One can nitpick at the specifics of this case. But I’m talking about a larger narrative. I know it’s hard, but just try to imagine how it feels to be a black male in this country. You are despised, you are demonized, you are devalued, you are dehumanized. From slavery, to slavery by another name, the nadir of race relations and lynching, and Jim Crow and police brutality and the the new Jim Crow and on and on. This is the lens through which black people view this case…
What really brought it home to me, the way black men are feared and dehumanized was the shooting of Oscar Grant. Captured right on video. Shook me for a few days. Still not sure if I’m up to seeing the movie…
Please…what’s ’ poor form ’ is for people of color to be denied their civil rights in the year 2013…maybe its time we get a little ‘worked up’ about it, ya think?
Seven involved black males when race was noted (i.e., he could see the suspects; it could also just be that he disclosed race only when asked). Also.there were 14 calls. Several were repeats of the same incident.
I looked only at suspicious activity calls because this is the type of call that led to Trayvon’s death. I am not asserting that Zimmerman is a racist (we can’t know that just from calls he made to police, especially without knowing if he was always asked to disclose race). I was just refuting your assertion that race calls were statistically insignificant.
One thing is clear to me. He must have been damn unpopular at police HQ. I can just imagine the exasperation at taking yet another “George is losing his shit again” call.
That larger narrative should be discussed in the context of a case in which a black male was despised, demonized, devalued, or dehumanized. Just like Marissa Alexander’s case is an awful one to use to advance the idea of unequal application of Florida’s self-defense laws, even if that happens, Zimmerman’s case is an awful one to use to advance the idea of black men being unable to get justice from our legal system, even though that happens.
The alleged victim being black and male isn’t enough to use this case as the fulcrum of some sort of historical narrative of injustice. Details matter. Using this case as a rallying cry for that narrative is actually counter-productive, because people who are willing to look at the details and consider them dispassionately won’t go along with it. Instead, an actual injustice should be used.
Ok, so even taking all your rules - multiple calls count as one, and only suspicious activity calls count – even granting you the most generous counting methods, in other words – it’s STILL not true that most of Zimmerman’s calls involved black males.
Yes, agreed. Some cant see the forest through the trees, and some like to keep pointing out each branch in a bid of keeping one from seeing the forest.
Dude. You said that many of his calls involved non-black “suspicious” people. I bothered to, y’know, actually LOOK at the calls. Your assertion is incorrect. Many “suspicious” calls did involve black males – where race was noted (so the number could in fact be HIGHER than 50%). Race was not noted at all on other calls. So we do not KNOW the race of the so-called “suspicious” people. Thus, your assertion does not hold validity.
I asked you how “most” was used when the numbers didn’t support it.
In what way does your response address that?
It seems that you can’t admit any error whatsoever – when confronted with one, you seek to shift the goalposts. Suddenly it’s not about the numbers at all – it’s the willingness to see a seven year old as suspicious.
We can certainly discuss that. But let’s close out the other point first, rather than leaving it abandoned and unresolved.
Contrary to the claim made above, “most” of Zimmerman’s calls did NOT involve black males. True?
Did you even LOOK at the list of calls? If you exclude the calls that weren’t about people (stray dogs, neighbor garage door open, his own butt-hurt about his landlord trying to collect rent on a foreclosed property), and THEN exclude the calls where race wouldn’t be a factor because he likely wouldn’t have been able to see the ‘perps’ driving through the neighborhood … And finally, exclude the calls where the dispatcher was probably just phoning it in to the log as “Yet another complaint from that nutball George” then you are left with a very, VERY statistically high number of calls about suspicious activity by black males.
Either you aren’t reading the facts, or you are cherry-picking in an effort to support an unsustainable assertion.
Are you on the spectrum, by any chance? I don’t otherwise understand why you won’t just concede my point. I have already acknowledged that I’m not making it as some way of “proving” that Zimmerman is a racist. The only conclusion I’d feel comfortable drawing is that he’s a nuisance.
At least 50%. And several of the calls were related to the “suspicious activities” that had been phones in earlier. And it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume that in some calls where race wasn’t noted, the ‘perps’ were black.
And if I were wrong and it was in fact 49% of his calls, what am I losing exactly? Certainly not my credibility. A reasonable person could GLANCE through that call log and arrive at the same conclusion that I did, which is that he did make a lot of calls about suspicious black males.
I counted each and every call that was categorized as “suspicious activity.” There were 17 of them. Seven specified black males.
So, yes, I did look at the calls. In fact, this is the second time I did this exercise; I posted a detailed spreadsheet breakdown of these calls last year.
I see that (without acknowledging error) you are quietly attempting to change from “most” to “… a very, VERY statistically high number…”
Do you contest the fact there are seven calls, and no more, concerning black males?
Do you contest the fact that there are seventeen suspicious activity calls?
Do you contest that seven is not the major part of seventeen, or even of fourteen?
You’re losing any accountability about your claims.
If you simply said, “OK, I was slightly off-base; it was less than half,” then we can continue. If you dodge without admitting any error, you’re not accountable for posting error.
Do you contest the fact that only 9 of those calls noted race AT ALL? One was a white male, another a probable Hispanic male. So where race was recorded, 7 of 9 were about black males.
About that…in case you were unaware, the Sanford Police Department asked Zimmerman to join a program of theirs, so it’s rather unlikely that the local police considered Zimmerman to be a “nutball” or a nuisance who made frivolous calls to them.