mohandasgandhi:

George Zimmerman’s “Black Friend” Defense Won’t Work

It was just a matter of time before white supremacist groups and right-wing apologists for abusive police started coming out of the woodwork to try and justify the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. His emails and Facebook accounts have been reportedly hacked by the hate groups. His school suspension records were leaked and posted on the Web. All of this to show that Trayvon was not some angel but, to some minds, a stereotypical young black thug who deserved what he got.

This type of racist mindset overlooks the fact that even if Trayvon was an extremely troubled kid from an extremely troubled background – much of the reporting on him and his family so far says otherwise – none of it would justify his shooting. He was unarmed. He was stalked, cornered, and killed. He violated no laws walking on the street and in that gated community. He had friends and family who loved him. One of his teachers described him as “an A and B student who majored in cheerfulness.”  He was a child and he deserved the chance to live out his future. Period. 

He was suspicious solely because he was black. As Bryan pointed out, that’s something that black parents, and for that matter the sisters, aunts, cousins, girlfriends of black men and boys, understand all too well. We worry because we know they are potential targets of police and armed civilians, guided by long-held racial fear and ingrained assumptions about black males. Although Trayvon’s death is introducing a new generation to this sad reality of  “Living While Black,”  those of us who’ve been around longer know what black men endure on regular basis and why they are taught a code of conduct at an early age. The New York Times wrote about this back in 1997. And yet it keeps happening.

“They killed my son and now they’re trying to kill his reputation,” Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin, said last week in response to the information leaked about her son. She and Trayvon’s father blame the Sanford police department for the leaks about Trayvon’s school suspensions – once allegedly for suspicion of possessing marijuana – and his supposed unprovoked attack on George Zimmerman.

Zimmerman’s father is waging his own PR campaign on behalf of his son. He started out by claiming that his son, whose mother is Peruvian, considers himself Hispanic, as if his biracial status undermines arguments that his son may have acted out of racial bias. It’s convenient to point out that Zimmerman is part Hispanic right after he shot dead an unarmed black kid. Never mind that George Zimmerman called police obsessively about “suspicious ” black men in his neighborhood and may have even used a racial epithet in his 911 call about Trayvon. Hispanic people, like white, black, Asian, Native-American and, yes even bi-racial people, are perfectly capable of being racist or showing racial bias in certain instances. Black males just seem to get the brunt of that bias and too often end up dead because of it.

Just yesterday this piece in the New York Times noted that “blacks are the target of the highest number of hate crimes in the United States, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” They are just 12.6 percent of the population yet were “70 percent of the victims of racial hate crimes in 2010.”

Last week, Zimmerman’s lawyer trotted out Joe Oliver, the “black friend” and former co-worker of George Zimmerman, who did the rounds on television talk shows and news programs and defended Zimmerman. Unfortunately for Zimmerman, Oliver did him no favors, as this video clip shows. Oliver didn’t seem to know Zimmerman very well and didn’t know that Zimmerman’s ex-fiancee had filed assault charges against him. He stumbled on questions about the anger management counseling Zimmerman allegedly underwent. The “some of my best friends are black” tactic failed badly.

Zimmerman’s father reminds me of the father of one of the NYC cops who tortured and sodomized Abner Louima with a broomstick in a Brooklyn police station in 1997. The cop’s father presented his son’s black girlfriend as if her mere existence could discount the fact that his son sodomized Louima while hurling racial epithets at him. Racism is complex and often deeply internalized; socializing casually with an individual black co-worker or sleeping with a black woman doesn’t change that. I’m waiting for Zimmerman’s real black friends, those who knew him well and know his heart, to come forward and vigorously defend him. I’m not holding my breath.

cheatsheet:

If the police video of George Zimmerman being taken into questioning shows what it appears to show, if Zimmerman really was devoid of the injuries that had been so feverishly and eagerly recounted by his defenders, then we have on our hands an absolutely catastrophic failure on the part of the media, and one of the most dramatic, devastating examples in recent memory of the Internet’s power to decide “the facts” long before anyone has a clue what they are.

So begins Jesse Singal’s piece on our outrage over the video George Zimmerman’s without the injuries he alleged sustained before killing Trayvon Martin. 

(via kateoplis)

mortemor:

On Tuesday me and a close friend of mine were siting in my car with her door open. Four girls started accosting us yelling derogatory racial slurs and gay-bashing us. We took up our places and fought against their ignorance. I may have a black eye and Jenn a busted nose, but you know what? Totally worth it. Racism and gay-bashing is not something that I let slide easy. Jenn and I ended up “winning” the match. The four girls ran off and were later arrested for hate crime.

We are all equal; the color of your skin, your sexual orientation, or your religious beliefs should not define you.

Spread love and eradicate the hate.

Here Here! I am glad you fought back! 

motherjones:

Stat of the Day: 20 percent of South Carolina Republicans think interracial marriage should be illegal. Maybe they should watch this.

ronpaulsucks:

ARTICLE:

Are you kidding me with this guy?

It amuses me to no end when white folks laud the Declaration of Independence — with all of its lofty rhetoric about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — all the while stoically ignoring that all that happy-happy-joy-joy talk didn’t apply to the Africans whites dragged to this country and enslaved.

So when I see the tiny wizened messiah talking about the Civil War and lamenting all the liberty that was lost as a result of the war, I laugh bitterly.  When I hear him talking about goooooold! and ending the Fed, I begin banging my head against the closest wall.

Dude is so out of touch with the 21st century, I’m starting to wonder if he’s some sort of time traveler who crawled through the Rift and has managed somehow to amass Paul-lovers and the Paul-curious from each end of the political spectrum, and everything in between.  Everyone from Katrina vanden Heuvel and Glenn Greenwald to David Duke and Stormfront are singing this guy’s praises, in some fashion or another (but not necessarily endorsing him. *wink wink*)

I find it fascinating and more than a little unsettling.

Here is Ron Paul giving a speech about how the South was right, and the Civil War was awful because it destroyed “individual choice.”  Never mind “individual choice” vis-à-vis the enslaved; they weren’t people and thus could lay no claim to “individuality” or “liberty.”  What Paul means by “individual choice,” is “white men’s (specifically white property-owning men) individual choice.” 

Just look at this silly little man, standing proudly in front of a Confederate flag talking about the enslavement of black people in transactional terms. In the Ron Paul Gospel, adherence to the quintessential American values of “individual choice and” “liberty” would have required the Yankees to buy the slaves’ freedom.  A detestable notion, to be sure, but also historically inaccurate since, as we all know, the South started it.

Ultimately, when it comes to black people, the world “liberty” seems to disappear from Paul’s vocabulary.  Funny, that.

MORE:

http://www.angryblacklady.com/2012/01/21/shorter-ron-paul-the-south-will-rise-again/

(via drinkthe-koolaid)