‘Raped’ Trayvon Martin had it coming – well, he was Walking While Black
TRAYVON Martin, and his shooting dead by Robert Zimmerman, continues to ride at the top of the news cycle in the US.
We start the round-up with news that Fox News host Geraldo Rivera is sorry for saying that Trayvon Martin might have been asking for it because he went out wearing a hooded top. Says the rent-a-gob:
“I have obscured the main point that someone shot and killed an unarmed teenager.”
Obscuring the main point is what the media does. Of course, Geraldo is only a bit sorry, adding:
“I apologize to anyone offended by what one prominent black conservative called my ‘very practical and potentially life-saving campaign’ urging black and Hispanic parents not to let their children go around wearing hoodies.”
Hey, If saying things that make you looking like a twat saves live, Geraldo is guilty as charged, says Geraldo.
Trayvon Marin’s mother, Sybina Fulton is now on twitter. He rson was once on the social network, too. The Daily Caller has found his tweets on an account now closed. Trayvon tweeted under the name@No_Limit_Nigga.
Nigga. And Zimmerman is whitey. Yes, Zimmerman is hispanic. So, why did Zimmerman shoots Tryavon Martin dead? Well, the media have taken to calling Zimmerman a”white hispanic”.
LezGetReal has debated if anyone can be a “White Hispanic”.
The Root, NPR, International Business Times, Yahoo! News, The Madison Times, Reuters, our own ITV have all aped the New York Times’ news that Zimmerman is above all things “white”, even if he is Hispanic:
Deryl Dedmon, a white teenager who drove a pickup truck over a black man in the parking lot of a Jackson, Miss., motel, pleaded guilty to murder on Wednesday and was sent to prison for life…
“I do not ask y’all to forget, but I do ask y’all to forgive,” Mr. Dedmon said to the family of James C. Anderson, 47, who was killed last June, according to pool reporters in the courtroom…
The family has filed a wrongful death suit in the case against all seven teenagers who the police say were involved, including two girls.
Morris Dees, a founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, is working with the family and their lawyer, Winston J. Thompson III. He said the family would continue to push for a civil trial so that more about the case could be revealed.
“You continue to see this around the country, the systematic targeting of black people. That’s what happened here and that’s what happened in Florida,” he said, referring to the case in Sanford, Fla., in which an unarmed black teenager was shot and killed almost four weeks ago by a white Hispanic crime watch volunteer.
So. It was all about race, then?.
Multiple suspensions paint complicated portrait of Trayvon Martin
As thousands of people gathered here to demand an arrest in the Trayvon Martin case, a more complicated portrait began to emerge of a teenager whose problems at school ranged from getting spotted defacing lockers to getting caught with a marijuana baggie and women’s jewelry…
In October, a school police investigator said he saw Trayvon on the school surveillance camera in an unauthorized area “hiding and being suspicious.” Then he said he saw Trayvon mark up a door with “W.T.F” — an acronym for “what the f—.” The officer said he found Trayvon the next day and went through his book bag in search of the graffiti marker.
Instead the officer reported he found women’s jewelry and a screwdriver that he described as a “burglary tool,” according to a Miami-Dade Schools Police report obtained by The Miami Herald.
Complicated? More complicated than black killed by white Hispanic? Could it be presented as being less complicated?
Michelle Goldberg writes:
I’m far from the first to notice the similarities between the way people talk about Martin and the way they talk about rape victims, whose clothes and histories are often subject to scrutiny no matter how cut-and-dried the case seems. Like a rape victim, Martin’s past is being excavated for evidence that he might have provoked the harm done to him.
The media is taking sides, choosing what and what not to highlight about the matter. Take the Drudge Report, which leads with a barrage of stories that cast shadows on the dead 17-year-old’s character.
Story selection is used to build a picture.
Take this from Yahoo!:
With a single punch,” the Orlando Sentinel, citing police sources, reported Monday, “Trayvon Martin decked the Neighborhood Watch volunteer … climbed on top of [him] and slammed his head into the sidewalk several times, leaving him bloody and battered.”
“That is the account Zimmerman gave police,” the paper said, “and much of it has been corroborated by witnesses, authorities say.”
Police and authorities are the same police and authorities who said Zimmerman committed no crime. They never even tested him for drugs or booze.
Pick a reader prejudice and pander to it. Take this in the Washington Beacon:
On the site Wagist, the question to be deabted is: “Was Trayvon Martin a drug dealer?”
Well, you can’t libel the dead,. So why not ask if he was into bestiality, child porn, Catholicism, saving whales and ballroom dancing. Wagist adds a section called “Multiple tattoos”. Who doesn’t have tattoos? The Queen has three.
Ian Pointon, chairman of the Police Federation in Kent, wants coppers to show off their ink. As he said:
“They can actually be a good way to start a line of communication with the public. It can be a bit of an ice-breaker . . . the days of tattoos being stigmatised should be over.”
Unless you’re black and have just been shot dead.
“Drug Culture,” says Wagist, adding:
Several of his friends have posted pictures of rolled blunts to twitter in memorial to Trayvon.
Because marijuana cause you to act in a violent manner?
Wagist adds:
Unless Trayvon was selling Orchids, it seems fairly reasonable to posit that he may have been somewhat well-known among his friends for selling marijuana.
Do white Hispanics sell or smoke marijuana? If not, why not? Perhaps Trayvon Martin’s death will trigger a sensible debate on the US’s failed drugs policy? After that the US could also hold a frank and open debate on race. If free speech means anything it means saying what you think. And right now the media seems to be speaking in code, saying that Trayvon Martin had it coming on account of his clothes and school report or that he was killed for that capital crime: walking while black.
Posted: 27th, March 2012 | In: Key Posts, Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
