Trayvon Martin.

If my ideological nonsense is other than your ideological nonsense, must you conclude that it is wrong?

Yeah, I get the racism thing. I don't really wanna get into that. Loaded argument of ideology vs. What Is.

I don't apologize for the racism of other people. Or classism or sexism or any other ancient dipshititry.

And I don't think anybody should. I really don't feel like My People did something against His People.

Of all the things I identify with--world traveler, target shooting enthusiast, military veteran--white ain't one.

I know that isn't the case for minority groups that have been subjected to so much bullshit for centuries.

Anyway, some idiot with a light complexion shot a kid with a dark complexion. It's a damn Greek tragedy.

All us good people strive to be the change we want to see in the world. But we're stuck with What It Is.

Zimmerman did what he did. The courts did what they did. It doesn't always work out the way we want.

Was it racism? Or was it just a set of circumstances where Dude A committed Action X and Dude B got killed?

The criminal justice system is an adversarial process. Somebody wins, somebody loses. It's no time machine.

Everything sucks. Racism sucks. Guns suck. White people suck. Florida sucks. Where are we going here?

...

I am white and I don't feel some compunction about his death. I don't really care if you respect me or not.

I feel like the trial wasn't done right, that Zimmerman should have done some time. We're beyond that now.

...

Whew, gotta lighten this up! A few mandatory poor taste stereotype joke videos:

White Cops on Black Males


Horny Old Asian Guys


Sexually Promiscuous White Cougar Moms


Flamboyant Homosexuals / Transexuals


Homeless People

 

Um, we're not beyond that now. Unless you find history to be a sequence of ok things.
I suspect you don't and you just don't want other things you've seen to be complicated by our relative good tidings. Which I totally get. Don't even have to explain that to me.
At the same time, I believe very, very strongly that people shouldn't give up on their ideals. They should voice them, Loudly, Not because so many people oppose them but because so many people just don't give a shit.

 

What are we even talking about anymore? It seemed as if you wanted to drag me into the thorny draw that is White Guys Scared of Black Guys (TM) and now there are so many pronouns that I've lost focus.

Probably because it's 0400.

 

Probably because you're not prepared to talk about this without trademarks. Which I find really odd and unfortunate. I don't get it.

 

I'll play your game: How am I supposed to approach this? I'm not very good at doing the hallowed tail-between-my-legs thing.

Instead of talking about my particular style of conversation and how odd and unfortunate I am, let's talk about the thread topic.

If you want sympathy for your particular flavor of feelings, I'd imagine FaceySpacey would be a better sounding board than TFP.

 

SO and I talked about this case 2-3 days ago.

We are fascinated how the death of a black teenager became such an international news sensation. Also fascinated by just how badly the prosecution managed their case against Zimmerman.

Then again, we are also fascinated by how individual cases in general (e.g. Casy Anthony, Amanda Knox, etc) become such huge international news headlines. While yesterday's murder of dozens of innocent Iraqi civilians - leading lives with hopes, dreams, aspirations not any less worth than the individuals named - is a mere footnote.

Probably because it doesn't happen in your direct neighbourhood, so you don't get offended.

First World priorities, fuck yeah.

---

To put it simply: In my opinion Trayvon Martin was a mildly interesting case, blown way out of proportion by local and national minority groups for some national/political attention. Next, please.

 

Remixer,

Did a white person (or somebody that looks like a white person) kill them? If not, doesn't count.

/thread

 

Truth is, I get upset by all the murders. I don't see how attention to one of them is indicative of not caring about the others. There are obvious mitigating factors to this one in particular that have incited a lot of people. That's because it is significant...and threatening to people. On a lot of levels. It is about racism, of course it is about racism, which is still a very big problem for America...and it will persist in being a problem (and perhaps even get worse) as the white majority continues to dwindle. But it is also about guns and the obsession that a relative few of us have with carrying them around all the time and whether that predisposes them to the likelihood of lethal violence. I don't see the benefit of minimizing those things.

 

Who is the 'you' here? Are you claiming that no one in the US cares when Iraqi people die? Did you know that a fair number of people in the US have been positively livid about the Iraq war for over a decade? The "if you really cared about X, then you'd show it by caring about Y" game is fucking tiring when the person playing can't be bothered to show that people don't already care about X and Y.

And I don't know about you, but I'm fully capable of multitasking when it comes to assigning my bottomless rations of internal rage to current events. I suspect most people are. And I can think of no one who I know who feels passionate about Trayvon Martin who isn't also concerned with the lives that have been lost in conjunction with the US' various extra curricular activities around the globe.

Plus, I think you're confusing Americans with American media, which, please don't. The media in the US is run by a handful of giant corporations who exercise control over the things that will be covered by their 'journalists'. Hence one of the best newspapers in the US is the Guardian, which isn't even a US paper. Your implication seems to be that people who care about Martin are jerks because the US media doesn't give the same attention to Iraqi deaths that it does to the vigilante deaths of unarmed black teenagers. Unfortunately, the US media *does* tend to ignore the deaths of black teenagers quite regularly, and the Martin case is kind of an anomaly in this regard.

The idea that only minority groups cared about Trayvon Martin might make you feel nice in a "when are those silly minorities going to realize how good they have it" kind of way, but has no basis in fact. There are a lot of white people who don't like the idea that that children deserve to be shot for looking suspicious, especially when "looking suspicious" for some people means "having dark skin". And the first person to respond with the phrase "White Guilt" gets a "Shut the fuck up you listen to too much Rush Limbaugh try reading a fucking book once in a while" cookie.

 

So you're saying we should address black on black crime before we express widespread public disapproval of the vigilante killing of an unarmed teenager or laws that make murder legal in the context of vigilantism? Do you think that sometimes getting upset at the outliers might help motivate people to care about the bulk of the distribution?

Do you have a source for those stats?

 

Here's my impression of your position: we shouldn't express public outrage about the killing of unarmed teenagers because black on black crime is high. Is this what you're saying?

What's the racial composition for murdered unarmed teenagers?

Do you think we should ignore prostate cancer because lung cancer takes up a larger share of overall mortality? I'm trying to understand the reasoning here.

 

For me, I think it's best expressed by "where's your outrage for Sterling Brown?" First person to identify him without Google/any search engine wins the internet.





He's a 5-year old boy that was shot in his bed in Chicago. His mom was killed too.

My point is that perhaps the outrage energy is best spent trying to solve problems that are much more likely to kill young black men and boys. There's a problem with White America; there's a bigger problem with Black America, though, and it's one that White America should be focusing on helping to solve. And if you get White America behind trying to fix the bigger problem, I think situations like Trayvon Martin go away pretty quickly.

 

It's difficult at times but I think civil debates of the issues is not only important but sadly missing in action all too often. All we get on the talking boxes we all own is shouting and hyperbole. Disagreeing is fine, seeing the same issue in a different light or from a different angle is fine. Shouting out the other voices and opinions so someone can claim "I'm right and you're freaking a moron" usually gets us nowhere and it seems rather obvious to me the US has some major issues that need to be addressed.

I'm willing to listen to almost anyone able to express their side with a reasonable amount of logic and in a civil tone.

Hopefully the country can work through this and learn from it, I know it's a big wish but a guy can dream. If nothing else maybe we can make progress without people being beat to death while they march over bridges or bomb little girls attending Sunday school classes in their church's basement.
--- merged: Jul 17, 2013 at 12:26 PM ---

I'll be the first to admit I had no idea who these people were or what happened to them. Not only that but until very recently I had no idea the amount of violence occurring in Chicago or Detroit. One article I read this morning (or last night?) stated there's been 700 fatalities due to violence in Chicago alone since T. Martin was shot and killed. I'd heard violence was on the rise and it was an issue but the number seems staggering to me. I can't imagine Detroit is much if any better. For me these crimes and deaths are just as important as young Mr. Martin. I think we need to devote resources and energy into stopping future deaths and holding those responsible accountable. But I think the issues in Florida also need attention. I think as a nation we have the ability to focus on violent crime in more then one location at a time. The question I think is do we have the will?

Maybe what we need to do is call it a "war." It's closer to war then some of the other things we call wars. So instead of the "war on drugs" or the "war on illegal immigration" we could have the "war on violence." America seems to need a war on something so give them that war to fight.

 

I guess one concern would be that there are a lot of people who only seem to care about black on black crime when it can be used to dismiss concerns about other kinds of racially tinged violence.
--- merged: Jul 17, 2013 at 12:41 PM ---

I just wanted to be sure I understood your position. Are you aware of instances where paying attention to outliers has revealed significant underlying problems, that once addressed, improve situations for the majority? Do you deny that this is possible? Do you think that if we shed light on the types of racial dynamics which brought about Martin's killing, we might be able to address the larger societal issues that contribute to black on black crime?

I agree. If you can't handle people requesting that you clarify your perspective, then you should probably avoid discussions about things.

 

Perhaps. But I live in a city that's currently the murder capital of the US, and almost all of our old gun laws are about to get thrown out the window. Every single day for the past month or more, I've opened the paper to see a body count from the night before posted on either the front page or within the first 5 pages (sometimes other events push it deeper, which is not surprising). Some of the local media are reporting on it. There's an ongoing drug war between the Latin Kings, who are taking over a lot of the cocaine trade, and the black gangs who have traditionally controlled that trade, which explains some of the violence.

I don't disagree that racially tinged violence is a problem - it is, and it needs to be addressed at some point. But even if that is suddenly magically solved, I'm still reading about body counts every morning.