Hate evil and love what is good; turn your courts into true halls of justice.
--- Amos 5:15 (New Living Translation)
It's funny (well not really funny, sad and pathetic actually) how white people, like myself, can take four or 500 years of oppression against another race of people -- be it people of African, Latin American or Native American descent -- and turn it around to make themselves look like victims.
I'll say it again. Four or 500 years of oppression -- rape; robbery; kidnapping; murder; slavery; trumped-up court system; genocide; economic injustice; impoverished reservations; tenement slums; infanticide; breaking up families; false imprisonment; inaccessibility to education, economic opportunity, food, transportation, housing, health care -- and white people, white males like myself --
are the victims.
The prosecution in the Trayvon Martin murder case played the "race card." They played it against George Zimmerman.
George Zimmerman was in fear for his life. He was getting his ass kicked by that kid. He was justified in taking out his gun and shooting Trayvon Martin. So it turned out that 17-year-old was unarmed. Zimmerman didn't know that.
This was simply a case of a guy defending himself against perceived mortal danger. The person shot to death happened to be black. That was coincidence. Why do you have to make it about race?
There are reasons why not everyone's buying the self-defense line. A black unarmed kid killed. His murderer acquitted by a jury. It's not like this hasn't happened before.
In the summer of 1955, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Chicago youth, was visiting relatives in Mississippi. It's not clear what happened. He either flirted with, whistled at or touched the hand of a young white woman. That was all they needed. Around three days later -- late at night -- two white men, brandishing guns, dragged Emmett out of bed, kidnapped him, brutally beat him, shot him in the head and tied him with barbed wire to a large metal fan blade and dumped his body into the Tallahatchie River.
An all-white male jury acquitted the men. A few months later, protected from double jeopardy, the men bragged about the killer to a journalist.
Oh but that was a long time ago. All the marching back in the '60s was successful. They got their Civil Rights legislation. Blacks are all over popular culture now. We have a black president. Racism isn't that big of problem anymore.
A day before the verdict was delivered in Zimmerman's trial, a link comes across my facebook page. Three black men allegedly robbed and murdered a white waitress for her tip money. We've heard all about Trayvon Martin. Why haven't we heard about this one?
In other words, we have it splashed all over the media about the white (actually half white, half Hispanic) man shooting a black youth. But we hear nothing about these black men murdering a white woman. So the entire white majority has to take offense because one of its own is on trial, charged with murdering a black youth. This is a threat to us. Oh, the media has to play it up about a white guy shooting a black. How come we don't hear about the black guys who murdered a white woman? This is media bias. It's unfair to us.
We are the victims.
It's hard to say why some crimes make national news and some don't. Wouldn't you think people would consider it a tragedy when any murder occurs? Do we have to trivialize barbaric inhumanity by reducing it to some scorecard that only perpetuates bitterness and rivalry between races?
Fine. Heard about any of these cases?
On New Year's Day, 2009, in Oakland, Calif., Oscar Grant, unarmed and restrained, was shot in the back by a police officer in a Bay Area Rapid Transit Station. The murder was captured on cell phone videos. A jury acquitted the officer who did the shooting. http://www.naacp.org/news/entry/naacp-denounces-verdict-of-oscar-grant-case http://www.oscargrantfoundation.com/
In the early morning hours of Nov. 25, 2006, Sean Bell, a 23-year-old man planning to get married later that day, stepped outside a Queens, N.Y. strip club with some friends. Bell, unarmed, was shot 50 times by five police officers. The officers waived their right to a jury trial and were acquitted by judge Arthur J. Cooperman. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/sean_bell/index.htm
On Feb. 4, 1999, Amadou Diallo, an immigrant from the West African country of Guinea, was unarmed and standing in the vestibule of a Bronx apartment building when four undercover police officers fired 41 shots into him. The officers claimed at trial that Diallo matched the description of a serial rape suspect. They were acquitted. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law/jan-june00/diallo_3-3.html http://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/26/nyregion/diallo-verdict-overview-4-officers-diallo-shooting-are-acquitted-all-charges.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/03/nyregion/amadou-diallos-mother-asks-why-officer-who-shot-at-her-son-will-get-gun-back.html?_r=0
These incidents go way back. On Feb. 13, 1946, Army Sgt. Isaac Woodard -- honorably discharged after serving in the Pacific Theater during World War II, still in uniform and wearing his medals -- was dragged off a city bus by police officers in Batesburg, beaten with nightsticks in an alley and thrown in jail. He woke up the next morning blinded. For the rest of his life. The officers were acquitted in a jury trial and the courtroom broke into applause. The incident led Woody Guthrie to compose "The Blinding of Isaac Woodard" and Pres. Harry Truman to issue Executive Order 9981, desegregating the U.S. Armed Forces. http://www.yahspeople.com/3/post/2013/04/us-army-sergeant-isaac-woodard-jr-the-blinding-of-an-american-soldier.html, http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Isaac_Woodard http://disstud.blogspot.com/2010/02/13-february-beating-of-isaac-woodard.html
Trayvon Martin's case isn't just an isolated incident. It is only the latest major headline in a persistent historical pattern of black unarmed men being killed by white armed men who are then given a pass in the court system. It seems every time this happens, the black murder victims are put on trial and the killers play the martyr. He was drunk. I thought he had a gun. He looked suspicious. I feared for my life.
http://www.ebony.com/photos/news-views/10-others-before-trayvon-martin#photo-6
And whites are offended because the prosecution in the Trayvon Martin case "played the race card." As if race is something we can ignore.
I can hear them saying, "Hey, you let O.J. walk." So one miscarriage of justice justifies another? It's true that the late defense attorney Johnnie Cochran inflamed racial tensions in the infamous, media-frenzied 1990s case by asking the jury to "send a message" with their verdict. The implication was, "Don't decide based on the evidence. Let's have payback for all those times blacks have been hijacked by the U.S. criminal justice system." In other words, Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman died for your sins.
It set a bitter precedent. Too many whites are painfully unaware of the long, nightmarish history of injustice African Americans have been dealt by the cops and courts system. Many of them do remember the O.J. Simpson verdict and it's just another pawn in their game of racial antagonism.
In his memoir, African American prosecutor Christopher Darden said the jury had to believe police would go to "supernatural" lengths to contaminate the air-tight evidence against Simpson. Whites were shocked when the not guilty verdict was read. They were revolted when blacks cheered.
I'm not justifying the O.J. verdict, but maybe we should ask ourselves, what would drive African Americans to believe that such a massive frame-up could be possible? There couldn't be any reasons why they would think in that direction, could there?
The race issue is ever present. It's enmeshed in the deepest fiber of our DNA. American history documents a long history of race consciousness that has manifested itself in everything from unspeakable crimes against humanity to veiled, subtle, psychological prejudice. To not acknowledge the presence of race would be to ignore an inordinately huge elephant in the room.
For whites to applaud the Zimmerman verdict shows cruel, arrogant disregard for the mistreatment of fellow citizens by the long arm of the law. Or, at the least, it shows us to be naive about history and the ghastly realities in a system acting in our name. Ignorance surely isn't bliss.
There's much more going on here than the surface illusion of a "race card."
It's funny (well not really funny, sad and pathetic actually) how white people, like myself, can take four or 500 years of oppression against another race of people -- be it people of African, Latin American or Native American descent -- and turn it around to make themselves look like victims.
I'll say it again. Four or 500 years of oppression -- rape; robbery; kidnapping; murder; slavery; trumped-up court system; genocide; economic injustice; impoverished reservations; tenement slums; infanticide; breaking up families; false imprisonment; inaccessibility to education, economic opportunity, food, transportation, housing, health care -- and white people, white males like myself --
are the victims.
The prosecution in the Trayvon Martin murder case played the "race card." They played it against George Zimmerman.
George Zimmerman was in fear for his life. He was getting his ass kicked by that kid. He was justified in taking out his gun and shooting Trayvon Martin. So it turned out that 17-year-old was unarmed. Zimmerman didn't know that.
This was simply a case of a guy defending himself against perceived mortal danger. The person shot to death happened to be black. That was coincidence. Why do you have to make it about race?
There are reasons why not everyone's buying the self-defense line. A black unarmed kid killed. His murderer acquitted by a jury. It's not like this hasn't happened before.
In the summer of 1955, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Chicago youth, was visiting relatives in Mississippi. It's not clear what happened. He either flirted with, whistled at or touched the hand of a young white woman. That was all they needed. Around three days later -- late at night -- two white men, brandishing guns, dragged Emmett out of bed, kidnapped him, brutally beat him, shot him in the head and tied him with barbed wire to a large metal fan blade and dumped his body into the Tallahatchie River.
An all-white male jury acquitted the men. A few months later, protected from double jeopardy, the men bragged about the killer to a journalist.
Oh but that was a long time ago. All the marching back in the '60s was successful. They got their Civil Rights legislation. Blacks are all over popular culture now. We have a black president. Racism isn't that big of problem anymore.
A day before the verdict was delivered in Zimmerman's trial, a link comes across my facebook page. Three black men allegedly robbed and murdered a white waitress for her tip money. We've heard all about Trayvon Martin. Why haven't we heard about this one?
In other words, we have it splashed all over the media about the white (actually half white, half Hispanic) man shooting a black youth. But we hear nothing about these black men murdering a white woman. So the entire white majority has to take offense because one of its own is on trial, charged with murdering a black youth. This is a threat to us. Oh, the media has to play it up about a white guy shooting a black. How come we don't hear about the black guys who murdered a white woman? This is media bias. It's unfair to us.
We are the victims.
It's hard to say why some crimes make national news and some don't. Wouldn't you think people would consider it a tragedy when any murder occurs? Do we have to trivialize barbaric inhumanity by reducing it to some scorecard that only perpetuates bitterness and rivalry between races?
Fine. Heard about any of these cases?
On New Year's Day, 2009, in Oakland, Calif., Oscar Grant, unarmed and restrained, was shot in the back by a police officer in a Bay Area Rapid Transit Station. The murder was captured on cell phone videos. A jury acquitted the officer who did the shooting. http://www.naacp.org/news/entry/naacp-denounces-verdict-of-oscar-grant-case http://www.oscargrantfoundation.com/
Video of Oscar Grant shooting, captured by a spectator's iphone.
In the early morning hours of Nov. 25, 2006, Sean Bell, a 23-year-old man planning to get married later that day, stepped outside a Queens, N.Y. strip club with some friends. Bell, unarmed, was shot 50 times by five police officers. The officers waived their right to a jury trial and were acquitted by judge Arthur J. Cooperman. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/sean_bell/index.htm
On Feb. 4, 1999, Amadou Diallo, an immigrant from the West African country of Guinea, was unarmed and standing in the vestibule of a Bronx apartment building when four undercover police officers fired 41 shots into him. The officers claimed at trial that Diallo matched the description of a serial rape suspect. They were acquitted. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law/jan-june00/diallo_3-3.html http://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/26/nyregion/diallo-verdict-overview-4-officers-diallo-shooting-are-acquitted-all-charges.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/03/nyregion/amadou-diallos-mother-asks-why-officer-who-shot-at-her-son-will-get-gun-back.html?_r=0
These incidents go way back. On Feb. 13, 1946, Army Sgt. Isaac Woodard -- honorably discharged after serving in the Pacific Theater during World War II, still in uniform and wearing his medals -- was dragged off a city bus by police officers in Batesburg, beaten with nightsticks in an alley and thrown in jail. He woke up the next morning blinded. For the rest of his life. The officers were acquitted in a jury trial and the courtroom broke into applause. The incident led Woody Guthrie to compose "The Blinding of Isaac Woodard" and Pres. Harry Truman to issue Executive Order 9981, desegregating the U.S. Armed Forces. http://www.yahspeople.com/3/post/2013/04/us-army-sergeant-isaac-woodard-jr-the-blinding-of-an-american-soldier.html, http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Isaac_Woodard http://disstud.blogspot.com/2010/02/13-february-beating-of-isaac-woodard.html
 |
| World War II veteran Isaac Woodard, beaten and blinded by police. |
Trayvon Martin's case isn't just an isolated incident. It is only the latest major headline in a persistent historical pattern of black unarmed men being killed by white armed men who are then given a pass in the court system. It seems every time this happens, the black murder victims are put on trial and the killers play the martyr. He was drunk. I thought he had a gun. He looked suspicious. I feared for my life.
http://www.ebony.com/photos/news-views/10-others-before-trayvon-martin#photo-6
And whites are offended because the prosecution in the Trayvon Martin case "played the race card." As if race is something we can ignore.
I can hear them saying, "Hey, you let O.J. walk." So one miscarriage of justice justifies another? It's true that the late defense attorney Johnnie Cochran inflamed racial tensions in the infamous, media-frenzied 1990s case by asking the jury to "send a message" with their verdict. The implication was, "Don't decide based on the evidence. Let's have payback for all those times blacks have been hijacked by the U.S. criminal justice system." In other words, Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman died for your sins.
It set a bitter precedent. Too many whites are painfully unaware of the long, nightmarish history of injustice African Americans have been dealt by the cops and courts system. Many of them do remember the O.J. Simpson verdict and it's just another pawn in their game of racial antagonism.
In his memoir, African American prosecutor Christopher Darden said the jury had to believe police would go to "supernatural" lengths to contaminate the air-tight evidence against Simpson. Whites were shocked when the not guilty verdict was read. They were revolted when blacks cheered.
I'm not justifying the O.J. verdict, but maybe we should ask ourselves, what would drive African Americans to believe that such a massive frame-up could be possible? There couldn't be any reasons why they would think in that direction, could there?
The race issue is ever present. It's enmeshed in the deepest fiber of our DNA. American history documents a long history of race consciousness that has manifested itself in everything from unspeakable crimes against humanity to veiled, subtle, psychological prejudice. To not acknowledge the presence of race would be to ignore an inordinately huge elephant in the room.
For whites to applaud the Zimmerman verdict shows cruel, arrogant disregard for the mistreatment of fellow citizens by the long arm of the law. Or, at the least, it shows us to be naive about history and the ghastly realities in a system acting in our name. Ignorance surely isn't bliss.
There's much more going on here than the surface illusion of a "race card."
Trailer for the just-released film, Fruitvale Station, about Oscar Grant.
"Things I've Seen" by the Spooks. Contains the lyrics, "Mentally cuffed, thrust by a cop thinkin' he tough, you bust Amadou Diallo is us, and what now I'm on my knees, beggin' 'God please!'"
"American Skin (41 Shots)" by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. About the Diallo killing.
