Impotent Sauce
GeoffP said:
Yet almost alone among all the posters on this thread, you have concerned yourself with the social and racial aspects of violent crime in general, rather than the facts of the case.
Oh, come on, dude. Even by your limp standards, that was pretty flaccid.
(1) In response to specific issues pertaining to
this crime in specific, you base your inquiry on the statement that I have concerned myself with the social and racial aspects of violent crime in general
rather than the facts of the case.
— Very well. I would at this time ask you to explain how the question of George Zimmerman's surrogates attributing conflicting stories to George Zimmerman himself is concerning myself with violent crime in general. This is important, insofar as I'm perfectly willing to explore the pretense, but you're going to need to do better than that.
(2) Almost alone among all posters in this thread? Okay, are you willing to affirmatively propose that what happened in Florida has absolutely nothing to do with social and racial aspects of crime in general? You know, like the current argument in favor of killing black people that makes their very skin color cause for mortal fear? Seriously:
Why is a black male in a hooded sweatshirt inherently threatening? The answer is, "Because he's black." Danger is in the eye of the beholder.
You feel that certain that the fault lies exclusively with Zimmerman, the would-be white-Hispanic agent of racial destruction?
All George Zimmerman had to do in his imagined "Neighborhood Watch" role is act like a proper Neighborhood Watchman. All he had to do was respect the instruction given him by emergency response officials. All he had to do was not go out of his way to deliberately pursue a conflict in order to kill a fucking coon that always gets away with whatever they always get away with in order to gun him down.
Just like I noted of Joe Horn in Texas, a case that wasn't so fraught with racism, it is an absolutely absurd proposition that the law should entitle someone to deliberately put himself in danger with the intention of killing someone in self defense.
When you strip out everything else from the Zimmerman case, that remains. And, yes, in Florida, as with other states, racial issues come into it because they must; self-defense and SYG laws, in effect, greatly favor whites over nonwhites.
And when we look at what has come since, well, I would think it's quite clear. If you somehow believe Zimmerman's defense isn't a con job exploiting racial issues in society, please listen to the press conference from after the trial when defense attorney Mark O'Mara actually argued explicitly about the injustice of Zimmerman having to answer the charges:
If George Zimmerman was black, he never would have been arrested.
Given the statistical reality, that claim is such excrement that one really does wonder what the hell O'Mara was thinking. He essentially tipped the entire playbook. George Zimmerman could defy instruction from emergency responders, pursue a confrontation, and kill someone; this starts with the notion that a black male in a sweatshirt is scary and suspicious.
Yes, the fault lies exclusively with this known liar, and the racism both general and institutional in Florida. As I've noted, the law and judicial system in Florida worked exactly as they're supposed to. What George Zimmerman did—pursuing a confrontation on the grounds that a black male in a sweatshirt is suspicious—in order to kill that person in "self defense" is
exactly what these laws are for.
And as I've noted repeatedly, we get another test of this principle soon. If Dunn walks, the question is answered affirmatively.
And I would note that while there is always conflicting evidence in such cases, watching
Negro Hunting Season SYG advocates and other Zimmerman supporters twist themselves into knots trying to rephrase the "conflicting evidence" and change history in order to find some justification for "the would-be white-Hispanic agent of racial destruction".
It's true, though, that the question of white privilege around George Zimmerman is not one that can be understood; that is, had he looked the same, but been named Jorge Diaz, for instance, would the outcome have been the same? We cannot know.
However, to take an
example from this thread, I must confess that I find it odd to consider that one of our neighbors has reached his purported age without ever having encountered the longstanding classifications of white- and nonwhite-Hispanic. It's a census ethnic classification, just like "white American". And, in truth, I have a very acute memory of the first time the issue occurred to me, in a doctor's office in Allenmore, Tacoma, Washington, when I was five, watching my mother fill out patient intake paperwork on my behalf. True, that occurred in the context of a five year-old's limited capacity for juxtaposition, but I've been aware that this classification exists for thirty-five years; I have encountered it
many times on paperwork, so many that I now answer race/ethnicity questions on any paperwork, government or otherwise, by checking "Other" and offering no clarification in the blank space.
It's one of those things that is so
normal in American society that, while I might shrug it off if someone purporting to be fifteen years old says,
"And then we had the "white-hispanic" that the media came up with, which honestly, i had never heard of before."
It's hardly a new classification, though uninformed people are treating it as such.
The media didn’t coin the term “white Hispanic.” It’s been around for quite a long time -- it just usually isn’t used to describe people like Zimmerman.
In the words of Teresa Puente, writing for Chicago Now, “To be blunt, Zimmerman's skin tone is the same as mine, a medium brown.”
The confusion over Zimmerman’s race and CNN’s clumsy terminology owes to the continued misunderstanding of Latino ethnicity. It has baffled the Census Bureau. It has tripped up the FBI. And now it has much of the media grasping for the proper way to describe the man being tried for what many view as killing in which racial prejudice may have played a role.
But it’s really not that hard. Latinos are a multi-racial ethnicity. What we have in common is Latin American or Hispanic birth or heritage. We can be white, black, mestizo, mulato, or indigenous and still count as Latino. In fact, people of Middle Eastern or Asian descent can count as Latino if they set down roots in the region! (We submit Shakira and Alberto Fujimori as exhibits A and B.) Confusing? It shouldn’t be. Just remember the “of Latin American or Hispanic birth or heritage” part.
The term “white Hispanic” refers to someone who is phenotypically white (of European blood), but is of Latin American or heritage. There’s lots of people who fit the description out there. Take, for example, Ted Cruz, who is super white, but Latino nonetheless:
Zimmerman is probably not one of them. Race is not a science. In fact, there’s no genetic foundation for it at all. It’s a social convention.
But within the context of that social convention, white refers to skin color. Zimmerman, like most Latinos, is likely of racially mixed heritage -- what in most Latin American countries would be described as “mestizo.”
The United States, with its comparatively rigid ideas about race and refusal to acknowledge racial mixing, does not have a word in popular use to describe it. (That’s also probably the reason why 18 million Latinos selected the “some other race” category on their Census form.) So it’s not surprising that CNN’s attempt to describe a non-white person as a “white Hispanic” grates on the ears of practically everyone across the political spectrum.
(Huffington Post)
The question of whether the white-Hispanic designation is appropriate or relevant is certainly a valid discussion in our ever-evolving society. But the proposition that this is some new, made-up media term? That's just silly.
I find our neighbor's incorrect assertion extraordinary nonetheless because it puzzles me how one can claim such an age in our society and never encounter this particular term, which has long been included in demographic data requests (usually optional) in both public and private sectors.
And that sort of thing reminds that, while we can certainly strip away the racial issues in order to examine the fact that George Zimmerman defied instruction from emergency responders in order to pursue a confrontation in which he allegedly found himself needing to defend himself with lethal force, those questions of presupposition and outlook pertaining to race and ethnicity remain unanswered.
In the end, what I can offer as a response for your bizarre inquiry is simple enough:
Had George Zimmerman behaved as he should have, and not deliberately defied instruction from emergency response in order to deliberately pursue a confrontation that ended up with the alleged necessity of killing someone, Trayvon Martin would be alive, and the question of Zimmerman's arrest and trial would never have come up.
This is at the core. Zimmerman wanted a confrontation. He got one. And then he killed in "self-defense". But that's what these SYG laws are for, to encourage homicide. And
we see how these laws are enforced.
There comes a point at which the racial and ethnic issues force their way into the discussion. We can certainly ignore them, but the only "good" that comes from doing so is that this sort of proactive "self-defense", in which people deliberately put themselves in some circumstance with dangerous appearances in order to kill another person, will continue to occur.
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Notes:
The Huffington Post. "CNN's ‘White Hispanic' Label For George Zimmerman Draws Fire". July 12, 2013. HuffingtonPost.com. July 20, 2013. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/12/cnn-white-hispanic_n_3588744.html