Backing Away Slowly...
Mar. 29th, 2012 05:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shipperxThe Trayvon Martin case has been both heartbreaking and infuriating. Ultimately, it boils down to the fact that a boy was killed for going to the store to buy Skittles, wearing a hoodie, for a culture infatuated with guns, and because of racist stereotypes (and mindsets). This can't be divorced from racism because when listening to people argue about this case, the underlying racial problems are obvious when 'somehow' Trayvon is being indicted for the POSSIBILITY that he MAY have tried to defend himself in the 1 minute gap between the phone call and his being killed... indicted by the same people 'defending' Zimmerman by arguing that Zimmerman was 'just defending himself' and therefore justified for following Martin and--according to the phone call--confronting Martin. Why is it that Zimmerman's defenders see no contradiction in their indicting a slaughtered boy for possibly/maybe defending himself from the guy who had just stalked him on a dark, rainy street with their saying that Zimmerman is 'justified' for feeling 'threatened' after he stalked the boy and brought about a confrontation while Zimmerman was armed?!.
That's where bias is very most definitely on full display.
Putting aside the ABC released video footage of Zimmerman in the police station (where he doesn't appear to have any injuries that match the desciption he and his defenders have given) my jaw dropped at Zimmerman's father's statement:
For the record the President said:
...which is the truth! It's called empathy.
Trayvon Martin was just a boy. He was someone's beloved son and brother. His life was violently ended and his parents left grieving. Expressing empathy for a child and his parents in no way whatsoever qualifies as 'hate. That it's interpreted as such says a hell of a lot more about the person reading his statement that way than the President showing empathy for the grieved in a human tragedy.
...and Zimmerman Sr. calls the President's statement hateful? WTF? Seriously, WTF.
That's where bias is very most definitely on full display.
Putting aside the ABC released video footage of Zimmerman in the police station (where he doesn't appear to have any injuries that match the desciption he and his defenders have given) my jaw dropped at Zimmerman's father's statement:
I never foresaw so much hate coming from the president, .
For the record the President said:
"If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon Martin"
...which is the truth! It's called empathy.
Trayvon Martin was just a boy. He was someone's beloved son and brother. His life was violently ended and his parents left grieving. Expressing empathy for a child and his parents in no way whatsoever qualifies as 'hate. That it's interpreted as such says a hell of a lot more about the person reading his statement that way than the President showing empathy for the grieved in a human tragedy.
...and Zimmerman Sr. calls the President's statement hateful? WTF? Seriously, WTF.
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Date: 2012-03-29 03:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 03:21 pm (UTC)This whole thing breaks my heart. It also makes me crazy that we don't have reasonable gun control laws in this country.
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Date: 2012-03-29 03:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 03:39 pm (UTC)Because that's particularly plausible to come from an unarmed boy who had been talking to his girlfriend about being frightened and who was 100lbs lighter than the guy who had been stalking him??!
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Date: 2012-03-29 03:56 pm (UTC)The fact Zimmerman has been charged with NOTHING appalls me more every day.
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Date: 2012-03-29 04:01 pm (UTC)And the sad fact is the 'investigation' (there was no investigation), the lack of gathering evidence at the time, and what is increasingly looking at some 'good ol' boy' reaction, means the case has already been blown even if they were to finally arrest or indict.
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Date: 2012-03-29 03:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 03:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 03:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 03:45 pm (UTC)Admittedly, I live in a neighborhood that is predominantly white (in a county that is excessively white). Every morning I pass a young teen African American boy who lives up the street waiting for the school bus. The Trayvon Martin case has made me think what if this were him and if it were my neighborhood?
It's saddening and sickening and tragic.
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Date: 2012-03-29 03:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-30 02:48 am (UTC)He claims that a 17 year old kid who had been on his phone with his girlfriend saying how frightened he was ONE MINUTE before he was killed (according to phone records and the 911 call where you can hear the shot) would actually say "you're gonna die" (the kid was unarmed!), would use the term "homie" (he was seventeen. He didn't live through the 1980s or early 1990s. Plus, 'homies' were people wasn't a term for strangers!) Or after he was shot and killed (in the space of a minute) would've said "you got me" like an old Western. Not to mention, the police vid shows Zimmerman Jr. with no visible blood on him. Had Zimmerman Jr. shot Martin while Martin was on top of him how would there not have been blood splatter? And how would he have wound up face down in the grass?
The account hits the "bullshit!" meter in several aspects.
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Date: 2012-03-29 03:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-30 02:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 04:15 pm (UTC)AS Fox News is now trying to disprove "scientifically" that "Obama's son would NOT look like Trayvon" (yes, they're taking the President's metaphorical comment LITERALLY), I'm officially completely disgusted by everyone in this country.
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Date: 2012-03-29 04:37 pm (UTC)Good grief, they have NO SHAME. NO SHAME AT ALL!
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Date: 2012-03-30 04:14 am (UTC)You have got to be kidding me...
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Date: 2012-03-30 02:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 04:32 pm (UTC)I cannot even put into words how maddening my frustration and anger has become. What happened is as plain as day, with witnesses (the girlfriend DeeDee and the neighbor Cutcher) who aide the case for the victim Trayvon. I hate how they're trying to slander him through the mud, and comments like, "Young black and Hispanic males shouldn't wear hoodies" coming from the Conservative media/dumbass Fox News. I am repulsed, and I feel ill.
This boy's justice is long over due.
http://video.msnbc.msn.com/martin-bashir/46884841
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Date: 2012-03-30 02:54 am (UTC)And there's simply no way that the Zimmerman's elaborate account of the confrontation can align with the logistics of the situation considering there was only a few minute gap between when Zimmerman got off the phone with 9-1-1, and when you can hear one of the witnesses 9-1-1 calls saying that she'd heard the gun shot. And coordinating with Dee Dee's phone records there was only a single minute of time from when she lost contact and when poor Trayvon was killed. One minute. And looking at what they've shown on Google map, given the distance from the road, it's really hard to buy that there was time for any significant confrontation to have happened in the 3-minute gap from when Zimmerman broke off with 911 and when Martin was murdered.
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Date: 2012-03-29 04:34 pm (UTC)Godfuckingdamnit.
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Date: 2012-03-30 02:57 am (UTC)Listening to people now force it into a discussion of how Trayvon Martin was behaving, whether he fought back, etc. Good grief, he was an UNARMED KID who was frightened, being followed, and just trying to make it home!
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Date: 2012-03-30 01:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-30 01:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 04:54 pm (UTC)SERIOUSLY. So Trayvon didn't have a right to stand his grown, but Zimmerman did? I cannot with these people.
Ugh. Sometimes I hate the world.
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Date: 2012-03-30 02:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 05:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-30 02:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 06:04 pm (UTC)So......Travon can't defend himself from a man, following him in the dark of night, a 17 year old boy, who, despite any macho attitude, was probably scared shiltless of being followed by a man twice to 3 times his size, is not allowed to defend himself, by throwing a punch, yet it OK for Zimmerman to defend himself WITH A GUN....agains a punch in the nose........by a 17 yearl old boy..carrying iced tea and skittles?!?! OH my friggin' GOD!!!!!!! Why on earth is there even anything in questions?
So...if my 15 year old daughter, is being followed by another person, even say a woman much older and armed, feels threatened, adn is confronted.....she is not allowed to defend herself in case she GETS SHOT?!?!?!?!
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Date: 2012-03-30 03:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-30 01:47 am (UTC)When anything else proves to be dangerous, it is either removed from the market, controlled by laws, or fixed so it is safer. Not so guns. And whenever someone DOES manage to push through a gun safety law, it is gutted and reformed and reworded so as to be fundamentally toothless.
Hence laws like Florida's "stand your ground" law. Arizona's concealed carry in BARS. Guns on college campuses.
I am a gun owner. I know how to use a gun. I know what it is for (killing things). I would not object in the slightest if there were LAWS surrounding my owning and usage of a gun, and I think guns should be regulated and licensed just like that other dangerous weapon, the automobile.
But as long as the NRA can wrap itself in the 2nd Amendment, men will get away with murdering little boys by saying "it was self defense."
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Date: 2012-03-30 02:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-30 02:57 am (UTC)But it is somewhat comforting to know there are fewer of them (although possibly not to the families of Trayvon... or Gabby Giffords... or...).
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Date: 2012-03-30 03:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-30 04:23 am (UTC)The absurdity just keeps on coming.
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Date: 2012-03-30 02:03 pm (UTC)