Trayvon Martin.

Bodkin, let me know when you're tired of playing "gotcha!" Borla got tired of your tedious little game of death by a thousand paper cuts. I am too. I've been consistent with my point, and I'm now officially bored with you trying to nitpick my statements to mean something that they don't.

So I'll just lob the fucking nuclear grenade and say that it's pretty obvious that you're practicing your own version of subtle racism by drawing distinctions between white and black America and focusing on a white-only problem. My point all along has been that all of us - black, white, Indian, Canadian-American, Cuban, Korean, Plan9 - have a problem that we need to solve together. There isn't an us-and-them thing here, man. There's only us. And we keep killing us.

 

When I get tired of "playing Gotcha?" Who are you? Sarah Palin?

Okay. You let me know when you're willing to actually read what I've written and acknowledge the implications of the things you've written without getting butthurt.

And I know the ways in which I'm racist, and you have no clue about them.

I will say that it's pret-ty clear that you don't have any idea of what my perspective actually is and that in hindsight it seems like your participation in the latter part of this discussion was just some sort of self righteous lashey-out dance precursor to martyring yourself out of the conversation. I tried to figure out what you and Borla were saying by asking questions, and you folks just got wounded, which, I mean, grow up.

 

Right, because I'm the one that deliberately misstated what you wrote then tried to ascribe the idea to you.

/sarcasm

I've restated my point in several ways and pointed out the logical implication of your own statements. I've read what you've written and tried to acknowledge where I agree and be respectful in my disagreement. I've answered questions and pointed out where I think we diverge, but you refuse to acknowledge that any point save your own has any validity.

And I know the reasons why I've participated in this thread, and you have no clue about them.

Finally, I find it ironic that if I need to grow up that you're the one telling me to do so. Bitch, please.

 

When did I deliberately misstate your ideas? I asked you about scenarios that I thought were implied in your ideas. You have restated your point, and as far as I can tell, it boils down to "Forget about Trayvon Martin, there's racism everywhere." My qualm is with the part of that sentence before the comma. I have no problem with the idea that the issues surrounding Trayvon Martin don't encapsulate the entirety of racial injustice in the world. I just don't think we should ignore the important issues that are brought up by Trayvon Martin because there is injustice elsewhere too.

Your maturity is very evident here. I agree that we could all take a lesson from you in that regard.

 

People forget that some of us who are white get screwed & treated shitty from blacks who hate us.
Just saying.....this door swings both ways.

 

I think that by and large, empirical evidence suggest that in the aggregate, black people are worse off than white people. Certainly individual experiences can differ substantially from general truths. In other words, people are shitty to each other. That sucks.

However, in the context of this thread, how do you think getting "screwed and treated shitty" compares to being followed, threatened and shot?

 

Good point Bodkin. Keep living in a make believe world.

 

???

 

remember that there is a segment of the population which has imbibed the same sort of "analysis" of the sequence of events that resulted in zimmerman murdering trayvon martin that we were treated to in the acquittal of those upstanding los angeles cops for beating the fuck out of rodney king, who, they said, actually threatened those fine officers of the law by adopting the "bullet posture" as they were beating the fuck out of him. the magic of decontextualization and tendentious argument. aided and abetted by a genuinely shitty piece of law in syg.

 

Right. And some black people are mean to white people sometimes, so it all evens out.

 

I can identify with a desire to move beyond the most petty aspects of the race conversation but honestly, there's no hope of bettering anything without first understanding that violence in america always has and always will be a racial and gendered (!) issue.

 

You certainly can't mean all violence is motivated by these factors, can you?

 

I wouldn't say motivated but contingent upon.

To be clear, there's little sense to made of this mess of a case. However, there's no fair way to discuss it without consideration of the specific racial dynamics that give it meaning. Saying this isn't a black/white thing is saying nothing at all. Just as, going beyond the trial, one can't seriously understand the problem of violence (inner-city and otherwise) without first seeing it as an expression of the patriarchal bullshit this country was founded upon.

 

how was this stand your ground law? the defense attorney clearly explained it in an interview. stand your ground means if someone pulls a knife on you then you have the legal grounds to react with deadly force. he used self defense to defend his client in this case. with martin on top of zimmerman there was no further room for retreat. stand your ground means you dont have to retreat before using deadly force, with self defense deadly force is the last option.

 

My point was that as a minor, Martin wasn't allowed to legally to carry a gun, and had he been able to legally carry a gun, he could have partially initiated a physical altercation with the creepy guy following him, then shot said creepy guy with legal justification. But since he was a child, he couldn't.

 

I have done a lot of arguing with a lot of different people here at TFP on the subject of racism and how it effects many aspects of our society - not just white on black crime. What's more, I have had many, many discussions about the injustices that we perpetrate overseas. And none of them have been easy discussions where I get a lot of back-patting for my views. So I'm sitting here reading through this conversation and I have to say that I really resent the implications being thrown around. Bodkin is one of a handful of people on this site who care about racial issues AT ALL. Let's be really real here. If black on black crime is so important to you, why don't you start a thread about it? Ever? I'm certain that Bodkin would have something to say on the issue, as would I. But this is a thread about Trayvon Martin. It's really kind of shitty to come onto this thread and tell us what we should really be talking about. "If you really cared, you'd be talking about this..." Uhhh, we've only been talking about these things for half a decade or more on this site. Who do you think you're talking to? Really? It's laughable, when you think about it.

 

Fucking thank you.

 

You're welcome. Needed to be said.

 

I really think I either don't understand your point or seriously disagree with it.

I've seen a lot of violence or the aftermath of violence that was two, or more, white guys and over everything for shit like- "you dented my new truck" to ""you shot MY elk" to "you slept with my wife." I went a call once where one construction worker used a nail gun to nail another guy (both white) to a wooden beam because he "just couldn't listen to his shit any more."

There's a lot of violence out there that has nothing to do with race or gender, just people pissed off at one another.