The entire country is aflame with the Trayvon Martin incident in Florida. I guess, it would be more appropriate to say that “Trayvon Martin murder in Florida.” For anyone that does not know, Trayvon Martin was a 17 year old Black male that was shot and killed by a self-proclaimed “Neighborhood Watch” man in Sanford, Florida. (If you need more information, Google it.) There are several things about this situation that I find concerning and/or troubling.
First, I really want to say that I really hope people really just want Zimmerman (the shooter) to have his day in court. If we just want to go after George Zimmerman in a wave of “street justice,” we are no better than what we accuse Zimmerman of doing. We should not want “retribution” or “revenge” in the name of “Justice.” None of this will bring back Trayvon Martin.
Also, i really wish the conversation would stop straying from the topic at hand. I feel the hoodies and the individuality of this instance are overshadowing the true problem here. Zimmerman shot and killed Martin and was not even charged by the police. All over America, Black males being murdered seems to illicit much less concern than anyone else being murdered. Every time a Black male is killed, people have to speak up and point out that he was not a criminal or immoral person. Why? The issue at hand is that murder is illegal. Do we really want to start placing levels of value on person’s murdered?
So, yes, this is bigger than Trayvon. It’s about everyone in America having equal protection under the law. It should not matter the colour of a person or their social status as to how much we care about their murder.
The other issue I see in this is the right of George Zimmerman to own a handgun. Is this what was in the Second Amendment? I don’t see it. Many of the defenders of the “Second Amendment” point out the text of the second amendment.
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
Everyone seems to want to ignore sections of this text. The NRA types want to ignore the text that says “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state…” This has nothing to do with George Zimmerman, especially in context of when this amendment was written. In the 1700′s, the contrast to a militia military was a professional military. George Zimmerman is not defending the United States from anything. Neither is someone who wants to shoot deer or rabbits in Montana, nor someone who feels safer from home invasion by having a gun in their nightstand.
The murder of Trayvon Martin brings a culmination of contemporary issues in America to the forefront. One is definitely the issue of race, which some GOP candidates and pundits want to decry. The truth is that Trayvon was murdered because he was Black and Zimmerman was not arrested immediately because he shot someone who was Black. This is not new. From Henry Louis Gates’ arrest in his own home to the murder of Amadou Diallo, Shawn Bell, and even Emmitt Till, Black males have been being treated as second class citizens in America.
Farther, how many of America’s children need to be shot before we realise where these “gun rights” get us. Can anyone name me one civilian with a gun that has defended the United States from foreign or domestic threats to the nation since the Civil War? When looking at gun violence in the United States and comparing it to other modern polities, it only compares to countries like Columbia. Is that our goal? To keep shooting each other?
I need to do another draft of this… I recognise that. I have just been really busy and not writing lately and felt the need to do something on here.
I don’t know why, but I happened upon Lawrence Auster’s blog and started reading it again. – Well, one reason is that, I have long maintained that it is important to listen to a variety of views in order to know where you stand. I am going to claim that is the reason.
I would like to begin by pointing out that Mr. Auster actually criticized The Onion for remarks that “show that in the minds of blacks (and I would add, of white liberals), any criticism of Obama (if it comes from white non-liberals) is racist.”
Is this same Onion that I have been reading for the past few years.? (Has it been decades?) Seriously, criticizing The Onion pretty much gives you almost no credibility, unless you criticize The Onion for being a distraction. The Onion? Really? WTF?
What I really wanted to discuss was an entry on Auster’s site that was really about two comments that were sent to him. Because Auster has all comments mailed to him and he posts the comments he approves, I felt it would be easier to comment here. I personally do not believe he would even post my remarks, let alone allow me to have several responses, if necessary. And I believe that dialogue is important to understanding.
Côte d’Ivoire has been in the news lately. Pretty infrequently, but it has still made the news. Many Americans probably do not know where Côte d’Ivoire is located, or what is going on. In a quick and dirty summation: Côte d’Ivoire has had an ongoing civil war. It has been split in two. There was an election in 2010. The election was declared free and fair. The election runoff results were contested. The Civil War escalated. People are dying.
First of all, Côte d’Ivoire has repeatedly requested the world not call them “Ivory Coast” for quite some time. The official name of the country is “Côte d’Ivoire.” (I tried to find previous names of the United States, but it wasn’t really one country prior to the US formation.) But this is much like referring to Italy as “The Roman Empire.” But that’s not what concerns me.
Every time civil strife breaks out in Africa, it is always the same response. It ranges from “these poor people” to “these Black Africans can’t stop killing each other.“ I think this response really shows how deep racism has been ingrained in the American psyche.
Michael Parenti is one of America’s most astute and engaging political analysts. In this talk, he describes how divisions of race and gender have played into — and often against — struggles for economic justice and human rights. He calls on progressive activists to focus on fighting the opprressive power structures that are at the base of wars and economic injustices rather than on differences among ourselves. Parenti also discusses and signs his new book, “The Culture Struggle”. This special PPJC presentation was recorded on April 27, 2006. (89 minutes.)
I commented on September 2nd that I had been to Lawrence Auster’s website and noticed that he had an entry where he was disturbed that in reference to an incident where a woman allegedly had acid thrown in her face, Auster’s complaint was: “The assailant was a stranger and the attack was unprovoked. MSNBC does not mention the race of the assailant until the last sentence of the article.”
It turned out, a few weeks later, that the entire thing was a hoax and no one had thrown acid in the woman’s face. (She threw acid on her own face.) I checked, and Mr. Auster did mention that the act was actually a hoax. Nowhere does he state “this was not perpetrated by a Black woman,” or anything mentioning that this woman had mutilated her own face for attention.
Not to mention, the police reported that they were leery of this story from the beginning. Maybe they were slow to release all of the details of the alleged assailant for fear of vigilante justice.”
These stories have been getting more attention lately, especially as internet spreads news faster than the mass media. It does not help that the flames of racism are being fanned by specific sectors of our population. (more…)
