim Americans. Even though such practices are unconstitutional, they are indebted to this insidious logic of order, one in which criminals constitute a permanent underclass, and everyone needs to know and stay in their place. And of course, race determines place.Comment:  For more on the subject, see Tim Wise on Trayvon Martin and Bigots Protest Brown-Skins on 9/11.

George Zimmerman is Native?!

A commenter on Zimmerman Acquitted of Trayvon's Murder claims George Zimmerman is Native. Wow, really? Let's take a look:And Anon, it turns out that GZ is Native American and Black as well.

The racist narrative of the Left on this issue keeps running aground on the rocks of facts like this.

The left, including the writers here, are bashing Zimmerman because he is white. Never mind that they are incorrect, they are still racist for doing so.The article I posted explains how a person can be white and Hispanic. Read the key points again:The truth is, Zimmerman is both: white and Hispanic, one a racial category and the other a marker of ethnicity. ... Both are social constructions, but the former relies on skin color and ostensibly biological features, while the latter is a designation based on country of origin.This is consistent with the US Census and most polls, in which "of Hispanic descent" is an additional choice besides "white" or "black," not an alternative to them.

Your ignorance of this common classification scheme, despite the explanation in front of your face, is your problem, not mine. And obviously you can't address it with anything other than your opinion or you'd have done so already.

"Peruvian" = Native?!

So what if Zimmerman has a Peruvian mother and an "Afro-Peruvian" grandfather? Peruvians come in all races just like Americans. The grandfather could've been pure white on his Peruvian side. Unless you can identify a tribe or tribes Zimmerman is descended from, your speculation that he's "Native" is worthless.

And what if this Afro-Peruvian grandfather were half black and half Native? That would make Zimmerman 1/8 Native at most. And that's what you're calling Native?!

I'm doubly surprised that you'd think I'd think a white man with a small amount of black or Native blood is anything but white. If you've foolishly forgotten all my postings on Johnny Depp, Taylor Lautner, et al., read 'em again. A person whose DNA is mostly white is white.

The main exception is when an Indian tribe chooses to enroll people who are mostly white by DNA. Was Zimmerman's great-grandparent, grandfather, or mother an acknowledged member of a Peruvian tribe? If not, you're wasting our time.And Rob, in all fairness, I can find some similarity in your inconsistent arguments. You have erroneously characterized the US legally fighting back against a major terrorist kingpin in Iraq as "killing brown people". Here, you call George Zimmerman white.There's no inconsistency here, just your ignorance of what constitutes race and ethnicity. Hispanics with mostly Native heritage are brown. Hispanics with mostly European heritage are white.

Conservatives ignore dead Iraqis

As for Iraq, don't be a dumbass. Saddam Hussein didn't attack the United States and we invaded under false pretenses--to find the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. More to the point, we killed hundreds of thousands of "brown people" while killing a "major terrorist kingpin." My characterization on that point is accurate and well-documented.Rob personally makes the error on Zimmerman: "Conservatives are predictably glad that a white man got away with killing a black boy"Your lack of concern for the innocent Muslims we've killed is sickening--but typical for conservatives who don't care about dead brown people. Ann Coulter was the first to say "Hallelujah" over Zimmerman's getting away with murder. You can read more about your racist conservative friends here:

Tea Parties Use Verdict to Further Attack Trayvon, Reproduce RacismDespite the fact that Trayvon Martin was guilty only of “walking while black,” some Tea Party leaders had already convicted 17 year-old well before the trial, rather than George Zimmerman who shot him.Joe Scarborough: Sean Hannity Using Trayvon Martin's Death 'To Gin Up His Ratings' (VIDEO)"Whatever excuse there is to say this young black man had it coming to him, that is the defense because there is no defense for shooting down a young black man in a middle class neighborhood with Skittles."Conservatives deny America's racismAnd he makes other errors too: I have talked to many conservatives about this, and not one of them cared about the race of those involved.Nope, that's your error too. Specifically, your ignorance of the concept of white privilege. White privilege lets you ignore the race in cases like this, or pretend to ignore it.

But the racism embedded in many Americans is extremely well-documented. And I've documented it many times in this blog. Yet apparently you're too dumb and white to understand what you're reading. Or too conservative and anti-science to understand how research works.And Rob, in all fairness, I can find some similarity in your inconsistent arguments. You have erroneously characterized the US legally fighting back against a major terrorist kingpin in Iraq as "killing brown people". Here, you call George Zimmerman white.

Compare the picture you chose for this post, here, of Zimmerman, to any typical picture of Saddam Hussein.

Zimmerman looks less "white" than Saddam Hussein. Yet you call him white, and call the terrorist brown.Okay, I'll take that challenge:











Zimmerman looks less "white"?! Check your eyes, buddy. As with every other point here, you lose on that point too.

"Brown" defined for dummies

Besides, brown is a label for a whole group of people. It refers to an average person in the group, not an outlier. In other words, an exception doesn't disprove the rule.

Try comparing the people I call brown to the people I call white in general and you'll see I'm right. I.e., you'll see you're stupid for wasting my time with this trivial point.

Here's a related news flash for you: Blacks have skin colors ranging from dark gray to light tan. They aren't literally black. Duhhh.And it seems odd that Zimmerman is whitewashed to the point that his 1/4 Native ancestry is whitewashed to the point that isn't mentioned on your blog about Native issues.The only odd thing here is your ignorance of my years of blogging on what makes someone an Indian. Again, it's not a small fraction of Native blood.

Meanwhile, we're still waiting for a shred of evidence about your claim. "Afro-Peruvian" could be 50% black, 50% white, and 0% Native by blood. Claiming that "Afro-Peruvian" means "1/4 Native ancestry" is an excellent example of the wishful thinking you mentioned. It deserves the scorn I've given it.

In short, better luck next time, friend. Try using facts rather than unsubstantiated opinions and speculation. Then I won't have to kick your conservative butt all over the map again.

For more on Trayvon Martin, see Racist Responses to Zimmerman Verdict and America's Dual Justice System.

Racist responses to Zimmerman verdict

Top 20 hypocritical statements about the George Zimmerman trial

By Charles Badger1. Let’s start with the obvious one: if you think Zimmerman had a right to self-defense or to “stand his ground,” but Trayvon did not, then you might be a hypocrite.

4. If you think it’s racist to “inject” race into this and we should just be “colorblind,” yet you:

a) support “stop and frisk” (NOT-colorblind)

b) support “show me your papers” (NOT-colorblind); and,

c) support profiling Arab males at airports (NOT-colorblind, either)

…then what you really want is colorblind rules when it’s to the disadvantage of people of color but colorful policies when it’s to the benefit of white people…ergo: you might be a hypocrite.

7. If you understand (correctly) that Elizabeth Warren’s claim to Native American status in Massachusetts was laughable, yet don’t see that Zimmerman having a Latina mother doesn’t make his claim to being “Hispanic” any less laughable–because your race isn’t your family tree, it’s the treatment you’re accorded by others–then you might be a hypocrite.

8. Moreover, if you think Zimmerman being Hispanic is at all relevant to determining whether he racially profiled Trayvon Martin–as if, somehow being Hispanic means you can’t be racist–yet you believe black people are more racist than white people (a recent Rasmussen poll shows 22-percent of Americans think this) and you believe affirmative action is “reverse racism” by white people against white people, then you might be a very amusing hypocrite.

(Moreover, if you think Zimmerman “having black friends” and black relatives means he can’t be racist, you should acquaint yourself with the names Strom Thurmond and Thomas Jefferson.)

19. If you say, but “what about the 90%+ of black men killed by other black men?,” after all, shouldn’t black people be more concerned about “black-on-black crime?”; without realizing that says nothing about race and violence since 86% of white people are killed by another white person—because crime, is in significant part, a function of proximity and opportunity.How to Completely Miss the Point in a Conversation About Racism

By Kyle “Guante” Tran MyhreAfter a week of comments and conversations, I wanted to address the recurring points that some white people have brought up in the wake of the Zimmerman verdict. Because it’s not just about Trayvon Martin; every time there’s a national conversation about race and racism, white people (yes, I’m generalizing; no, I’m not sorry) tend to have the same kinds of reactions.

Getting wildly, irrationally defensive even though it’s not about you:
My column from last week basically just says “if you’re white and upset about the verdict, here are some things you can do to confront racism in your own life.” That’s it.

But then come the comments: “It’s racist to say that white people are racist!” “Why do we have to make such a big deal out of this?” “I’m white and I paid to go to college so there’s no such thing as white privilege!” “Why do we have to be singled out?“ The people talking about racism are the real racists!” “We’re not all like that!” “I’m so offended!”

White people: “talking about racism” does not equal “attacking you personally.” We desperately need to stop being so insecure every time anyone brings up anything remotely related to race and racism. You don’t have to agree, but to immediately jump into “eyes-closed-and-screaming” mode speaks volumes about you and the kind of world in which you’d prefer to live.

Refusing to acknowledge the role that race plays in our lives:
“It wasn’t about race.” That was the most consistent theme in the responses. Time and time again, when there is a racial incident in this country, people of color point to the giant racist elephant rampaging through the room and white people say “oh that’s probably just the wind.”

Is it possible that Zimmerman would have approached a white kid the same way he approached Trayvon Martin? Sure… it’s possible. But the lived experience of millions upon millions of people says that it’s also extremely naïve to believe that.

When people of color talk about racism, they’re not just making things up. There’s no Black Santa who delivers big bags of money to anyone who claims to have been discriminated against. Racial profiling, harassment and discrimination are daily realities for millions of people. To just dismiss that as “whining” or “playing the race card” is unbelievably arrogant.

“Refusing to talk about racism” doesn’t end racism. “Ending racism” ends racism. If your house is on fire, you don’t just ignore the flames away. Maybe a better metaphor is if your neighbors’ house is on fire, you don’t tell them to “stop making such a big deal out of it.” You don’t look the other direction and say “but are you sure it’s on fire?” You help, or you get out of the way.

Focusing on the details and ignoring the big picture:
“Zimmerman was half-Peruvian!” “911 dispatchers don’t have the authority to give orders!” “Trayvon was big and really strong and got in trouble at school!” “Zimmerman had an African-American girlfriend once!” “Since Travyon was right-handed, and standing at x angle, and the moon was at y point in the sky, there’s no way he could have…”

Stop.

I think the biggest misconception about the outrage around the Zimmerman trial is that people are mad about the verdict. To be fair, many are. But many more are mad because Travyon Martin happens every day in this country. It may not always end with a dramatic gun death, but young black and brown men are demonized, profiled, harassed, imprisoned and killed every day for being young black and brown men (and women too, let’s be honest).

The marches and rallies that have been happening recently aren’t just about Trayvon Martin. They’re about the culture that demonizes black and brown youth, assuming that they’re dangerous, threatening, and up-to-no-good. They’re about the lack of accountability and consequences in police brutality cases. They’re about disproportionate minority confinement. They’re about the selective application of the “Stand Your Ground” law. They’re about the gross over-representation of people of color in the criminal justice system. They’re about who is given the benefit of the doubt and who isn’t, time and time again. They’re about the continued de-valuing of black and brown life in this country.

Argue about the specific details of this specific case all you want, but nothing in the above paragraph is up for debate. That’s the big picture that we—especially those of us who identify as white—have to see, if we ever hope to transition from “having a conversation about racism” to “doing something about racism.”Comment:  For more on Trayvon Martin, see America's Dual Justice System and American "Justice" Protects White People.

America's dual justice system

White people believe the justice system is color blind. Black people really don’t.

By John SidesQ: Why do blacks and whites have such different views of the criminal justice system?

Much of the difference comes down to either personal or vicarious experiences that people have with police and the courts. We found that African Americans, especially younger black men, were far more likely than whites to report being treated unfairly by the police because of their race. In fact, a recent Gallup Poll found that one of every four black men under age 35 said that the police have treated them unfairly during the last 30 days. Little has changed since our survey. And these contacts do not have to be personal. In a recent study we conducted with Jeffery Mondak, we found that the distrust felt by many blacks is compounded by their vicarious experiences. Many of their black acquaintances have also had similar negative encounters with the law.

Q: Are there factors that matter beyond personal or vicarious experiences?

A: So much of an individual’s judgment of the justice system comes down to perceived process. When African Americans see the enormous overrepresentation of blacks in correctional facilities, they assume there has been blatant procedural injustice—injustice due to prevalent biases in apprehensions, arrests, trials, sentencing, laws, and more. In his remarks Friday about the death of Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of George Zimmerman, President Obama himself described this view: “The African-American community is…knowledgeable that there is a history of racial disparities in the application of our criminal laws, everything from the death penalty to enforcement of our drug laws. And that ends up having an impact in terms of how people interpret the case.”

But in our data many whites (about 60 percent) believed that blacks deserve to be imprisoned more frequently. They often based their explanations of racial discrepancies in the prisons on racial stereotypes: Blacks, they believed, are more inclined to commit crimes or just less likely to respect authority. To a considerable extent, therefore, African Americans attribute outcomes to procedural bias, while whites are more willing to attribute them to character flaws of blacks.And:Q: What are the consequences of these separate realities for opinions about how criminals could or should be punished?

A: The separate realities of whites and blacks affect those opinions too. Whites are significantly more likely than blacks to support capital punishment, three-strikes laws, and spending money building more prisons (rather than funding antipoverty programs) to prevent crime. Because blacks do not trust the justice system, they do not believe that punishment will be handed out fairly. But because whites do believe the system is fair and because they are more likely to hold blacks personally responsible for the crimes for which they are accused, they support considerably more punitive policies.

Given the pervasive cynicism and distrust among so many African Americans, as well as the belief in the integrity of the fairness of the justice system so prevalent among many whites, it was almost inevitable that responses to the Zimmerman acquittal would be racially polarized. Surveys have already documented far less support for, and far more disappointment with, the verdict among blacks than among whites.

In a recent YouGov poll 75 percent of black respondents said that they would have found Zimmerman guilty of a crime—39 percent said guilty of manslaughter, while 36 percent said guilty of murder. Among white respondents, only 34 percent would have found him guilty of one of the two crimes. The dominant emotions expressed by black Americans over the verdict were disappointment (53 percent) and anger (25 percent), whereas whites tended to say that they were pleased (25 percent) and relieved (21 percent) as well as disappointed (23 percent).

Q: What do the book’s findings tell us about the broader impact on public attitudes of the killing of Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of George Zimmerman?

A: Social scientists have uncovered an avalanche of evidence documenting whites’ stereotypes of blacks as violent and criminal. Social psychologists conducting controlled lab experiments, for example, have demonstrated that merely thinking briefly about blacks can lead people, including police officers, to evaluate ambiguous behavior as aggressive, to miscategorize harmless objects as weapons, to shoot quickly and, at times, inappropriately, and to endorse harsh treatment of a black (versus a white) suspect. And the association between race and crime is not strong, but also outside people’s awareness and control to some extent (see, for example, research here, here; and here).

The Trayvon Martin case demonstrates how the association between race and violence in the minds of many non-blacks is a recipe for tragic misperception and a failure to correct, or even to recognize, how stereotypes often lead to a series of faulty decisions and catastrophic errors.

If Trayvon Martin had been white it would be harder to make sense of the events surrounding the case—how Zimmerman assumed Martin, who was in a gated community carrying Skittles and a soft drink, was a dangerous criminal, why Zimmerman twice ignored the police dispatch asking him not to pursue Martin and instead confronted and shot him. It would be harder to understand how the Sanford police could have questioned Zimmerman and released him without charging him, or how for more than a month Zimmerman was not charged until a national outrage ensued, or how an all-white jury eventually acquitted Zimmerman for killing Martin.

From where we sit, which admittedly is far removed from the scene of the crime or the trial, the sequence of events should be informed by our knowledge of how racial stereotypes can bias judgments and rationalize decisions.Comment:  In the same vein, I posted the following on Facebook:



I have a conservative white friend who said none of his conservative white friends are talking about race in the Zimmerman case. So race isn't an issue. *headdesk*

For more on Trayvon Martin, see American "Justice" Protects White People and Zimmerman Verdict Shows America's Pathology.

American "justice" protects white people

Native American Journalists on Trayvon Martin

By Richard PrinceThe fallout from the George Zimmerman trial was in the air Friday, as President Obama made a surprise speech about the verdict in the White House press briefing room. But at the National Native Media Conference in Tempe, Ariz., where the Native American Journalists Association was meeting, other topics ruled the day. The words "George Zimmerman" or "Trayvon Martin" were hardly uttered.

When asked why, attendees offered remarkably similar responses, variations of, "Welcome to my world. Native Americans receive unequal justice all the time."

"We have our own system of injustice, and we've been living it for 100 years," Tim Giago, Oglala Lakota, veteran Native journalist and founding president of NAJA, told Journal-isms.

"We're used to it. We have to prove our innocence," replied Lucinda Hughes-Juan, Tohono O'odham, a freelance business writer and business instructor at Tohono O'odham Community College.

"Native Americans have always dealt with similar circumstances," said Ronnie Washines of the Yakama Nation Review, a Yakama and a former NAJA president.

Each could cite examples.

In South Dakota, Giago said, a Native American was given a five-year sentence for driving while intoxicated, while a white man received probation.

"On my reservation alone," Washines said, "there have been almost a dozen unsolved murders and missing women cases." Then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales came to the reservation and promised to have investigators review all of the unsolved homicide and mysterious death cases on the reservation.

"They can't find anything. Came back with zero," Washines said.

"This is typical," Hughes-Juan said of the way justice was administered in the Martin case. "Being followed around in stores, stuff like that. We have so many issues, poverty issues, day-to-day survival." Native Americans rank near the bottom on so many social indicators that "a lot of this one is Native people are always dealing with our own issues," Perci Ami, a Hopi master trainer and facilitator who came to the convention in place of an ailing Patty Talahongva, a past NAJA president. If Martin had been an Indian, "We would have responded the way African American people are responding. That's probably the main reason you don't see a lot of discussion."

Outside the convention, some Native Americans have taken a different approach. Activist Suzan Shown Harjo last year used the Martin case, in which Zimmerman, a night watchman, fatally shot Martin, an unarmed black teenager, as an example of white privilege.

"All sorts of excuses are made for whites who harm non-whites, mainly that they act out of fear," Harjo wrote. "No one really acknowledges what their fear is: That non-whites, once in charge of anything, will be as bad to the whites as they have been to us."

Suzette Brewer wrote last week for the Indian Country Today Media Network about a high-profile custody case involving 3-year-old Veronica Brown, a Cherokee, and Matt and Melanie Capobianco, a white couple who took the newborn Veronica home from the hospital in an open adoption approved by the mother. Brewer quoted an outraged Native legal scholar: "This is Indian country's Trayvon Martin moment; we cannot pass on this."

Gyasi Ross, a member of the Blackfeet Nation whose family also belongs to the Suquamish Nation, wrote last year about the backlash he received from "one small group of dissenters" who disagreed with his piece urging everyone to care about the Martin case.

"We must realize that Native people have a vested interest in making sure that everybody in this country's rights are respected," Ross wrote. "The more that all people of color are able to enforce their rights in this country, the more likely that justice will eventually make its way to Native people.

"We are all inextricably linked and need each other--therefore, Indian people should be screaming for justice for Trayvon Martin specifically because we've seen many instances of Native people being killed by rednecks under the theory that the Native people were 'threatening' before.Some historical context

Cicero's Tongue: “Hey! It’s me, Trayvon!”

By Vorris L. NunleyConsider Zimmerman’s vigilante “stand your ground” pose as a trope. The power of the trope emerging from the American electricity of rugged individualism, the right to bear arms, private property, and the protection of the American project of progress requiring the civilizing or disciplining of the uncivilized, the savage, the foreigner, and the criminal. Why did the vigilante trope work to perfection for Zimmerman? The vigilante trope is White. It is raced, gendered and classed. Does anyone believe that if the victim were White, a Black male could adopt the vigilante pose to equal effect? That an Asian could? A lesbian? A poor Black woman? Tropes influence human behavior almost as much as human behavior influence the use of tropes. Zimmerman was performed by the trope. It took over his body as Zimmerman exuded the arrogance, confidence, and racial tone-deafness the trope demands. Both his individuality and his Whiteness were evoked and protected by the trope. Unfortunately the Black trope erased Trayvon’s individuality. Transformed his Blackness into spectacle.

Trayvon the person, the human being, rarely entered the courtroom. The defense was unwilling to skirmish with the Trayvon invented by Zimmerman: Trayvon as King Kong in a hoodie: savage, undomesticated, prone to violence, guilty by definition; George Zimmerman as Fay Wray: fragile, scared, driven to self-defense, innocent through skin. The prosecution tapped into the galvanizing energy of the Black trope with such brio that the defense lawyers seemed to be Moot Court scrubs. The misbehaving Black body (that is, any Black body challenging White notions of proper Black civility and decorum in fact or in fearful projection) is by definition wrong, needing to be quelled and made to behave, often by calling the police to say how “scared” they were, how they feared for their safety.

How the System Worked: The US v. Trayvon Martin

By Robin D. G. Kelley[I]t would be a mistake to place the verdict at the feet of the defense for its unscrupulous use of race, or to blame the prosecution for avoiding race, or the jury for insensitivity, or even the gun lobby for creating the conditions that have made the murder of young black men justifiable homicide. The verdict did not surprise me, or most people I know, because we’ve been here before. We were here with Latasha Harlins and Rodney King, with Eleanor Bumpurs and Michael Stewart. We were here with Anthony Baez, Michael Wayne Clark, Julio Nunez, Maria Rivas, Mohammed Assassa. We were here with Amadou Diallo, the Central Park Five, Oscar Grant, Stanley “Rock” Scott, Donnell “Bo” Lucas, Tommy Yates. We were here with Angel Castro, Jr. Bilal Ashraf, Anthony Starks, Johnny Gammage, Malice Green, Darlene Tiller, Alvin Barroso, Marcillus Miller, Brenda Forester. We’ve been here before with Eliberto Saldana, Elzie Coleman, Tracy Mayberry, De Andre Harrison, Sonji Taylor, Baraka Hall, Sean Bell, Tyisha Miller, Devon Nelson, LaTanya Haggerty, Prince Jamel Galvin, Robin Taneisha Williams, Melvin Cox, Rudolph Bell, Sheron Jackson. And Jordan Davis, killed in Jacksonville, Florida, not long after Trayvon Martin. His murderer, Michael Dunn, emptied his gun into the parked SUV where Davis and three friends sat because they refused to turn down their music. Dunn is invoking “stand your ground” in his defense.

The list is long and deep. In 2012 alone, police officers, security guards or vigilantes took the lives of 136 unarmed black men and women—at least twenty-five of whom were killed by vigilantes. In ten of the incidents, the killers were not charged with a crime, and most of those who were charged either escaped conviction or accepted reduced charges in exchange for a guilty plea. And I haven’t included the reign of terror that produced at least 5,000 legal lynchings in the United States, or the numerous assassinations—from political activists to four black girls attending Sunday school in Birmingham fifty years ago.

The point is that justice was always going to elude Trayvon Martin, not because the system failed, but because it worked. Martin died and Zimmerman walked because our entire political and legal foundations were built on an ideology of settler colonialism—an ideology in which the protection of white property rights was always sacrosanct; predators and threats to those privileges were almost always black, brown, and red; and where the very purpose of police power was to discipline, monitor, and contain populations rendered a threat to white property and privilege. This has been the legal standard for African Americans and other racialized groups in the U.S. long before ALEC or the NRA came into being. We were rendered property in slavery, and a threat to property in freedom. And during the brief moment in the 1860s and ‘70s, when former slaves participated in democracy, held political offices, and insisted on the rights of citizenship, it was a well-armed (white) citizenry that overthrew democratically-elected governments in the South, assassinated black political leaders, stripped African-Americans of virtually all citizenship rights (the franchise, the right of habeas corpus, right of free speech and assembly, etc.), and turned an entire people into predators.Trayvon Martin Stood His Ground and Got Murdered for It: So Did Native Americans

By Mark KarlinTrayvon Martin is dead because he followed the letter of the racist ALEC-NRA "license to murder law" and protected himself against an unstoppable, insatiable deadly force: George Zimmerman. But "Stand Your Ground" laws aren't meant to give blacks the same rights as non-blacks; quite the opposite, they are, as they did in the case of George Zimmerman, meant to give whites (or half-whites in this case) the right to pursue blacks with impunity.

Historically, if we go back to the founding and expansion of what is now the United States, if there had been a legal entity existing at that time, Native Americans (as the illustration for this article points out) would have been entitled to stand their ground against the colonizers from Europe who were stealing their land and massacring them.

We would be subject to Native American law right now if indigenous tribes had had the enforced right to stand their ground as European conquerors expanded westward, creating what is now the United States.

There would have been no development of the Southern tyranny and abomination of slavery, which imported Africans as property and the source of wealth for aristocratic plantation owners.

There would have likely, ironically, been no "Stand Your Ground" laws aimed at de facto allowing the murder of non-whites as BuzzFlash at Truthout wrote about in a July 6 column, "It's Not Just George Zimmerman on Trial, It's America's Acceptance of Killing 'the Other'."Comment:  For more on Trayvon Martin, see Zimmerman Verdict Shows America's Pathology and Racism in Post-Trayvon America.

Zimmerman verdict shows America's pathology

The Zimmerman verdict is about racism, but not just racism against blacks. It's about America's racist attitude toward "the Other." This began with the first murder of innocent Indians, and it continues with the murder of innocent Muslims via drones.

Below are some postings on these subjects. First, on the connection with violence against Indians:

Stand Your Ground for Trayvon Martin and All Our Children

By Ruth HopkinsThe case was replete with racial overtones. Zimmerman, although Hispanic, racially profiled young Martin, or he would not have pursued him. Others claimed that Zimmerman, as well as his family, had a history of being prejudice against Blacks. Taken as a whole though, the Zimmerman trial and the resulting not guilty verdict are symptomatic of a larger problem; young minority men, guilty of nothing more than being brown, are being murdered at an alarming rate by white men. Further, their surviving families, who’ve already suffered a tremendous loss, are receiving no justice.

Unfortunately, this is not a new phenomenon. The United States has a long and twisted colonial history of exercising brutal vigilante justice against men who are not white. Often these horrendous murders had little to do with the actual procuring of justice and more to do with enforcing white supremacy. While most people are aware of the lynching of innocent African American men in the south, most do not know that Asian, Hispanic, and Native American men have all been victims of lynch mobs too.

Thousands of Native men have been lynched since European invaders arrived. One of the earliest lynchings happened in 1642. After his village of over 100 men, women and children were slaughtered, a young, unidentified Native man was hacked to death by Dutch settlers in the area now called New York City. That’s just one example.And:What people are failing to realize is that we’ve all been lied to. Culture is real, yes--but race is an illusion. There is only one race--the human race. We are all the same species. We all share the same DNA. What divides us is a mental block based purely on physical traits and the stereotypes, misconceptions and false history that we’ve been conditioned to believe that they represent. We’ve all been brainwashed, folks. The colonial system feeds the racism lie because they need it to control us and keep us separate. As long as we are divided, we as a people are weaker, and less able to effect change.

In my mind, Zimmerman being acquitted of murder and manslaughter was an absolute travesty, but I can’t say that I was shocked. There are two Americas. There’s the old guard, the ‘white picket fence’ colonial America, built on land stolen from Indigenous peoples over the broken backs of African slaves, where PoC are still second class citizens who are seen as less than equals, and where although not all of its actors maybe white, the agenda of white privilege indeed dominates, and then there is the new guard--a progressive 2013 citizenry comprised of those the old guard would call ‘the Other,’ who face oppression every single day yet push forward with determination and hope. When Zimmerman was found not guilty, the old guard flexed its muscle. But I believe this is one of a few last gasps before it dies for good. We will pull together. We must, for the sake of Earth and all our children.

Trayvon Martin Verdict: The Difference Between The Law and What's Right“The Zimmerman case is not just about stand your ground, or self-defense; it’s about the prejudice that exists to this day, it’s about a prejudicial justice system that makes the color of the victims skin predetermine the verdict of not guilty, and the message sent out to other individuals such as Zimmerman that you can get away with it,” O.J. Semans, co-director of the voting-rights group Four Directions, said in an e-mail to ICTMN. “Here in Indian country we understand that all too well.”

Many human rights groups and activists decried the verdict shortly after it was announced with protests across the country, yet as usatoday.com addressed, the verdict was no surprise to many lawyers. Those protests as usatoday.com reported were by many people who feel that the bigger issues of race and justice are unresolved.

“The most important thing we can do as Native Americans is to raise our voices against injustice, to affirm our love for one another, and to show that we stand together with the Black community. Indian country knows in the most profound way, the hurt and historical legacy of centuries of oppression, war, termination, and disease all now deeply baked into a system of institutional racism. The lesson is that we as a nation cannot be afraid to look at race. And as a nation, America cannot grow into who it is supposed to be until we address race and racism head on,” Chris Stearns, chairman of the Seattle Human Rights Commission said in an e-mail to ICTMN. “From a human rights perspective, not only is there a fundamental human right to life, there is also a central human right to be free from discrimination. Article 7 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that all people ‘are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law.’ Article 2 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination requires all governments to ‘take effective measures to review governmental, national and local policies, and to amend, rescind or nullify any laws and regulations which have the effect of creating or perpetuating racial discrimination wherever it exists.’ We have a right to not only expect, but to demand, better from our government.”Kill the "other"!

Violence toward blacks, Indians, and other minorities exemplify what America is all about. Namely, demonizing anyone who isn't a white, male Christian in the (fictional) image of Jesus.

Zimmerman verdict: A green light for racist vigilantes

This verdict allows every paranoid, sub-intelligent, vigilante with a gun to go on victimizing black youth

By Rich BenjaminThis sordid affair has everything to do with race, but not race alone.

Not just a cautionary tale on racial profiling and vigilante justice, Trayvon’s needless death is a devastating lesson on the paranoid logic of gun capitalism. Zimmerman claims he didn’t feel safe. Did Trayvon feel safe? What about his safety? After all, the youth was shot by a multi-racial vigilante assailant—with a troubling history with law enforcement—in a multiracial gated community.

When will we muster the resolve to stop deaths from gun violence? For goodness sake: Why wouldn’t the Aurora shooting and the Newtown massacre force us all to confront the illusory sense of safety in our communities?

Regeneration Through Violence, The Fatal Environment, Gunfighter Nation: Richard Slotkin’s masterful historical trilogy on this country’s long-standing love affair with vigilantism, cruelty, and gun violence reveals as much about Zimmerman and this tragedy as does his trial transcripts—or any news media. This tragedy rips bare all the thorny issues Richard Slotkin exposes in that brilliant trilogy.

The questions demand: How does a legal establishment maintain justice in a world getting browner by the day? And in a nation that feels the need to “regenerate” itself through violence? What will this country do to keep young people safe?

The Slotkin trilogy shows us how America’s frontier myths still dominate our violent politics and culture.

George Zimmerman killed the presumption of innocence

In an era of drones and NSA excess, the Zimmerman verdict reaffirms that like Trayvon, too many are presumed guilty

By David SirotaRemember, in the same year that saw Zimmerman kill Martin, Zimmerman’s president, Barack Obama, extra-judicially executed Anwar al-Awlaki and then his 16-year-old son, without charging either of the two U.S. citizens with a single crime. The two were simply presumed guilty, without any evidence being officially marshaled against them. Not only that, such a presumption wasn’t hidden from view in shame, as if it was something to be embarrassed about. Instead, Obama openly touted the extra-judicial killing of the father and then his spokesman haughtily justified the extra-judicial killing of the child.

Explaining the Zimmerman-like aggression against the Awlakis and thousands of others who find themselves targeted by U.S. drone strike missiles, the federal government later offered up the Zimmerman Principle, repeating the same sentiment that Zimmerman expressed during his cellphone call to non-emergency responders.

Whereas Zimmerman told non-emergency responders that Martin “looks like he’s up to no good,” the New York Times reported that Obama’s indiscriminate drone bombing, which “counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants,” presumes that people in a targeted area are “probably up to no good.” In other words, when it comes to military policy, the Obama administration is George Zimmerman perceiving the world as filled with Trayvon Martins supposedly “up to no good”—and who supposedly therefore deserve to die.

It is, of course, no coincidence that, whether African-Americans like Martin or Arabs like the Awlakis, those most affected by the Zimmerman Principle’s presumption of guilt tend to be people of color.

As has been the case throughout this country’s history, being racially, ethnically or religiously classified as non-white or “other” by America still means being presumed guilty (and certainly more guilty than others). Indeed, despite all the vapid paeans to our allegedly “post-racial” or “colorblind” ethos, we see that truth everywhere.

We see it in the disproportionate targeting of minorities through programs like “stop and frisk.” We see it in a CIA-directed police department targeting Muslim communities for surveillance. We see it in Arizona’s racial profiling law that aimed to weaken the requirement for probable cause. We see it in the proliferation of “stand your ground” laws that disproportionately protect white folk whose presumption of black guilt leads them to gun down African-Americans. And we see it in a drug war whose deployment of resources presumes that communities of color are more guilty than other communities.Comment:  Indians have suffered in countless "Stand Your Ground" type of situations. White men attacked, Indians fought back, and white men got hurt. The aggressors killed the "offenders" and the courts and the public found the killers innocent of any crime.

Columbus brought this mentality from the Old World and it's still with us today. It needs to stop, now.

For more on the subject, see:

America's culture based on violence
Changing our gun culture
Newtown shootings show America's pathology
White = sick, brown = deviant
Sikh shootings reflect white supremacy

Racism in post-Trayvon America

The Zimmerman verdict highlights the fact that racism is still prevalent in America. In similar cases:

5 racially charged self-defense cases that echo Zimmerman

Zimmerman's acquittal has drawn attention to other self-defense trials--and the racial biases they reveal

By Katie McDonoughMarissa Alexander

Invoking Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law did little to protect Marissa Alexander, a 31-year-old African-American mother of three, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison after she fired a warning shot to ward off her husband during a domestic violence incident. Alexander, who had a protective order out against her husband, aimed her shot at the ceiling, injuring no one.

Alexander maintained throughout the trial that she was acting in self-defense, but was convicted on three counts of aggravated assault in 2011. And despite the fact that she had no prior record, she was given the harsh sentence of 20 years because of the state’s mandatory minimum sentencing requirements.

John McNeil

In 2005, John McNeil received a phone call from his son reporting that 19-year-old Brian Epp was trespassing in the backyard of the family’s Georgia home, wielding a box cutter. McNeil, a black man, returned home, called the police and told Epp, a white man, to leave. He then fired a warning shot into the ground, but Epp continued to approach. McNeil then shot Epp, killing him.

Witnesses corroborated McNeil’s account of events, and police initially ruled he acted in self-defense. But months later, the Cobb County District Attorney’s Office brought murder charges against him and won a conviction. McNeil was sentenced to life in prison.

In February 2013, after spending six years in prison, McNeil’s case was reconsidered and he pleaded guilty to the reduced charge of manslaughter and released on time served and 13 years probation.In our judicial system overall:

A Racial Disparity in Justified Killings?Black Americans are significantly less likely to be found justified in the deadly use of a firearm than white Americans, according to research by John Roman, of the Urban Institute’s Justice Policy Center.

Roman examined Supplementary Homicide Reports submitted to the Federal Bureau of Investigation between 2005 and 2010. He posted his findings on the Urban Institute’s MetroTrends Blog.

Roman found that “the difference between rates of justifiable rulings in cases with a white shooter and a black victim and cases with a black shooter and a white victim are astonishing.”

In cases in which both the shooter and victim are white, the shooting is ruled to be justified less than 2 percent of the time, according to Roman. If the shooter is black and the victim is white, the shooting considered justified about 1 percent of the time.

“However, if the shooter is white and the victim is black, it is ruled justified in 9.5 percent of cases in non-Stand Your Ground (SYG) states. In SYG states, the rate is even higher—almost 17 percent,” writes Roman.

In cases in which the shooter and victim are strangers and neither is law enforcement the disparity is even larger. Roman found that in cases with black shooters and white victims, less than 3 percent were ruled justified. But when the roles are reversed, 29 percent in non-SYG states were ruled justified, and almost 36 percent in SYG states.In our culture:

America’s summer of hate

From George Zimmerman to Paula Deen, KTVU's awful Asian jokes to "Big Brother," it's been one hot, racist summer

By Mary Elizabeth WilliamsThe Zimmerman verdict—and the reactions to it—didn’t occur in a vacuum. They happened in a time and place in which the prosecution’s greatest hope for a star witness, Rachel Jeantel, was ripped to shreds in the court of public opinion for being “ghetto trash.” After I wrote about Jeantel last month, I spent the next several days on the receiving end of some of the vilest emails I’ve ever received. And yet I could shrug them off with a click of the delete button. I still had the luxury of walking around in my fair skin, protected in a way that the Rachel Jeantels of America never are.

And as a white woman, I have had many of the same advantages that Paula Deen does. Deen, who has spent the summer making weak statements about how she doesn’t “condone” racism while swaggeringly insisting, “I is what I is, and I’m not changing.” Deen, who, let’s remember here, is the subject of a lawsuit not for her casual use of racial epithets or weird romantic vision of a distant era but for her behavior, for “patterns of disrespect and degradation of people that she deems to be inferior.”

As a white woman, I don’t have to put up with the attitudes of contestants on “Big Brother” who toss around slurs about their African-American housemates and whisper that Asians should shut up and “go make some rice.” As a white woman, I look not so different from KTVU reporter Tori Campbell, who on Friday unblinkingly rattled off a series of juvenile, insulting fake names for the pilots of Asiana crash from a teleprompter, who didn’t pause for even a moment to question their authenticity. That’s white privilege in action for you, right there.And in ourselves:

Inside George Zimmerman’s brain

A video game-like experiment studies how we make assumptions--and may unlock how to prevent more such killings

By Maya WileyCorrell formed a video game-like experiment based on decades of “implicit associations” research. Participants had milliseconds to assess whether a person (or “target”) on the screen was carrying a gun. If the person had a gun, the participant had to quickly push a button to “shoot” the person. If the person had something else, like a wallet or a cell phone, participants had to press a different button. Time and again, research subjects wrongly shot the unarmed Black “targets.” And here is the kicker: Correll’s findings held even when the research subjects were Black. In other words, even Black people are more likely to shoot unarmed Black targets than armed white targets.

Over 2 million people have taken a similar test, the Implicit Associations Test. Participants have to push buttons identifying a face with a judgment, like “good” or “bad.” Almost 88 percent of the tens of thousands of white participants react to a Black face as “bad” and a white face as “good.” This is a subconscious preference for whites. And 42 percent of Blacks do as well.

This is implicit bias—the prejudices we carry that we aren’t even aware of but which profoundly influence our emotions and reactions to other people. As Correll has explained, the shooter bias of his studies “come not from what you personally believe or want to believe, but from long-standing associations drilled into our heads every time we go to the movies or pick up a newspaper or hear a joke.”

Juror B37 from George Zimmerman’s trial has said in the media that she and her fellow jurors did not think that George Zimmerman’s behavior—following Trayvon Martin because he didn’t know him, considering him an “F*ing punk” and dialing and trailing the Black youth, then allegedly fearing for his life and shooting Trayvon Martin—had anything to do with race. At the same time, the juror said she believed that Trayvon was doing something strange, looking in houses at night. Based on what we know of implicit bias, both Zimmerman and Juror B37 have exhibit indications of implicit bias. They may not “see race”—that is, they may not be conscious of how their brains are processing the visual information that Trayvon Martin is Black. But what we know about our brains and race tells us that subconscious bias was as influential the night that Trayvon Martin was killed as it was the night that George Zimmerman was acquitted.Comment:  For more on Trayvon Martin, see Black Youth Killed Like Trayvon and Racial Profiling for Blacks and Indians.

Zimmerman acquitted of Trayvon's murder

The verdict on George Zimmerman's killing of Trayvon Martin is in: not guilty. Conservatives are predictably glad that a white man got away with killing a black boy, while liberals are predictably angry.

For starters, let's note that the liberal outrage isn't necessarily over the verdict itself:

On the Killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman

By Ta-Nehisi CoatesI think the jury basically got it right. The only real eyewitness to the death of Trayvon Martin was the man who killed him. At no point did I think that the state proved second degree murder. I also never thought they proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he acted recklessly. They had no ability to counter his basic narrative, because there were no other eye-witnesses.

I think Andrew Cohen is right--trials don't work as strict "moral surrogates." Not everything that is immoral is illegal--nor should it be. I want to live in a society that presumes innocence. I want to live in that society even when I feel that a person should be punished.That said, observers say the prosecution made several mistakes. One was not focusing on Zimmerman's initial aggression:How does 2013 Florida have a (Stand Your Ground) law that seems cut and pasted from 1881 Tombstone? Because let’s be clear here: according to current Florida law, you can get a gun, follow an unarmed minor, call the police, have them explicitly tell you to stop following them, then choose to ignore that, keep following the minor, get into a confrontation with them, and if at any point during that process you get scared, you can shoot the minor to death. And the state of Florida would say ‘Well, you did what you could.’John Oliver, The Daily ShowAnother was not focusing on Trayvon's race:

Zimmerman saga was all about race

Let's get real

By Paul CamposTrayvon Martin was stalked by George Zimmerman because he was black. Trayvon Martin is dead because he was black. George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing Trayvon Martin because the boy Zimmerman killed was black.

If you deny these things, you are either a liar or an idiot, or possibly both.

Nothing above requires the conclusion that the jury’s verdict was wrong as a matter of law. Florida’s laws, in their majestic equality, extend to people of all races the right to engage in vigilante killing that eliminates the sole witness to that killing. To point this out is neither a defense of those laws, nor a claim that they will in fact be applied equally. In other words, to blame this jury in this situation is to miss the point.Zimmerman verdict: A green light for racist vigilantes

This verdict allows every paranoid, sub-intelligent, vigilante with a gun to go on victimizing black youth

By Rich BenjaminZimmerman’s stooges and apologists claim that his deadly encounter had nothing do with race. And that his trial and acquittal have nothing to do with race. His defenders effectively portrayed him as a hapless Samaritan who got in over his head. Meanwhile, they tarred Trayvon as a menace who failed to properly justify his existence.

These presumptions colored every moment of the Police Department’s botched initial reaction and the trial.

How does an armed adult defy the policy, chase down a youth, kill him, and then turn around and call it self defense? Defense from what? A fleeing kid? Was Trayvon Martin seen for his humanity? Or as a “fucking punk”? Are black men seen for our humanity or as three-fifths of a fucking punk? This verdict will have devastating consequences. It is an implicit green light for every paranoid, sub-intelligent, vigilante racist to go on victimizing black youth. Trayvon Martin is dead for no reason other than being black.

Why do Zimmerman and some Americans feel entitled to police black and brown people like vigilantes? Why did the Sanford Police Department test a dead boy’s body for drugs in “standard operating procedure,” yet failed to test a live man’s body for alcohol or drugs? Why did the Sanford Police Department fail so miserably during the critical immediate hours after arriving on the scene?

Since our juridical Establishment often turns its head--or even winks--at the prevalence of racial profiling and police brutality against black and brown people, why should anyone be surprised by Zimmerman’s chase? Or by his acquittal? Implicitly and explicitly, the law condones his racial paranoia. The so-called rationales used to design and peddle “Stand Your Ground” laws and “Stop and Frisk” laws, and immigrant policing laws, fuel a vigilante mentality allowing some Americans to feel entitled to self-police others.

Even before the verdict, the Police Establishment warned black people not to riot--as though that were a foregone conclusion--without delivering Zimmerman’s supporters the same warning. The warning not to riot--in its substance and tone--recirculates the dogma of “black men as menace.” The chase, the trial, the warnings not to riot, the acquittal all compound the passive-aggressive profiling of black and brown people.Defending Zimmerman = racist

Tim Wise explains the racism in the Zimmerman case for those who still don't get it:

No Innocence Left to Kill: Racism, Injustice and Explaining America to My Daughter

By Tim WiseI am fully aware that there are still those who would admonish me for even suggesting this case was about race. Not just the defenders of George Zimmerman, with whom I shall deal in a moment, but even the state, whose prosecutors de-racialized this case to a point that frankly was as troubling as anything the defense tried to do. Maybe more. I mean, the defense’s job is to represent their client, and I cannot fault them for having done so successfully. But the prosecution’s job is to make it clear to the jury what the defendant did and preferably why he did it. By agreeing to a fundamentally colorblind, “this isn’t about race,” narrative, they gave away the best part of their arsenal before the war had really started.

Because anyone who still believes that this case had nothing to do with race—or worse, that it was simply a tragedy, the racial meaning of which was concocted by those whom they love to term “race hustlers”—are suffering from a delusion so profound as to call into question their capacities for rational thought. And yet still, let us try to reason with them for a second, as if they were capable of hearing it. Let’s do that for the sake of rational thought itself, as a thing we still believe in; and for our country, which some of us still believe—against all evidence—is capable of doing justice and living up to its promises. In short, let’s give this one more shot.

Those who deny the racial angle to the killing of Trayvon Martin can only do so by a willful ignorance, a carefully cultivated denial of every logical, obvious piece of evidence before them, and by erasing from their minds—if indeed they ever had anything in there to erase—the entire history of American criminal justice, the criminal suspicion regularly attached to black men, and the inevitable results whenever black men pay for these suspicions with their lives. They must choose to leave the dots unconnected between, for instance, Martin on the one hand, and then on the other, Amadou Diallo or Sean Bell or Patrick Dorismond, or any of a number of other black men whose names—were I to list them—would take up page after page, and whose names wouldn’t mean shit to most white people even if I did list them, and that is the problem.

Oh sure, I’ve heard it all before. George Zimmerman didn’t follow Trayvon Martin because Martin was black; he followed him because he thought he might be a criminal. Yes precious, I get that. But what you don’t get—and by not getting it while still managing to somehow hold down a job and feed yourself, scare the shit out of me—is far more important. Namely, if the presumption of criminality that Zimmerman attached to Martin was so attached because the latter was black—and would not have been similarly attached to him had he been white—then the charge of racial bias and profiling is entirely appropriate.

And surely we cannot deny that the presumption of criminality was dependent on this dead child’s race can we? Before you answer, please note that even the defense did not deny this. Indeed, Zimmerman’s attorneys acknowledged in court that their client’s concerns about Martin were connected directly to the fact that previous break-ins in the neighborhood had been committed by young black males.

This is why it matters that George Zimmerman justified his following of Martin because as he put it, “these fucking punks” always get away. In other words, Zimmerman saw Martin as just another “fucking punk” up to no good, similar to those who had committed previous break-ins in the community. But why? What behavior did Martin display that would have suggested he was criminally inclined? Zimmerman’s team could produce nothing to indicate anything particularly suspicious about Martin’s actions that night. According to Zimmerman, Martin was walking in the rain, “looking around,” or “looking around at the houses.” But not looking in windows, or jiggling doorknobs or porch screens, or anything that might have suggested a possible burglar. At no point was any evidence presented by the defense to justify their client’s suspicions. All we know is that Zimmerman saw Martin and concluded that he was just like those other criminals. And to the extent there was nothing in Martin’s actions—talking on the telephone and walking slowly home from the store—that would have indicated he was another of those “fucking punks,” the only possible explanation as to why George Zimmerman would have seen him that way is because Martin, as a young black male was presumed to be a likely criminal, and for no other reason, ultimately, but color.

Which is to say, Trayvon Martin is dead because he is black and because George Zimmerman can’t differentiate—and didn’t see the need to—between criminal and non-criminal black people. Which is to say, George Zimmerman is a racist. Because if you cannot differentiate between black criminals and just plain kids, and don’t even see the need to try, apparently, you are a racist. I don’t care what your Peruvian mother says, or her white husband who married the Peruvian mother, or your brother, or your black friends, or the black girl you took to prom, or the black kids you mentored. If you see a black child and assume “criminal,” despite no behavioral evidence at all to suggest such a conclusion, you are a racist. No exceptions. That goes for George Zimmerman and for anyone reading this.

And here’s the thing: even in the evidentiary light most favorable to George Zimmerman this would remain true. Because even if we believe, as the jury did, that Zimmerman acted in self-defense, there can be no question that were it not for George Zimmerman’s unfounded and racially-biased suspicions that evening, Trayvon Martin would be alive, and Zimmerman would be an entirely anonymous, pathetic wanna-be lawman, about whom no one would much care. It was he who initiated the drama that night. And even if you believe that Trayvon Martin attacked Zimmerman after being followed by him, that doesn’t change.

But apparently that moral and existential truth matters little to this jury or to the white reactionaries so quick to praise their decision. To them, the fact that Martin might well have had reason to fear Zimmerman that night, might have thought he was standing his ground, confronted by someone who himself was “up to no good” is irrelevant. They are saying that black people who fight back against someone they think is creepy and who is following them, and might intend to harm them, are more responsible for their deaths than those who ultimately kill them. What they have said, and make no mistake about it, is that any white person who wants to kill a black person can follow one, confront them, maybe even provoke them; and as soon as that black person perhaps takes a swing at them, or lunges at them, the white pursuer can pull their weapon, fire, and reasonably assume that they will get away with this act. I can start drama, and if you respond to the drama I created, you are to blame, not me.A Washington Post columnist helpfully demonstrates how Zimmerman's defenders are as racist as Zimmerman is--exactly as Tim Wise said:

Richard Cohen is terrified of black people

Washington Post columnist understands racial profiling, because hoodies are the "uniform" of crime

By Alex PareeenWashington Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote an offensive, poorly reasoned column about racial profiling. In 1986. And also this week. And once or twice or let’s say perhaps a dozen additional times in the interim. The occasion of this week’s installment of “Richard Cohen explains why black men should be treated as second-class citizens for the safety of us all, which is to say rich old white men” is the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the murder of Trayvon Martin. Cohen is very sorry that Martin is dead due to Zimmerman incorrectly assuming him to be a criminal of some sort based solely on Martin’s demographic profile—in other words, Cohen is sorry that Martin is dead because of racial profiling—but on the other hand, Cohen argues, racial profiling is correct and necessary because black people are scary, at least when they wear certain things.I don’t like what George Zimmerman did, and I hate that Trayvon Martin is dead. But I also can understand why Zimmerman was suspicious and why he thought Martin was wearing a uniform we all recognize. I don’t know whether Zimmerman is a racist. But I’m tired of politicians and others who have donned hoodies in solidarity with Martin and who essentially suggest that, for recognizing the reality of urban crime in the United States, I am a racist. The hoodie blinds them as much as it did Zimmerman.A “uniform we all recognize.” “We all.” “We.” Richard Cohen speaks for us all. Or “us” “all.” That one incredibly dumb assertion, stated with perfect idiotic certainty in the first-person plural, is exactly the sort of thing that makes Richard Cohen America’s worst columnist on America’s worst opinion page.

In the world outside Cohen’s tiny boomer rich guy bubble, “a hoodie” is worn by … nearly all young people and plenty of not-so-young people. To call a hoodie part of a (universally recognized!) “uniform” of Dangerous Black Thuggishness makes about as much sense as invoking high-tops or baseball caps. It is the “uniform” of youth. But then, to Richard Cohen, youth plus blackness makes probable cause.And please, spare us any talk of how Zimmerman is Hispanic, not white:

Is George Zimmerman white or Hispanic? That depends

For white Hispanics, our privilege can always be undercut. Zimmerman bet on his whiteness--and now he's entrapped

By Isa HopkinsIn the cascade of social media responses to the verdict in the death of young, black Trayvon Martin, the racial and ethnic identity of assailant George Zimmerman has been as bifurcated as the rage and relief. To those grieving an injustice, Zimmerman was a white man; those who celebrate his acquittal have been quick to point out that Zimmerman is, in fact, not white at all, but Hispanic. How can such a basic fact of a man be so disputed?

The truth is, Zimmerman is both: white and Hispanic, one a racial category and the other a marker of ethnicity, an accusation and an exoneration, respectively, inverted from their usual exculpatory order. Both are social constructions, but the former relies on skin color and ostensibly biological features, while the latter is a designation based on country of origin. Many Hispanics are dark-skinned, but many are not. It’s a confusing identity in a land that has traditionally preferred its divisions to be more clean-cut, and it’s one that even we white Hispanics struggle to understand.The key point:The genius of white supremacy is in its elasticity: It can expand to include the not-quite-right, the off-whites, when necessary, and then otherize and eject us when convenient.Bottom line: Zimmerman is white, racially speaking. End of story there.

For more on Trayvon Martin, see Black Youth Killed Like Trayvon and Racial Profiling for Blacks and Indians.