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

much needed

Notable that the bell hooks excerpt is from 2001.

"The result was a quintessentially American tragedy — the death of a young man understandably suspected because he was black and tragically dead for the same reason."

this is a disgusting sentence

otm

i wrote a paragraph about it, but couldn't post it because it was not fit for publication.

Aside... Thomas Frank's What's The Matter With Kansas also great at detailing the history of bait-and-switch conservatism.

oh jfc:

You might have thought the Trayvon Martin case was about race—that George Zimmerman thought the unarmed teenager was a criminal because he was black. Today, in certain corners of the Internet, you are wrong. It's Martin who was the true bigot. As Rush Limbaugh told listeners Tuesday, "Zimmerman got beat up because Trayvon thought he was gay."

In an interview with CNN's Piers Morgan on Monday night, Rachel Jeantel said she told Martin to run from George Zimmerman because he might be a rapist, during their phone call in the last minutes of Martin's life. "For every boy or every man who’s not that kind of way, seeing a grown man following them, would they be creeped out?" she said. This is not new. When Jeantel said the same thing in court in June, it didn't make much news—people were focused on her "creepy-ass cracker" description of Zimmerman instead of the rape angle. But now, it's the main story on the Drudge Report. Limbaugh spent a good part of his radio show talking about it. Lots of conservative blogs picked it up.

from here

just so tired of this stuff gaining actual, real traction

yeah a righty friend threw that at me today and i was dumbfounded

i'm not sure he's a friend after all this shit

oh jesus

Good Lord.

GOod lord.

And by that logic if a woman was being stalked/harrased by a man, turned and said STOP FOLLOWING ME and say, punched/kneed him in groin to get away, ITS STILL OK TO SHOOT HER DEAD I mean what the FUCK, Limbaugh.

Yeah, OTM. Even if you're willing to buy the premise that TM thought GZ was a gay rapist, punching someone because you think he is going to rape you is not the same as beating someone up just for being gay. (And yeah, does Limbaugh now advocate gay men using deadly force to protect themselves from homophobic attacks?)

feel like every time I feel like this situation won't get any uglier...

fuck civility - anybody who shares that link for reasons other than "fuck this guy" deserves infinite dick punches. I'd almost respect these assholes more if they would just own up to their goddamn racism instead of their disingenuous pretending that they're just reviewing facts objectively and "this is what they arrived at".

jfc

http://www.latinorebels.com/2013/07/16/the-travyon-martin-la-protest-video-the-mainstream-media-wont-show-you/?fb_source=pubv1

yep

they took a fucking freeway. big up.

speaking of "reviewing facts objectively"......(xposts)

one of the things i've been seeing a lot of in the past couple of days is the use of "race" as a euphemism for "racism", particularly by members of the mainstream media (e.g., "the extent to which race played a role in the Zimmerman affair is a matter of great controversy...."). the conversation becomes so abstract and sanitized, and the concept so multi-directional. abstractions like these greatly facilitate the transformation of atrocities into mere news items and "issues" to be considered, and perhaps to some extent "addressed". (hell, at times "racism" itself feels like a cop-out, when what's being talked about is murderous hatred and fear of black people on the one hand, and fierce, blinding, refusal to let go of white privilege, on the other).

Anyone read that questlove piece everyone's wetting themselves over? Kind of felt for the woman in that, although impossible to tell if racist or justifiably avoidant of any potential danger.

xp good point, part of the media's "fair and balanced" attitude. unfortunately it legitimizes a belief system that has led to the murder of a young man because he was black, which is fucking irresponsible. like, they treat it as equal sides: on the one hand violent racists who have no problem with an innocent young man being gunned down for the color of his skin, and their equal counterparts the people who are under the gun because of the color of their skin. seems objectively fair to me.

it's that annoying "reality has a liberal bias" angle

i've often had women i don't know avoid me or at least feel obviously uncomfortable in similar situations (tbh, i've had exactly that elevator interaction). course i know it happens to me far less often than it would if i were black. plus no one "legally" shoots people who look like me just for walking through their neighborhood at night. that's crucial.

still, agree that while "woman afraid of man" and "white afraid of black" do intersect, there's a lot more to it than race.

The Questlove thing comes from the right place, but is totally rong. He just finished writing about what an exclusive place he lives in, full of famous people, kids of royalty, "mafia goombahs," etc. Hmm, I wonder if there could be any reason why this woman wouldn't want anyone to know what floor she lives on? I mean, I can imagine Madonna blindfolding her best friends before bringing them up to her place. This could have been the wife of a "mafia goombah," or the mother of some kid of royalty. Or a hooker going to any of the above. People live in these places because they want total privacy and discretion, and few of them are as cool as Questlove.

A much better Questlove anecdote was in the New Yorker, the story of not buying a big flashy SUV because he didn't want to be lopped in with the drug dealers he grew up around. So he drove a Scion or something. And he tells the story of getting pulled over three times late one night, then eventually asking what the fuck is up. And the cops tell him that they figured this large black guy had just stolen some college kids' dopey little car. Damned if you do ...

collardio g otm

i learned that questove weighs 300 pounds today!

said Goetz, a noted authority on shooting unarmed black teenagers

and he uses the phrase 'pain in the arse' xo

xp

wow I'm surprised at how strongly Curtis Silwa comes out for Martin in that article

“Because I deal with the wannabes who want to join the Guardian Angels, I see right away what this guy Zimmerman is: a self-appointed guardian. It’s him determining who is and is not a threat. Forget laws, forget standards, forget the police. Goetz had already been victimized, thrown thru a plate-glass window (in an attemped day-time robbery on Canal Street in 1981). When the four guys began to surround him on the train, to do that dance that many of us were used to back then, when the predators would sniff you out and maybe they’d rob you but they would empower themselves and you’d be completely emasculated and realize there’s nothing you can do if these guy pounce––but this time he got the jump.”

Those trying to suggest Martin was likewise some sort of thug who brought on his own death because he smoked marijuana or bragged with friends about fighting, “they should impale themselves," said Sliwa. "Here’s a kid, goes out at half-time to get Skittles and iced tea, puts his hoodie on because it’s starting to rain, doesn’t say anything to anybody, isn’t eye-fornicating anybody, just minding his own business. He doesn’t have a M.O. He doesn’t do home invasions. What the hell are you following this kid for? Goddamn right he fights back. The same law that says you can stand and defend yourself in Florida—Martin is defending himself against a guy approaching him with a gun and confronting him.”

that article does a pretty good job in highlighting the differences between the two cases, although it actually makes Goetz look sympathetic in comparison

trying to stay away here but let me make one point about the Questlove piece. There is maybe a 3% chance that this social interaction wasn't about race, but about secret mob mistress or some bullshit. That's generous. But think about this -- every interaction, even if there is always some chance of an innocent explanation, there's no way they're _all_ innocent. And everywhere you go in life, every time something happens, you never know. you have to walk around all day every day saying "was it because? i hope not but..."

"It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity."

not an awkward interaction every now and then, but always, ever-present. ines-fucking-scapable. try to understand how exhausting that is.

All I'm going to say about the reaction to the Questlove piece is "stop telling black people how to experience racism".

my mind is blown that the rxn has been anything other than 'questo otm' but i guess it shouldn't be after this week

good point & well said, clover.

sometimes tough juggling sympathy for women's 100% legit awareness of sexual threat in the rape culture w/ sympathy for black people's 100% legit awareness of racism in murderland. but not every thought need be voiced...

hoos otm - I'm bummed that there's blowback on the Questo piece

I had a friend who lived in an upper east side nice place. I went to visit him once, and I got so many stares and weird looks in or near the elevator bank it made me feel weird and out of place. I am neither black nor huge, so I can only imagine, but I think many people who live in bubble-world doorman buildings in NYC are just totally weird. I wouldn't be surprised if along with his mafia dons and supermodels his building is filled with just your usual array of antisocial freaks.

Anyway, whether or not his anecdote reveals racism is irrelevant, because the same situation arrises for him again and again, and many of those situations are undoubtedly the product of racism. Quest is entirely justified to feel how he feels. It is not in my place to tell him otherwise.

DJP otm

otm. and questlove otm, and JIC too. all around.

I think stevie wonder's had the best idea so far and an organized boycott of florida until syg is repealed might actually have some effect

I mean there are good reasons to boycott florida regardless so

friend of mine showed up to a rally saturday night with a BOYCOTT FLORIDA shirt she had ironed-on for the occassion

Miami heat should move to Chicago

an economy so dependent on tourism is actually a pretty good boycott target

Gah, who needs a boycott when "you could get shot there for no reason" is reason enough to avoid Florida? There are a lot of places I'm currently "boycotting."

Florida's a little more fucked up than most of the rest of the country, but I feel like all this "boycott florida" shit is missing the picture that there isn't a state in this union that this couldn't have happened in (except maybe Ohio). I've been seeing so much smug "fuck florida", "fuck the south" and "let's let florida and texas secede" bullshit on FB, particularly from bay area friends. This on the same weekend as Fruitvale Station's release in theatres, which is about a similar case where a BART cop in Oakland shot an unarmed black man who was cuffed and lying face down on the ground and only ended up getting 2 years in prison, this with multiple eyewitnesses and video footage.

can't boycott california, i live here

that's true, fetchboy, but it helps to chose targets, to narrow the focus. florida seems a good choice in part because of its relationship to a case that's very much in the public eye, and in part because it seems to have worked so actively to create this exact situation. the murder of trayvon martin isn't something that just happens to have occurred in florida. it's the natural result of florida's decisions & culture. it's the goal.

the murder of trayvon martin isn't something that just happens to have occurred in florida. it's the natural result of florida's decisions & culture. it's the goal.

with terms replaced, the same thing is true in Oakland. American racism is the problem. noplace is exempt imo.

okay, fair enough. florida's been extra flagrant, imo, but not uniquely so. still, i don't see anything wrong with seizing the moment in order gain some leverage. not that i'm all fired up on the "ban florida" bandwagon. just sayin.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/4aaed3909d9de30c9e35497a51b80859/tumblr_mpwlznMPEa1rwttbfo1_400.gif

Fuck this image and the whole sentiment behind it, the “it’s not us, it’s them!" nonsense that people think makes they’re above this. It ain’t Florida that’s the problem. It never was. It’s the white supremacy that infests every aspect of American life from top to bottom. It’s a government that is beholden to corporate interests over its own people. It’s a country that has been taught that black lives ain’t worth a thing, and that playing the “race card" is an actual thing that happens, as opposed to some nonsense some white douchebag made up.

America and white Americans have consistently and strategically engaged in terrorism and genocide against whatever stands in its way. Black bodies were commerce, and when that stopped being feasible, Americans found another way to hold them down. When that became an issue, America granted a few rights, paid some lip service to the idea of equality, and then assassinated the people who were trying to force it to be better, shipped so many brown faces to Vietnam and brought them back with emotional trauma and addictions, shipped guns and money and support directly to the people who were poisoning the ghetto, and then, after murdering men, women, and children, blames the victim for their death and skates scot-free.

Try harder. This basic nonsense doesn’t cut it anymore.

http://tumblr.iamdavidbrothers.com/post/55410053903/fuck-this-image-and-the-whole-sentiment-behind-it