Make America Throw Up …Again

The Chumph – like most bigots, doesn’t quite “get it” as far as the black community in America. A case in point was his speech about the “inner-city”, Sanford, Florida…Where Trayvon Martin was murdered.

Looks like some college kids in the background waving Trump signs for money.

 

Trump Warns of Inner City ‘Hell’ for Blacks Where Trayvon Martin Was Shot

As Donald Trump campaigned in central Florida today, he made his usual appeal to African-Americans, painting a grim and partially inaccurate portrait of black communities.

“African-Americans are living in hell in the inner cities,” he said. “They are living — they are living in hell. You walk to the store for a loaf of bread you get shot.”

But his comment today struck a particularly tone-deaf chord. Trump was in Sanford, Fla., where teenager Trayvon Martin had been killed four years earlier by a neighborhood watchman while walking home after getting a pack of Skittles.

Trump has garnered criticism for how he’s reached out to African-Americans, with whom his support remains low according to all major polls. He often makes his appeals in front of almost all-white crowds, harping on conditions in inner cities, neglecting to appeal to other African-Americans who don’t live in inner cities.

Across the country, the data show that more African-Americans live in suburbs than anywhere else.

During the second presidential debate, James Carter, a black man asked Trump if he believed he could be a devoted president to all the people in the United States.

Trump responded: “I will be a president for all of our people. And I’ll be a president that will turn our inner cities around.”

Some have bristled at the imagery Trump has used to appeal to African-Americans, saying it is only representative of a slice of the African-American community and disregards the wealth, education, and status that Black Americans have achieved.

Census data from 2015 show that 52.9 percent of African-Americans 25 or older have a college degree of some sort. And a report from Pew in December showed that, compared with other racial or ethnic groups, African-American adults saw the largest improvement in income status from 1971 to 2015 and were the only racial or ethnic group that saw a decline in the percentage of low-income earners.

 

Zimmerman Tries to Sell Murder Weapon…Marc Lamont Hill Eviscerates Him

Last night –

George Zimmerman Auctioning Off Gun He Used To Kill Trayvon Martin

This morning, in response to the overwhelming outrage –

BUSTED: Gun broker cancels sale of George Zimmerman’s gun used to kill Trayvon Martin

Marc Lamont Hill compares Zimmerman’s latest to OJ Selling a line of Steak Knives right after the Nicole Brown murder…

 

Trayvon Murderer Arrested Again for Aggravated Assault

Surprise, surprise! George Zimmerman has been arrested for a violent crime…Again.

The hero of the racist right, a virtual one man crime spree – yet again is unaccountable to the law.

Special laws for special people in Florida.

Man acquitted in Trayvon Martin case charged in domestic dispute

George Zimmerman, a former neighborhood watch volunteer acquitted in a fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager in 2013, was charged with aggravated assault on Saturday after his arrest in connection with a domestic disturbance in Florida.

Zimmerman, wearing a blue jumpsuit and handcuffs, appeared before Florida Circuit Judge John D. Galluzzo who offered him a $5,000 bond, ordered him to turn over any firearms and restricted his travel to Seminole County in central Florida.

“Anywhere else in the state and we have a problem,” the judge said.

Zimmerman’s lawyer, Don West, could not immediately be reached for comment.

In February 2012, Zimmerman gained national notoriety by claiming he acted in self-defense when he shot and killed Trayvon Martin, 17, during a neighborhood watch patrol in Sanford, Florida.

His trial and acquittal in 2013 polarized the U.S. public on issues of race, gun laws and drew international attention to Florida’s “stand your ground” law.

Zimmerman has since had several brushes with the law.

Police in central Florida arrested him in November 2013 after he allegedly pointed a gun at his girlfriend during an argument. A month later, prosecutors dropped the charges, saying his girlfriend, Samantha Scheibe, withdrew allegations.

 

Beginning to Feel a Lot Like 1963…

For you youngsters, 1963 was the year the Civil Rights Movement spawned the anti-War Movement. Literally millions of people were marching in the streets.

In that 1963 March, SNCC Chairman, now Congressman John Lewis had a few things to say –

SNCC Chairperson John Lewis, whose speech was considered so militant that the lead organizers requested he revise it. His original draft states, “We march today for jobs and freedom, but we have nothing to be proud of, for hundreds and thousands of our brothers are not here. They have no money for their transportation, for they are receiving starvation wages or no wages at all.

“In good conscience, we cannot support wholeheartedly the administration’s civil rights bill, for it is too little and too late. There’s not one thing in the bill that will protect our people from police brutality.”

Lewis also generated controversy when he stressed, “We are now involved in a serious revolution. This nation is still a place of cheap political leaders who build their careers on immoral compromises and ally themselves with open forms of political, economic and social exploitation. What political leader here can stand up and say, ‘My party is the party of principles?’ The party of Kennedy is also the party of [racist Mississippi Senator James] Eastland. The party of [Republican Senator Jacob] Javits is also the party of [rightist Senator Barry] Goldwater. Where is our party?”

It is coming again. This isn’t growing into a movement just to stop police murder and brutality…

It is a movement for accountability.

Russell Simmons hints at it…

 

Bulletproof Vests for Black Children

Forget the PS-4 – Get the kid something which, quite literally may save his life this Christmas!

 

‘Bulletproof Vest For Boys’: Florida Billboards Put A Twist On Police Brutality

An activist group aiming to organize opposition to killings by police and armed vigilantes has launched satirical ads depicting a new line of bulletproof vests for boys of color.

Mocking an advertisement for a clothing line, a billboard by Dream Defenders in Tallahassee, Fla. depicted a sale event with a young black boy modeling body armor, WCTV reported.

The billboard, along with a video featuring the same theme, was part of the group’s “Vest or Vote” campaign. The ads urged pressure on police departments after the high-profile killings of Michael Brown by a police officer in Missouri and Trayvon Martin by an armed vigilante in Florida.

The campaign doesn’t appear to be advocating for or against any specific ballot measure but is more broadly about voting and voter registration.

“No one wants to live in a world where bulletproof vests are the norm,” read a description on the group’s website. “Vote on November 4th (and earlier, in Florida and most states), and let’s together take a stand on laws, like Stand Your Ground, that create fear and insecurity in our communities.”

Now BTx3 persoanlly has a different approach…

No Picture ID? Vote…Or Stand Your Ground

 

Searching for a White Trayvon – The “Knockout Game”

First the Faux News racist sensationalism –

The Knockout Game Myth and its Racist Roots

The stories are chilling–conjuring a world of senseless, alien violence as incomprehensible as it is reprehensible. Rightfully, we are mortified and outraged and we fear for a country in which A Clockwork Orange ultra-violence finds life in our streets. The analysis of many pundits is startling: these attacks are racially motivated hate crimes against whites by black youths and the media and our politicians refuse to identify these racist motives out of political correctness.

What goes mostly unspoken in these commentaries on the “knockout game” is the idea that these assaults are racially motivated and so white people should be wary of groups of black men. Some take this further and blame the “liberal media” for the violence, since the media allegedly hid the “truth” about the race of the criminals. If only the media would tell us when black people attack white people, we’d know to not trust them and we’d be safe, the logic goes.

But are these pundits correct? Are these crimes committed by roaming packs of black “savages” against white people?

Here’s the fascinating thing about this “spreading” trend: nobody seems to have any evidence that it’s spreading, or that it’s new, or that it’s racially motivated, or that black youths are the ones typically responsible, or that whites are typically targeted. This hasn’t stopped Mark Steyn, Thomas Sowell, andMatt Walsh from describing this specifically as a crime committed by blacks against whites, CNN from claiming that it is “spreading,” or Alec Torres at NRO from say it is “evidently increasing [in] popularity.” Most sources claim that it is spreading, and a number of sources claim that it is racially motivated. But how do they know? Where are they getting their data from?

Alec Torres wrote what appears to be the most thorough survey of all the reported accounts of the “knockout game,” but these “reports” are actually newspaper reports, not police reports, so they don’t give us a reliable picture. Yet, Torres is confident enough to conclude: “Most of the victims have been whites and Asians, and attackers tend to target Jews, immigrants, and the elderly in particular. Most of the attackers have been African American.”

“Most” is an awfully slippery word to describe a increasingly popular, violent hate crime.

What’s very perplexing about Torres’s post is that he quotes multiple times from an award-winning article by John H. Tucker in Riverfront Times titled, Knockout King: Kids call it a game. Academics call it a bogus trend. Cops call it murder. I say this citation is perplexing because Tucker’s article explains quite clearly why sweeping claims about rising incidences of the “knockout game” and the racial identities of the perpetrators and victims are bogus. Tucker helps us see how many commentaries about these assaults are deeply flawed.

First of all, we don’t have reliable data:

A variety of factors make it impossible to quantify how many assaults can be attributed to Knockout King. For one, police often categorize such attacks as attempted robberies; though participants say theft isn’t the motive, they’ve been known to add larceny to injury when the opportunity presents itself. Moreover, because victims usually don’t get a good look at their assailant, incidents seldom result in charges. Many of the most vulnerable victims don’t file police reports, either because they fear revenge or were taught in their native countries not to trust police.

In order to draw any remotely competent conclusion about these assaults, you’d have to deal with all the above problems and also consider if crimes by whites are reported as frequently as crimes by blacks, whether teens of other races might refer to the game by another name or not label it at all, how the percentage of attacks by blacks compares to the general percentage of assaults by black teens, and so on. Analyzing data is not as simple as watching some YouTube videos and Googling “knockout game.” Here’s Tucker again:

Given that 4.3 million violent attacks were reported by U.S. citizens in 2009, according to the National Crime Victimization Survey, Males [a research fellow at the nonprofit Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice] says reporters should know better than to highlight a handful of random attacks by kids and call it journalism. It’s the same thing as plucking a few instances of attackers with Jewish surnames who beat up non-Jews and declaring it a “troubling new trend,” he argues.

All but two of the ten victims . . . interviewed were white (one was black and was Latino), and all of the players were black. But Knockout King does not appear to be bounded by race. Jason, from St. Louis County, says two white friends were part of his punch-out crew. One Dutchtown woman, agreeing to speak on the condition that her name not be published, says police caught her son, who is white, playing Knockout King. . . .

“It’s not a black thing, it’s a kid thing,” the woman says. “It’s teenage kids trying to be cool. My son’s as white as can be. He doesn’t have a black bone in his body.”

How could Torres read this article and yet still come to the conclusion that the assaults are on the rise and that “most” of them involve black assailants and white or asian victims? In his defense, other pundits have drawn the same conclusion, despite the lack of evidence.

Of course, there are some things we can confidently say about these crimes: “Most criminologists and youth experts agree that unprovoked attacks by teenagers on strangers are a real, if extremely rare, phenomenon,” notes Tucker. What’s more, unquestionably these attacks are horrid and inhumane, Mark Steyn is right that these perpetrators lack a basic moral fortitude, the guilty parties must be apprehended and punished, and the public should be warned about the realities of random violent crime. And we might even admit that some of these assaults appear to have been hate crimes. None of these claims are objectionable because we have evidence for them.

What we don’t have evidence for is the claim that this “game” is becoming increasingly popular or that it is part of a larger problem of black mob violence which the media is ignoring. To support such absurd claims we need to turn elsewhere, away from the experts and the data, to a man who has made a name for himself peddling a book which purports to show that a covert race war is being waged by blacks against whites all across the country, and the knockout game is just one weapon in their arsenal.

Before almost anyone else was talking about the “knockout game,” Colin Flaherty was reporting on it and other incidences of what he calls “black mob violence” for WorldNetDaily, the notoriously deceptive, far-right news and opinions site. His schtick is simple: every time he finds a report of black “mob” violence or black on white violence, he writes about it. He’s compiled many of these incidences into his book, White Girl Bleed A Lot, which is ranked #1,455 under “Books” at Amazon as of Sunday evening, 24th of November. Its high ranking is undoubtedly due to the press he’s been getting. Hannity had him on his radio show. And Thomas Sowell’s article on the knockout game, which was published in the New York Post and the National Review Online, cites Flaherty and repeats much of the WND author’s rhetoric about the national epidemic of racial violence that the media has covered up. This isn’t too surprising, since Sowell’s original review of the book was actually published on the NRO’s website, where he gave the book high praise. His book has also received praise from Allen West, David Horowitz, and American Thinker.

What’s surprising about all the positive press Flaherty has received is that his articles purporting to prove this epidemic of black racial violence are incredibly, basically absurd. And that absurdity, the lengths Flaherty is willing to go to support his assertion about the secret race war can really only be interpreted as bigotry. Flaherty deceives his readers to sell his book, peddling the classic white fear of the savage, violent, black man, mixed in with a little contemporary rhetoric about how the “liberal,” politically correct media is covering up for black thugs. This narrative fits nicely into the larger perception that Obama has created a nation of entitled, lazy, and violent blacks, which I have written about before.

The most basic flaw in his argument is that his entire project is one big stacked evidence fallacy. If you only cite examples of black crime, of course you’ll conclude that there’s a national racial crime wave! Using that “logic” I can prove that any group is waging a secret race war (it is interesting to note that Robert Spencer of JihadWatch uses a very similar method to argue that Muslims are dangerous). On top of that egregious error, Flaherty entirely ignores all other characteristics of the crimes: social class, education, setting; nothing else matters except race to him. Any respectable criminologist would scoff at such a methodology, not because they want to be politically correct, but because it’s a gross reduction of the factors that actually contribute to crime. Next, Flaherty fails to recognize that correlation does not equal causation. So, because a black person commits a violent crime, his blackness must have caused it, in Flaherty’s logic. And because a black party got out of hand, it’s a “race riot.” Yes, that’s right, because the partiers were black, it was a “race” riot. Because “black” is a race. Makes perfect sense, right?

When the media doesn’t mention that a violent crime was committed by a black person, that’s evidence of a cover up for Flaherty. In one article, he describes calling and emailing the police to try to learn the racial makeup of a party that turned into a “mob”:

“What happened? Was this a case of black mob violence?”

No reply. I get that a lot. It is a red flag.

So, he called the police and explicitly asked if an incident was “black mob violence,” and when he got no reply, it was confirmation to him that the police were hiding the truth. My guess is that in most of these cases, the media and police are silent about the race of the perpetrators because “race” isn’t really a factor in the crimes.

Flaherty regularly stacks and exaggerates the evidence (also see here, or here, or here).

Colin Flaherty and his project have been cited repeatedly to support the claim that the “knockout game” is really about racial violence against whites.  He’s been cited to this end not just in far-right publications like WND, or FrontPageMag, but in the National Review Online, one of the most respected conservative journals, and one that I like to recommend. His conspiracy is extremely racist, as Flaherty reduces everything down to the color of the criminal’s skin, regardless of the facts. He consistently distorts the truth in order to portray black people as the savage, animalistic, and Other.

We need to be honest and accurate about these crimes, neither sharing the hysteria and racial fear-mongering nor trivializing the reality of these crimes. This isn’t easy to balance. We have the right to be concerned about random violence and the authorities have the responsibility to protect us and prosecute violent criminals. But we also have the responsibility to tell the truth about our neighbor and the world.

And no Faux news race baiting is complete without the resident ncle Tom –

 

“Killer” George Zimmerman Arrested For Pulling A Gun…Again

You know – all the conservative bigots and racist who supported this guy, must be feeling like complete toilet wipes about now.

So how many more people does this scumbag have to murder before the police in Florida get the courage to lock him up?

This time “innocent George” pulled a shotgun on his (new?) girlfriend…Who is pregnant!

He has gotten away with murder before…

 

 

 

McBride Killer to Be Tried

There is an old cultural myth in the South, of a farmer protecting his fields from theft by kids with a shotgun loaded with rock salt.  Of course this was in the times before the NRA armed every moron in America with lethal weapons or mass murder, and the racist right terrorized the public into committing, what has become genocide. The farmer certainly realized the loss of a couple of ears of corn wasn’t worth taking someones life, and was seeking to install a moral lesson by way of a painful warning.

As a kid growing up in an area which still had a fair amount of rural expanse – I can certainly remember a few times when a motorist knocked on the door in need of a phone to call for help due to a breakdown or accident. This was the days before we all (or anyone) had cell phones, little ones. As an aside, I can remember as a really little guy of about 5 or 6 visiting my Uncle’s farm in the country, and they had Party Lines. Of course in those days before the terror induced by he gun crazies, the first response to someone knocking on the front door, wasn’t to grab you gun and shoot the visitor.

Now, I have been a gun owner since I was 7, and with relatives who lived in rural areas of the Tidewater and mountains, grew up with folks where hunting and fishing was a way of life. In those days before the Tea Bagged Reich created the Jim Crow “Stand Your Ground” excuse for murder, we had what was called a “Threshold Law”. Ergo, if some Republican decided to dance buck naked on your porch and howl at the moon – it was a matter for law enforcement. If same Republican forced their way into your house (across the threshold) then you were within your rights to use deadly force if necessary. Of course a pot of hot water, or the Al Green Treatment (a pan full of hot grits) would likely prove to be a sufficient enough re-education lesson for all but the most “Cruz”esque of intruders…

But then, in the fast-food infected modern America, a pot of hot water might be pretty hard to come by.

Why are black murder victims put on trial?

Renisha McBride’s toxicology report is out and now we know the 19-year-old had a blood-alcohol level that was more than twice the legal limit for driving. This would explain why, according to her family, she was involved in a single-car accident.

However, it does not explain why Theodore Wafer shot her in the face.

McBride’s family says she was seeking help after the crash and knocked on the door of Wafer’s house in Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. The 54-year-old Wafer, who is white, told investigators he feared McBride, who is black, was trying to break in.

There are too many unanswered questions to know exactly what happened that night. But we do know this: If a black man told police officers “self-defense” was the reason why he shot an unarmed white teenage girl in the face with his shotgun, it would not have taken protests, national media attention and nearly two weeks for authorities to reject that excuse.

And this is why McBride’s death — ruled a homicide after protests and national media attention — draws comparisons to that of Trayvon Martin, the Florida teen shot and killed by George Zimmerman, who is of white and Latino heritage, last year.

 

Gen Colin Powell on Trayvon Martin Verdict and Racism in America

Powell comes down on the side of rational people…

I think the verdict will have “staying power”, as I see it as an issue that will continue to strongly divide the country – argued and debated about much as the OJ verdict was for years. Further, unlike the OJ verdict, the issues of laws being passed by conservatives who in vast majority supported Zimmerman aren’t going to disappear anytime soon.

Colin Powell: Trayvon Martin verdict questionable

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday the jury verdict that freed the killer of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin was “questionable.” But he isn’t sure it will have staying power in the public consciousness.

Speaking on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Powell said cases like Martin’s “blaze across the midnight sky” and are forgotten. George Zimmerman was acquitted earlier this summer of the fatal 2012 shooting in Florida

The first black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and first black secretary of state, Powell says America has come a long way toward racial equality 50 years after Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which came 50 years ago this week. Powell recalled being refused service when trying to buy a hamburger before the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Minorities have many more opportunities today, but Powell says King would still demand work on education, housing and economic opportunities.

Powell also believes that the New Jim Crow voting laws in the red zone will backfire – which is the essence of why Trayvon won’t go away…

Colin Powell: Voter ID Laws Will ‘Backfire’ For Republicans

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell warned Republicans on Sunday that the strict voter identification laws they’re pursuing around the country will damage the party’s standing with growing blocs of voters.

“[H]ere’s what I say to my Republican friends: The country is becoming more diverse,” Powell told Bob Schieffer on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “You say you want to reach out, you say you want to have a new message. You say you want to see if you can bring some of these voters to the Republican side. This is not the way to do it.”

“The way to do it is to make it easier for them to vote and then give them something to vote for that they can believe in,” Powell added.

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling that struck down a key portion of the Voting Rights Act, Republicans in states like North Carolina, Florida and Texas have sought voter restrictions that critics, including Powell, say will disproportionately hurt minorities at the polls. North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) signed legislation earlier this month that requires voter identification, rolls back early voting hours and ends a state-supported voter registration drive. Powell condemned that particular law at an event in Raleigh last week.

Powell pointed out that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud, the very premise of the identification statutes.

“You need a photo ID. Well, you didn’t need a photo ID for decades before,” Powell said. “Is it really necessary now? And they claim that there’s widespread abuse and voter fraud, but nothing documents, nothing substantiates that. There isn’t widespread abuse.”

Powell predicted that such measures will blow up in Republicans’ faces.

“These kind of procedures that are being put in place to slow the process down and make it likely that fewer Hispanics and African Americans might vote, I think, are going to backfire, because these people are going to come out and do what they have to do in order to vote, and I encourage that,” he said.

During the interview, Powell also reflected on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, recalling times when he couldn’t eat in certain places due to the color of his skin, even though he’d just served his country.

“In my lifetime, over a long career in public life, you know, I’ve been refused access to restaurants where I couldn’t eat, even though I just came back from Vietnam: ‘We can’t give you a hamburger, come back some other time,'” Powell recalled. “And I did, right after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, I went right back to that same place and got my hamburger, and they were more than happy to serve me now. It removed a cross from their back, but we’re not there yet. We’re not there yet. And so we’ve got to keep working on it.”

One of the genesis of the modern conservative movement was the treatment of Vets after the Vietnam War by the American people and anti-war groups. That left a large scar on our national psyche.  Apparently it never imprinted on the conservative mindless that their feelings of being disrespected…

Might just be the same as experienced by black folks when they are confronted by racism driven discrimination.

 

More From Florida…

Yeah…More fall out from the Zimmerman travesty…

Walton Henry Butler Shoots Neighbor

Florida man shoots neighbor in the face and tells police ‘I only shot a ni**er

Port St. Joe, Florida man arrested for shooting his neighbor in the face allegedly admitted his crime to police, with a strange excuse.

Walter Henry Butler, 59, was arrested by Gulf County Sheriffs deputies after shooting Everett Gant, who is black. Gant was shot in the face after he confronted Butler about using racial slurs to address children living in the apartment complex where the two men reside.

Deputies said Butler admitted to shooting the victim, and even called 911 himself to report it, after which he reportedly went back to cooking his dinner. According to reports, officers on the scene said Butler seemed annoyed by the arrest and told officers, “I only shot a ni—r.

Butler was charged with attempted murder and a hate crime. He is being held at the Gulf County Jail. Gant is said to be in stable condition and is expected to survive.

 

President Obama Speaks on Trayvon Martin and Stereotyping of Black Men

 

PRESIDENT OBAMA: The reason I actually wanted to come out today is not to take questions, but to speak to an issue that obviously has gotten a lot of attention over the course of the last week, the issue of the Trayvon Martin ruling. I gave an — a preliminary statement right after the ruling on Sunday, but watching the debate over the course of the last week I thought it might be useful for me to expand on my thoughts a little bit.

First of all, you know, I — I want to make sure that, once again, I send my thoughts and prayers, as well as Michelle’s, to the family of Trayvon Martin, and to remark on the incredible grace and dignity with which they’ve dealt with the entire situation. I can only imagine what they’re going through, and it’s — it’s remarkable how they’ve handled it.

The second thing I want to say is to reiterate what I said on Sunday, which is there are going to be a lot of arguments about the legal — legal issues in the case. I’ll let all the legal analysts and talking heads address those issues.

The judge conducted the trial in a professional manner. The prosecution and the defense made their arguments. The juries were properly instructed that in a — in a case such as this, reasonable doubt was relevant, and they rendered a verdict. And once the jury’s spoken, that’s how our system works.

But I did want to just talk a little bit about context and how people have responded to it and how people are feeling. You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago. And when you think about why, in the African- American community at least, there’s a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it’s important to recognize that the African- American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that — that doesn’t go away.

There are very few African-American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me. 

And there are very few African-American men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me, at least before I was a senator. There are very few African-Americans who haven’t had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off. That happens often.

And you know, I don’t want to exaggerate this, but those sets of experiences inform how the African-American community interprets what happened one night in Florida. And it’s inescapable for people to bring those experiences to bear. 

The African-American community is also 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.

Now, this isn’t to say that the African-American community is naive about the fact that African-American young men are disproportionately involved in the criminal justice system, that they are disproportionately both victims and perpetrators of violence. It’s not to make excuses for that fact, although black folks do interpret the reasons for that in a historical context.

We understand that some of the violence that takes place in poor black neighborhoods around the country is born out of a very violent past in this country, and that the poverty and dysfunction that we see in those communities can be traced to a very difficult history.

And so the fact that sometimes that’s unacknowledged adds to the frustration. And the fact that a lot of African-American boys are painted with a broad brush and the excuse is given, well, there are these statistics out there that show that African-American boys are more violent — using that as an excuse to then see sons treated differently causes pain.

I think the African-American community is also not naive in understanding that statistically somebody like Trayvon Martin was probably statistically more likely to be shot by a peer than he was by somebody else.

So — so folks understand the challenges that exist for African- American boys, but they get frustrated, I think, if they feel that there’s no context for it or — and that context is being denied. And — and that all contributes, I think, to a sense that if a white male teen was involved in the same kind of scenario, that, from top to bottom, both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different.

Now, the question for me at least, and I think, for a lot of folks is, where do we take this? How do we learn some lessons from this and move in a positive direction? You know, I think it’s understandable that there have been demonstrations and vigils and protests, and some of that stuff is just going to have to work its way through as long as it remains nonviolent. If I see any violence, then I will remind folks that that dishonors what happened to Trayvon Martin and his family. 

But beyond protests or vigils, the question is, are there some concrete things that we might be able to do? I know that Eric Holder is reviewing what happened down there, but I think it’s important for people to have some clear expectations here. Traditionally, these are issues of state and local government — the criminal code. And law enforcement has traditionally done it at the state and local levels, not at the federal levels.

That doesn’t mean, though, that as a nation, we can’t do some things that I think would be productive. So let me just give a couple of specifics that I’m still bouncing around with my staff so we’re not rolling out some five-point plan, but some areas where I think all of us could potentially focus. 

Number one, precisely because law enforcement is often determined at the state and local level, I think it’d be productive for the Justice Department — governors, mayors to work with law enforcement about training at the state and local levels in order to reduce the kind of mistrust in the system that sometimes currently exists.

You know, when I was in Illinois I passed racial profiling legislation. And it actually did just two simple things. One, it collected data on traffic stops and the race of the person who was stopped. But the other thing was it resourced us training police departments across the state on how to think about potential racial bias and ways to further professionalize what they were doing.

And initially, the police departments across the state were resistant, but actually they came to recognize that if it was done in a fair, straightforward way, that it would allow them to do their jobs better and communities would have more confidence in them and in turn be more helpful in applying the law. And obviously law enforcement’s got a very tough job.

So that’s one area where I think there are a lot of resources and best practices that could be brought bear if state and local governments are receptive. And I think a lot of them would be. And — and let’s figure out other ways for us to push out that kind of training.

Along the same lines, I think it would be useful for us to examine some state and local laws to see if it — if they are designed in such a way that they may encourage the kinds of altercations and confrontations and tragedies that we saw in the Florida case, rather than diffuse potential altercations.

I know that there’s been commentary about the fact that the stand your ground laws in Florida were not used as a defense in the case.

On the other hand, if we’re sending a message as a society in our communities that someone who is armed potentially has the right to use those firearms even if there’s a way for them to exit from a situation, is that really going to be contributing to the kind of peace and security and order that we’d like to see?

And for those who resist that idea that we should think about something like these “stand your ground” laws, I just ask people to consider if Trayvon Martin was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk? And do we actually think that he would have been justified in shooting Mr. Zimmerman, who had followed him in a car, because he felt threatened? 

And if the answer to that question is at least ambiguous, it seems to me that we might want to examine those kinds of laws.

Number three — and this is a long-term project: We need to spend some time in thinking about how do we bolster and reinforce our African-American boys? And this is something that Michelle and I talk a lot about. There are a lot of kids out there who need help who are getting a lot of negative reinforcement. And is there more that we can do to give them the sense that their country cares about them and values them and is willing to invest in them? 

You know, I’m not naive about the prospects of some brand-new federal program.

I’m not sure that that’s what we’re talking about here. But I do recognize that as president, I’ve got some convening power.

And there are a lot of good programs that are being done across the country on this front. And for us to be able to gather together business leaders and local elected officials and clergy and celebrities and athletes and figure out how are we doing a better job helping young African-American men feel that they’re a full part of this society and that — and that they’ve got pathways and avenues to succeed — you know, I think that would be a pretty good outcome from what was obviously a tragic situation. And we’re going to spend some time working on that and thinking about that.

And then finally, I think it’s going to be important for all of us to do some soul-searching. You know, there have been talk about should we convene a conversation on race. I haven’t seen that be particularly productive when politicians try to organize conversations. They end up being stilted and politicized, and folks are locked into the positions they already have.

On the other hand, in families and churches and workplaces, there’s a possibility that people are a little bit more honest, and at least you ask yourself your own questions about, am I wringing as much bias out of myself as I can; am I judging people, as much as I can, based on not the color of their skin but the content of their character? That would, I think, be an appropriate exercise in the wake of this tragedy.

And let me just leave you with — with a final thought, that as difficult and challenging as this whole episode has been for a lot of people, I don’t want us to lose sight that things are getting better. Each successive generation seems to be making progress in changing attitudes when it comes to race. I doesn’t mean that we’re in a postracial society. It doesn’t mean that racism is eliminated. But you know, when I talk to Malia and Sasha and I listen to their friends and I see them interact, they’re better than we are. They’re better than we were on these issues. And that’s true in every community that I’ve visited all across the country.

And so, you know, we have to be vigilant and we have to work on these issues, and those of us in authority should be doing everything we can to encourage the better angels of our nature as opposed to using these episodes to heighten divisions. But we should also have confidence that kids these days I think have more sense than we did back then, and certainly more than our parents did or our grandparents did, and that along this long, difficult journey, you know, we’re becoming a more perfect union — not a perfect union, but a more perfect union.

 

Why Travon Martin’s Murder Is a Watershed

Val Nickolas hits the nail on the head.Why most black men think the Zimmerman trial was a travesty.

Went through a couple of these experiences myself growing up, and later as an adult. Getting stopped in a$70,000 car, in a suit, with my then 80 year old mother 2 blocks from my house in a very nice neighborhood on the way home from taking her out to dinner… For having a loose license plate screw.

Had my Zimmerman moment as a teen, when I and two friends stopped by the local McDonalds for a meal. The driver was a couple of years older, and was known around the community as a bit of a bad ass. He later became a County Policeman and served with distinction for 30 some years. A car with four young white men first attempted to ram us in the parking lot as we drove out – missing us by a few inches. My older friend said “Forget it – they are probably a bunch of drunks”, and kept going without saying a word to the other driver. Half way home, we noticed the car full of guys was following us. We took a couple of turns through streets which basically took us around the block and back to the main, two  lane road (the area was pretty country at that time) – the car followed our every move. As the numbers were 4 to 3,we figured those guys weren’t interested in a stand up fight. They probably were armed. My friend carried a sawed-off under the seat (I said he was a bad ass) – but we didn’t want to force a confrontation on the road. I suggested we go to my house, which had a long circular driveway, shielded by a row of bushes and a wall. My Dad, who was out of town with my Mom, kept loaded guns by the doors after having the house shot at because of their involvement in the Civil Rights Movement (He never was real big on that “peaceful” stuff). When we pulled into the drive, the two non-drivers would jump out through the hedge unseen, and circle around to the house, letting ourselves in and collecting Dad’s venerable Pump and Double Barrel. IF the clowns followed us into the driveway, they would be faced with a three sided ambush, with no way out as the driveway would be blocked by our car, and the wall on one side, and the side of the garage on the other…

Which is exactly what happened.  We made them get out, and besides a case of beer, found two revolvers when we searched them and the car. We took the bullets, removed the cylinders, and tossed the revolver frames into the car – and collected 6 beers from the stash for our efforts. And with a graphic description of what was going to happen if we ever saw them in our town again…

Sent them on their way with instructions as to where to find their revolver cylinders in a few days.

Those guys were so shook up we never saw them again, and they never did pick up their revolver cylinders which we set atop a fence post at the end of a dead end farm road.

Story could have been a lot different…But those beers were damn good.

Had another friend who managed to get stopped 3 times the same day by the same cop, supposedly looking for a robber on his way to visit his girl friend in the next county. Cop as hell on aged blue Mustangs.

I could have been Trayvon Martin

The Don Imus controversy a while back brought racial discrimination into the national conversation. But for many African-Americans like me it dug up a lot of deep, suppressed memories of hateful things that have been said and done to us over the years. Things we thought we had moved past but came screaming back like a freight train into our lives again.

For me, it was the George Zimmerman trial that sparked my memory. As a vice president in a national news division, I watched the trial through an objective lens my eyes have long been trained to look through. However at the end of the trial, those long suppressed memories made an unwelcomed hello.

I grew up in a military family and we always lived in middle class neighborhoods. I was an honor studentin high school as well as a student athlete running track. I even had an after-school job to earn spending money. That said, twice as a teen, I ended up looking down the barrel of police guns for no other reason that I happened to be a black teenager. I had completely forgotten about these incidents but the Zimmerman verdict opened that door again.

The first time, I was merely waiting for a bus to go to my job. Suddenly two California Highway Patrol vehicles jumped over the concrete middle island and they came screaming to a halt on either side of me kicking up a huge cloud of dust.

My first instinct was to run away but before I could figure out how to handle this, an officer from each car jumped out with handguns pointed at me, screaming for me to put my hands up and get down on the ground.

I started to ask what was going on, but they were having none of it and forcibly pushed me down into the dirt making my work clothes a filthy mess. They then asked me if I was the name of someone they were looking for. I told them no and they demanded ID. I did not have a driver’s license yet but fortunately I did have a picture ID from work. If I had not had that ID, I would have surely ended up in jail. After they realized they had the wrong guy, they got back in their cars and drove off. No apology, no checking if I was OK, no nothing.

It was the first time I came to realize that being black was not just a magnet for racist speech and actions directed at me but also could also cost me my life had I responded to a normal human being’s natural fight or flight instinct.

The second time was while I was in a convenience store, and a voice from behind me told me not to move a muscle. I glanced back and saw a shotgun pointed at the back of my head. I thought I was being robbed and I had an envelope in my coat pocket with money I had just cashed from my paycheck. I was thinking about trying to get it out and hide it in the snack display in front of me.

Had I done that, I would have died on the spot…

Another great piece on “Waking Up”  was written by Leonard Pitts for the Miami Herald –

Leonard Pitts Jr.: Zimmerman acquittal another reason to wake up

Four words of advice for African Americans in the wake of George Zimmerman’s acquittal:

Wake the hell up.

The Sunday after Zimmerman went free was a day of protest for many of us. From Biscayne Boulevard in Miami to Leimert Park in Los Angeles, to the Daley Center in Chicago to Times Square in New York City, African Americans — and others who believe in racial justice — carried out angry, but mostly peaceful demonstrations.

Good. This is as it should have been.

But if that’s the end, if you just get it out of your system, then move ahead with business as usual, then all you did Sunday was waste your time. You might as well have stayed home.

We are living in a perilous era for African-American freedom. The parallels to other eras have become too stark to ignore.

Every period of African-American advance has always been met by a crushing period of push back, the crafting of laws and the use of violence with the intent of eroding the new freedoms. Look it up:

The 13th Amendment ended slavery. So the white South created a convict leasing system that was actually harsher.

The 14th Amendment guaranteed citizenship. So the white South rendered that citizenship meaningless with the imposition of Jim Crow laws.

The 15th Amendment gave us the right to vote; it was taken away by the so-called “grandfather clause.” The Supreme Court struck that down, so the white South relied on literacy tests and poll taxes to snatch our ballots all over again.

Our history is a litany: two steps forward, one step back…

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/07/16/3503415/zimmerman-acquittal-another-reason.html#storylink=cpy

 

Read more here:

 

 

Another Black Teen Murdered

In this one a 75 Year old white man shoots an unarmed teen doing house chores bringing in the empty garbage cans.

Two differences between this and the Trayvon, this one had a video recording of it by the murderer’s “security camera” so it was hard to cover up…

And it wasn’t in a Stand Your Ground Get Away With Murder of Black Kids State.

John Henry Spooner Shooting VIDEO: Evidence Shows Darius Simmons Killed

John Henry Spooner has been found guilty of first-degree intentional homicide in the fatal shooting of Darius Simmons.

ORIGINAL STORY — A video entered as evidence in the murder trial of John Henry Spooner on Tuesday appears to show the 76-year-old shooting his 13-year-old neighbor Darius Simmons dead.

The Milwaukee senior is charged with first-degree homicide after the alleged incident in May last year. Jurors saw the video (below), taken from Spooner’s ownsurveillance camera, that shows the suspect walk out of his house, brandishing a gun. After a short argument, the man in the video waves the gun around before he shoots Simmons in the chest. Simmons manages to flee outside the scope of the camera before dying.

 

Another Trayvon…

Now that a kangaroo court in Florida has declared it legal to murder unarmed black boys…

Trial begins for Wis. man, 76, charged with shooting 13-year-old neighbor over alleged theft

Jurors were selected Monday in the case of a 76-year-old white man charged with gunning down a 13-year-old black boy last year on a Milwaukee sidewalk over a theft allegation.

The proceedings come two days after a jury acquitted George Zimmerman in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla., last year. In the Milwaukee shooting, which has been compared to the Florida case, John Henry Spooner is charged with first-degree intentional homicide in the May 2012 death of his next-door neighbor, Darius Simmons.

Spooner suspected Simmons of breaking into his Milwaukee home and stealing guns, prosecutors said. Spooner confronted the teen on the sidewalk two days after the weapons came up missing and demanded that he return them. When Simmons denied stealing anything, Spooner shot him in the chest from five feet away as the teen’s mother watched, according to the criminal complaint.

Spooner then fired a second shot as Simmons tried to run away, the complaint said. Police recovered a weapon and two spent bullet casings.

An autopsy found that Simmons, who was unarmed, suffered a gunshot wound to his torso. The bullet exited his back.

Witnesses said Spooner paced up and down the sidewalk after the shooting until police arrived. They arrested him without incident.

Spooner’s defense attorney, Franklyn Gimbel, conceded that Spooner shot Simmons but said he would argue that he didn’t intend to kill the boy. Gimbel also said he had an expert who would testify that Spooner had a mental illness at the time of shooting that prevented him from knowing right from wrong.

The morning of the shooting, Spooner and Milwaukee Alderman Bob Donovan ate breakfast together. Donovan said Spooner told him he had lost $3,000 worth of shotguns in a burglary that week and was frustrated with police. He also told Donovan that he was dying of lung cancer, Donovan said.

 

For The George Zimmerman Defense…Race

Kind of hard to escape the last few days evisceration of the first prosecution witness in the Trayvon Martin murder case by the media.  And the role race has played in that.

Rachel Jeantel can’t read cursive. That’s the main takeaway from the fourth day of the George Zimmerman trial: Jeantel, the heavyset, snappy prosecution witness who was on the phone with her friend Trayvon Martin minutes before he died, cannot read script handwriting. Defense attorney Don West underlined that fact for the benefit of the jury, the general public, and everyone else looking for an excuse to dismiss her testimony.

Given the extent to which Jeantel’s demeanor was covered on television and in news articles, you’d be excused for thinking—as Jezebel’s Callie Beusman put it—that she was the one on trial. Over the past couple of days, Jeantel has recounted that Martin told her he was being followed by a “creepy-ass cracker” who, it seems, then proceeded to attack him. Pundits, meanwhile, have made snickering observations that have had little to do with the substance of her testimony. They’ve criticized Jeantel’s weight, her attitude, her manner of dress, and her mumbling, inarticulate answers to West’s questions. These observations are generally framed as discussions of her credibility and how she’ll be received by the jury. But they’re also an excuse to point and laugh at a poor, black teenager who comes from an America that we’d rather not acknowledge exists.

The media has consistently treated Jeantel as if she were some sassy alien life-form. TheNew York Daily News story about yesterday’s proceedings focused on Jeantel-as-sideshow, calling the cursive story an “especially cringe-worthy moment,” and noting that, “[a]t one point, the key prosecution witness blurted out, ‘That’s retarded, Sir’ in response to West’s suggestion that Martin attacked Zimmerman.” On Piers Morgan Tonight, Morgan repeated the phrase “creepy-ass cracker” as if it were some inscrutable bit of baby talk. The day before, panelist Jayne Weintraub disdainfully asserted that “it’s really not about this young woman’s … credibility, because her credibility, it’s a wash whatever her testimony is. Yes, she was a difficult witness. She was impossible.”…

Racial and socioeconomic stereotypes play differently in different contexts. The statements and mannerisms that make Jeantel a laughingstock now might have made her a viral video star outside the courtroom. As I was watching Jeantel’s testimony and the subsequent reaction, I couldn’t help thinking about Aisha Harris’ Slate piece from Mayabout the “fairly recent trend of ‘hilarious’ black neighbors, unwitting Internet celebrities whose appeal seems rooted in a ‘colorful’ style that is always immediately recognizable as poor or working-class.” Charles Ramsey, Antoine Dodson, Sweet Brown—these people caught white America’s attention in part because they so blatantly violated normative behavior. If Jeantel would’ve been filmed saying “That’s retarded, sir” to some reporter on the streets outside her house, the Internet might well be singing her praises. Black people are celebrated when they play the fool in the proper setting.