[Beneath The Spin]
White conservatives often criticize Black people for being too quick to allegedly play what they call “the race card.”
On the other hand, many Black people criticize America for not being sensitive enough to the reality that race plays in American life. George Zimmerman’s trial for the murder of Trayvon Martin clearly validates the Black community’s point of view.
Trayvon Martin is dead for no other reason than he was born Black in America. That’s a non-debatable fact. Had he been a White kid, Trayvon would have still been alive today. Yet, even as the jury is out deliberating Zimmerman’s fate, there’s a raging debate going on in America over whether or not Zimmerman was justified in taking this mere child’s life.
Regardless to the eventual verdict in this case, the trial itself clearly demonstrates how the laws of the land are routinely bent against the interest of the Black community, while still managing to maintain the illusion of justice for all.
The bottom line is, Trayvon Martin was guilty of absolutely nothing. He was simply engaged in an activity that millions of kids – good kids – engage in all across this country on a daily basis. He wasn’t casing the neighborhood in preparation to commit a crime, he wasn’t walking down the street smoking dope, nor was he walking the street in search of a potential victim. He was simply an innocent kid on his way home after going to the store to buy a bag of Skittles and a soft drink. So how, in a just society, can he end up dead, and his killer – an armed adult, who stalked him, and outweighed him by forty pounds – can now be claiming self-defense in his murder? The very scenario strains credulity to the limit.
One would think the facts above would be crystal clear to every single person in America – and they would be if the situation was exactly reversed. If Trayvon Martin had been the adult in this scenario, and he stalked and killed a White kid under the exact same circumstances – if he stalked the kid, weighed forty pounds more than his victim, and he was armed while the kid was not – chances are, he would already be on Death Row, for First Degree Murder – that is, assuming he survived to reach the police station.
So while I don’t take the position that all White people are malevolent, nor am I one who looks under every rock for the existence of racism whenever Black people don’t get their way, I do stand firm in the belief that racism is such an historically pervasive part of American life that many Americans – both Black and White – harbor grossly racist attitudes towards Black people that are so deeply ingrained that they don’t even recognize it themselves.
You don’t think so? Watch any hip hop video and count the number beautiful dark-skinned sisters you find. I guarantee you, you’ll find very few – and even when a dark-skinned sister is so strikingly beautiful that they can’t avoid using her, they’ll usually shine a light on her to make her look orange.
So I reiterate, Trayvon Martin is dead due to the gross racism of a grossly racist society – Period.
wattree.blogspot.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
Religious bigotry: It’s not that I hate everyone who doesn’t look, think, and act like me – it’s just that God does.
