Sure. What’s confusing is that anybody thinks Zimmerman has been railroaded in this way. Even apart from the very obvious negating fact that Zimmerman continues to walk free, those who think he ought to have been arrested (as I do) are not really proposing anything that deviates from standard operating procedure. How this has metamorphosed into some great injustice visited on someone perceived to be white, I surely don’t know. Nor do I have much hope that F-P will articulate reasons for why we should think that Zimmerman is being railroaded for his race, which is the threshold question of his proposition for debate, since the system’s mistreatment of white people is, to him, an article of faith.
I’ll take that as a yes. I realize that if you lived through the riots in the '60s and/or saw the Rodney King or the Crown Heights riots up close, this kind of thing is more likely to be at the forefront of your mind. Still, I can’t help noticing that people are quick to suggest that black people might start rioting if they’re upset with something. Anything, really. It was suggested many times on this board that black people would riot if Obama lost in 2008, and there was never any concrete reason that it might lead to riots - it just seemed reasonable to some people to speculate that black people would riot if they didn’t get their way. As a reminder, there were no riots over the Amadou Diallo shooting, none over the sexual assault of Abner Louima by police (and I realize there were convictions in that case), none over the Sean Bell shooting, none over the Duke case, and I’m sure I’m forgetting my share of other controversial criminal cases that involved race in one way or other.
There have already been marches, and nothing bad happened.
Though as you note, George Zimmerman is not powerful. In this particular confrontation, he’s just close enough to fit the bill.
I don’t see where one cancels out the other.
ISTM that from a logical perspective, that’s analogous to saying “I also feel compelled to point out that the reason MM’s are often pre-judged by the public is that they so frequently commit heinous crimes”.
Well yeah, everyone agrees in principle. But in practice, few like to admit that they’ve chosen to interpret the facts a certain way, and hypothesize about the missing information a certain way, in order to fit the story to their preferred scenario. So the agreement is not especially meaningful.
Because he is, at least according to the usual guidelines used for self-reporting these sorts of things?
His father is white, his mother is Hispanic (Peruvian I believe). I do not know how he self-indentified prior to this incident.
Hispanics can be of any race, including white. Who said Zimmerman isn’t white because he’s Hispanic?
I agree that nothing bad has happened. I also stated that IF Zimmerman walks there COULD be a problem. It really depends on how the complete store plays out.
Yes, there are some people that will claim that blacks riot at the drop of a hat. I did not state that, and I feel like your arguments are trying to imply that I am another racist casting aspersions. The poison bottle is sitting next to the well, whether it has leaked into the water supply remains to be seen.
As far as I know, Zimmerman considers himself Hispanic and the press has been identifying him that way since his preference became known. You can be white and Hispanic, but if you say a guy is white, you probably don’t picture someone who looks like George Zimmerman, so calling him a white guy with no further explanation can be confusing.
Based on how similar recent cases have played out, there’s not much reason to think so.
I’m not trying to imply you’re a racist. What I am saying is that it’s my experience that people are more likely to raise this possibility with regard to black people, and there’s little reason to do so. It reflects an underlying presumption.
This thread started with the concept of the PWM. By referring to Zimmerman as white, ignoring his Hispanic heritage, we fall into the trap of over-simplifying the narrative.
Here in LA, we don’t talk about the Zoot suit riots as being one of whites vs. whites. We talk about Hispanics vs. a white government.
When black gangs and hispanic gangs in Inglewood fight, the hispanic gangs are not called “White Hispanic” gangs - they are called Hispanic gangs.
I don’t think it does. I just think that it is disengenous to attempt to equate the prejudicial effects that majorities feel when accused by minorities of criminal activity with the prejudicial effects that minorities feel every day of their lives. While similar in type, they are vastly different in quantity, as RitterSport has pointed out.
You’re probably right. Stereotypes almost always have some basis in reality - that’s why they are so widespread. The stereotype of the rich powerful guy that buys his way out of a crime (or doesn’t even get investigated) is as much of a stereotype as the young black hoodlum trying to jack houses in a gated community. Or the police officer that immediately buys the self-defense claim form a white guy that he never would from a black guy.
You’re right - there are plenty of people that have made absolutist statements about what happened that night without possibly knowing. On both sides. The only fair course of action is to continue, and perhaps expand, the investigation and attempt to discern the course of events as precisely as is possible.
But the fact will remain, even if no crime was committed, that the initial act of profiling and raised suspicion will inherently involve race. There’s no way to get around the fact that if Martin were a white boy he most likely wouldn’t be dead. We can’t know this for sure, but it certainly seems likely.
Fair enough - and I agree that the possibility of black riots IS raised too much. I probably think about it a little bit more due to personal experience I admit.
Jas09,
I don’t disagree with anything in your most recent post.
Just an idle observation, by the way: it seems to me that if Trayvon Martin had had a gun (that he had permission to carry), he could’ve shot George Zimmerman and also claimed self-defense under the same law since Zimmerman was pursuing him. Or they could’ve shot each other at the same time, and if they had both lived, they both could have made that claim. That seems like a problem to me.
This is something that bothers me, and I think I mentioned in one of the threads here that it seems that Trayvon’s mistake was not being armed himself and killing Zimmerman first.
The Florida statutory scheme certainly seems to encourage people to go around armed and to start shooting whenever they feel threatened. After all, if everyone’s armed, then everyone is always subject to a reasonable fear of deadly force.
Are the proponents of this law really satisfied with the idea that everyone should always fear being subject to deadly threat from firearms? It conjures up the kind of hair-trigger society from old Westerns.
Lots of Hispanics do identify themselves as “white” and that’s especially true in Florida.
In fact many Cuban and Colombian immigrants are quite shocked to discover they’re. It considered “Blancos” in the US.
Obviously, I don’t know how George Zimmerman identified himself and don’t see why it’s relevant. Plenty of non-whites are capable of being racist against blacks, as the family of Latasha Harlins can attest.
Anyway back to the OP. Comparing the cases is utterly asinine. The Duke Lacrosse players were clearly innocent and the DA’s office eventually was forced to admit they were. By contrast the evidence against DSK was vastly stronger, but in the end it probably wasn’t strong enough to convict. And of course the case against Zimmerman also appears to be dramatically stronger.
What concerns me about this is the fact that it makes killing someone the safest option. If you get in a fight and the other person lives, he can claim you were the aggressor, but if they are dead the police will take your word for it.
That has always been the “safest” option. I have been hearing the “dead men tell no tales” mantra of self defense going back to the 70s in my case.
Well, the New York Times has referred to him as a White Hispanic 5 days ago. ISTM that this is an attempt to keep the race angle going. Can you imagine someone being turned away from a voting booth being described as “white hispanic”? How about if the victim of a shooting was hispanic and the gunman was white? I’m guessing the dead guy would be hispanic. It fits the narrative better.
You should seldom attribute to malice that which is easily explained by idiocy. Sensationalism sells papers, feeding peoples’ prejudices sells papers.
That said, however this turns out, I don’t believe the Zimmerman/Trayvon case are at all similar to the Duke Lacrosse case.
In the former, to my mind anyway, the problem is that Zimmerman wasn’t arrested and there has been at best a minimal investigation when the bare facts of the event that we know seem to support an arrest (at least, they seem to, to me).
In the latter, there were many people (including, fortunately, including people at ABC News - though the rest of the press was right in there howling for blood) who were from the very first reports saying: “show me the evidence”. The reason for this was that there have been and continue to be far, far too many cases of “guilty as accused” when the accused is male (of any ethnicity) and the accuser is female (of any ethnicity) and this looked like it could be more of the same.