Let's talk about Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, and how unbelievably fucked up this all is

Let me start with a quick apology to Reverend. That was dumb and mean of me to shoot back personally to a generalized cry of grief, and I hate dumb and mean.

I have just read a bunch of reasonable white guy articles by reasonable white guy lawyers explaining reasonably and whitely how we cannot blame the courts and now that we all know Zimmerman was disproved to be a racist black folk should all go home and heel quietly and the articles made me want to vomit. I also haven't changed my opinion that the courts may have been the only part of the dreadful Florida government that didn't fail in this case. I haven't seen anyone on this thread say "DON'T FEEL!!" but I have read a couple of "THINKING TOO MUCH IS RACIST" posts, and that is very uncool. Someone in my close circle died a drug related death a few years back, and a very few of us saw it coming and grieved before his death, and others didn't and were shocked and freaking out in his last days. There was tension and fighting among us, and I understand it.

I should also say that when I moved to Europe in 1998, I had been given a legal guarantee of voting rights in the country I now call home by 2004. Last week, the government changed the law (as they have repeatedly over the last decade and a half, always to my detriment) again to deny the possibility of my having any voting rights before 2020. People read my name and hear my accent and judge my intelligence, my trustworthiness, my criminality on that basis alone and react to me accordingly. I thinkI have some clue about what not having white privilege is like.

"heel" was a typo, but a fitting one.

No, thinking too much is not racist.

Shouting down and talking over black people on a subject where black voices are sorely needed is racist.
Putting arguments into the mouths of black people so they can be useful for you to make arguments completely tangential to what they said is racist.
Ascribing ulterior motives to black people who dare question your authority is racist.
Minimizing the reality of the psychological trauma that racialized violence creates for black people is racist.
Prescribing a course for black people to undertake rather than allowing to come to their own conclusions is racist.
Thinking your status as a white American in Europe gives you true understanding of how black people are treated in America is racist.

Good night.

Apology withdrawn.

:)

"Shouting down and talking over black people on a subject where black voices are sorely needed is racist."

I agree. Fuck you if you mean me.

"Putting arguments into the mouths of black people so they can be useful for you to make arguments completely tangential to what they said is racist."

I agree. Fuck you if you mean me.

"Ascribing ulterior motives to black people who dare question your authority is racist."

I agree. Fuck you if you mean me.

"Minimizing the reality of the psychological trauma that racialized violence creates for black people is racist."

I agree. Fuck you with an extra "Christ, you're dumb" if you mean me.

Prescribing a course for black people to undertake rather than allowing to come to their own conclusions is racist.

I agree. Fuck you if you mean me.

Thinking your status as a white American in Europe gives you true understanding of how black people are treated in America is racist.

I agree. But since you clearly mean me here, fuck you. Christ, you're dumb.

TWU, it would be best for all of us, including you, if you just forgot this thread exists and never revisit it.

It would be best for everyone if ILX didn't exist, yet here we are.

ILX is often an enlightening and beneficial community, and then things like you participating in this thread happen.

I mean the swift wrath of the dogpile of the sensitive majority is surely coming, so I won't have to forget it -- but I think I can draw a distinction between outcries of well-earned grief and rage and specific accusations of me being a racist. And if someone would like to show me that the latter is not what I just got a from the Rev, I'm all fucking ears.

TWU, rev was looking for a space wherein which to grieve over this verdict - and earlier in the thread, he had already decided that this was not it, and vented a little about it. you thought he came after you personally, and decided that you had to respond. okay - a misstep! you later apologized. but it was very important for you to show to everybody in your apology that you didn't have racist intentions, that you, a white american living among white people in europe, understand what it's like to be a black person living in america. okay...? so the rev came back, and called you out on it. you know, you don't have to respond to everything that is directed at you on the internet. you are entitled to post a reply if you'd like, but you are also entitled to walk away. you sound like you are very confident in your position. if that's so, then maybe you can let your words in this thread stand alone for everybody to judge, instead of deafening us with invective.

"but it was very important for you to show to everybody in your apology that you didn't have racist intentions, that you, a white american living among white people in europe, understand what it's like to be a black person living in america."

Horseshit. It is very important to me to respond to deliberate distortions of what I have actually said, and this is one. Words have fucking meanings and the meanings of words are fucking important. I said I have some idea what it is to like not to have White privilege because of my status in Austrian society, and I meant exactly that. I am denied certain legal and societal privileges in the country where I live because of where I was born. I did not say I understood what it is to be Black in America, and wouldn't, and fuck you if you say I did or would. I was not saying "I'm not a racist!" because that would have been irrelevant and is one of those rare sentences that becomes a lie the moment you utter it; I was saying that as I do not live in a country where I am protected by white privilege, it is not purely theoretical for me to have some idea of what it is like to be the subject of societal and legal scrutiny different from what people who enjoy white privilege can imagine. I really don't want to put my business out into the world, but my discussion of comparative law systems is not come from a theoretical basis and is not the blabla of a board or other attorney.

thank you for your rebuttal, counselor. you may rest.

I do not recognize your authority.

If folks want to distort my arguments and call me a racist on this thread, I will continue to respond to them on this thread until the inevitable banning. If folks want to call me a racist and distort my arguments and not have me react to it on this thread, I invite them to send me an e-mail.

i just spent a few minutes searching for a story i read about a white american living in berlin unprotected by white privilege and being stalked and killed by a racist neighborhood watch guy and then the dude who shot him getting let off because of a legal system stacked against a white american ever getting justice and fucked up gun laws that have resulted in lots of white americans in germany getting murdered and living in a climate of complete fear of authority and their neighbors...

http://cnn.com/shitneverhappened-homie-get-the-fuck-off-this-thread.html

Boy, you sure showed me the ridiculousness of something I never said, fuckhead. I will continue to never have said that, having now seen the absurdity of the argument I never made.

hard as it may seem maybe this is a thread where your getting the final word isn't U&K? i would certainly prefer you to stop posting.

I said I have some idea what it is to like not to have White privilege because of my status in Austrian society...

second class vol-au-vents

Put it in italics forever and it still won't say that I know what it is to be black or that I am Trayvon or whatever it is you want me to have said to disqualify me from having an opinion that is informed by my white racism.

"hard as it may seem maybe this is a thread where your getting the final word isn't U&K?"

I understand that my opinion is not welcome on this thread, and I will only ever again post on I Love Everything to respond to deliberate distortions of what I have said here or accusations that I am a racist. So far, that's all I've been posting for hours.

Maybe it's timely to link to this http://gawker.com/we-are-not-trayvon-martin-campaign-turns-protest-meme-791571082

ok, i consider rev a bro and he is understandably upset at the moment, but i want to put in for TWU here, because i think everything he's said has been level-headed, thoughtful, and devoid of malice. anyone criticizing his conduct in this thread is seriously off-base

he and others in this thread have been defensive and hostile beyond all reason. i suggest folks look up the privilege as a meme thread and check it.

Ayesha A. Siddiqi ‏@pushinghoops 4h
white ppl I kno white supremacy has meant always being the center of attn but try not 2 lose it when a conversation isnt about yr experience

i suggest folks look up the privilege as a meme thread and check it.

― stefon taylor swiftboat (s.clover), Tuesday, July 16, 2013 5:02 AM (31 minutes ago)

special shout-out to those level-headed, thoughtful and devoid of compassion

ok, i consider rev a bro and he is understandably upset at the moment, but i want to put in for TWU here, because i think everything he's said has been level-headed, thoughtful, and devoid of malice. anyone criticizing his conduct in this thread is seriously off-base

― k3vin k., Tuesday, 16 July 2013 12:54 (57 minutes ago)

yeah after reading his posts one is (from an auslander perspective) conceivably better informed about american criminal justice than beforehand, which is a rarity amidst the amateur hackwork itt. he can defend himself from mischaracterizations and doesn't need the appeal to experience to verify his good faith as a nondelusional white person. and despite the usual ilx alighting upon any racial gaucheness, one can fairly obviously see that he is making no comparison in degree in affirming the existence of some disenfranchisement.

ok, i consider rev a bro and he is understandably upset at the moment, but i want to put in for TWU here, because i think everything he's said has been level-headed, thoughtful, and devoid of malice. anyone criticizing his conduct in this thread is seriously off-base

OTM

"Fuck you with an extra "Christ, you're dumb" if you mean me"
"you are a dummy and a dupe and a lot of prosecutors can't wait to shake your hand as they help you fuck yourself"

Yep, level-headed, thoughtful and devoid of malice! no "amateur hackwork" here, and boy can he ever "defend himself from mischaracterizations".

keeping it posi, bringing that level-headed, thoughtful vibe. props and love all around.

no white privilege for non-austrians in austria either. its always been about "austria for austrians" and "austria first" for illustrious white ppl born in austria. can't think of any exceptions there.

Jesus Christ shut up everyone

What fucking good is any of this

Having said that, who else is seriously considering getting a gun now?

sorry -- i'm gonna ignore the meta infighting here and say something else. (aside - Rev, hugs from me to you. It's hard to see someone in that kind of pain.)

In the wake of all of this, i've been thinking a lot about this thing I wrote in March of 2000, when i was living in NC and working for a local paper. My dad invited me to go on an anniversary march in Selma, and I was like sure, I'll go. I took some pictures, and the words and pictures in the story below are all mine. I removed my name because it's my name. I've been a little embarrassed about how earnest I got toward the end, the preachy tone of my last paragraph, but fuck it. I thought then, have thought my whole life, and will continue to think that activism is a required part of civic duty.

My dad had the article photocopied, took the copy to John Lewis to have him sign it, and then framed it and gave it to me as a gift. It has been sitting around in storage for a long time, but i think I'll hang it up to get me psyched up for the next academic year.

here it is, i'm just posting it as a reminder that this is a conversation we apparently still need to be having.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7362/9298340525_196e109051.jpg

oh shit! wrong link! mod please remove!!

i hope this is the right one
http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5465/9298438043_553201b44f.jpg

Hey, a deliberate mischaracterization! It's like the bat signal for me!

1. That first quote was directly for the Rev after I had directly been accused of racism by him, and you know that. It was not entirely clear to me that he was accusing me also of "(m)inimizing the reality of the psychological trauma that racialized violence creates for black people", an absolutely unspeakable accusation and one based on a complete misunderstanding of anything I have ever written on ILX (let alone this fucking thread), so I made my response conditional.

2. As you well fucking know, that second response was at aimed at no person in particular but at a line of argument that you, and not you alone, were picking up. Here is the whole sentence, which I stand by except for the lousy late night grammar (which I have corrected in brackets): "A racist legislature, racist police and racist prosecutors conspire to set Zimmerman free, and you think people who aren't calling for the destruction of one of the few judicial systems in the world (in which a defendant has) even a ghost of a chance of avoiding or escaping an unjust conviction are the ones going 'ho-hum, omelettes and eggs', then you are a dummy and a dupe and a lot of prosecutors can't wait to shake your hand as they help you fuck yourself."

x-post: as to Austria: wow, are you ever dumb. (That was a direct personal attack brought on by your nearly comical ignorance of the political situation in the country that brought the world the Nazi Fucking Party.)

itt: a safe space for touchy defensive people

don't forget the pseudoradical cryptofascists like yrself now clove

rumbled!

though that's more in this board i guess, maybe you showed some levity on a picket fences thread once who knows

clove which part of the bill of rights do you hope gets repealed first, 'when the revolution comes'? or would you just scrap all of it?

you seem especially fond of habeas dorkus, i suppose?

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6pvyuex011rwgdwdo1_500.jpg

I was at this gathering yesterday and found Rev. Barber's words profoundly moving and I thought I would share them here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQAj6IxBh78

Why bother?

that's what i was wondering myself

just forget my article and pictures and sincerity
i'm sorry i brought it up
not sorry like "it's my fault", but sorry like "i regret sharing this piece of my life experience here"

I just wanted to defuse something that was about to get uglier but that was probably a bad idea.

strike "probably"