Editor’s Pick
MARCH 19, 2012 2:06PM
Trayvon Martin and Life Lessons for Young Black Boys
Scholars have long maintained that race is merely a social construct, not something fixed into our nature, yet this insight hasn’t made it any less of a factor in our lives. If we no longer participate in a society in which the presence of black blood renders a person black, then racial self-identification becomes a matter of individual will.
And where the will is involved, the question of ethics arises. At a moment when prominent, upwardly mobile African-Americans are experimenting with terms like “post-black,” and outwardly mobile ones peel off at the margins and disappear into the multiracial ether, what happens to that core of black people who cannot or do not want to do either?
Trayvon Martin was killed for the crime of being black, young, and "suspicious." Like many other young black boys and grown men throughout United States history, he was shot dead for the crime of possessing an innocuous object (and likely daring to be insufficiently compliant to someone who imagined that they had the State's permission to kill people of color without consequence or condemnation).
The facts are still playing themselves out. From all appearances,the police have failed to investigate the incident properly. Trayvon Martin's family has been denied the reasonable care, respect, and response due to them by the local authorities. Observers and activists have gravitated towards racism as the prime motive for the shooting and murder of a young black boy by a grown man and self-styled mall cop, Charles Bronson, Dirty Harry wannabe vigilante.
Common sense renders a clear judgement here: if a black man shot and killed a white kid for holding a bag of Skittles he would already be under the jail; in this instance, the police are operating from a position where a young African American is presumed "guilty," and his murderer is assumed innocent.
Yes, race matters in the killing of Trayvon Martin. However, and I will explore this in a later post, it is significant in a manner that is much more pernicious than the simple calculus of whether to shoot a young black boy for some imagined grievance or offense--as opposed to being asked a question, or perhaps sternly talked to. The latter is also problematic: it assumes that black people's citizenship and humanity are forever questionable, and subject to evaluation, by any person who happens to not be African American.
Cornel West famously suggested that all black children are "niggerized" at some point in their upbringing. Moreover, black children learn to live in a state of existential dread because they are always subject to wanton and unjust violence. Trayvon Martin's murder reminds me of a parallel and complementary observation. Black people live a paradox. We are simultaneously both children and adults in the white racial imagination regardless of our age.
Black people are treated as adults even when they are minors. In the courts, black young people are disproportionately subjected to punishments which are typically meted out to adults. As research has repeatedly demonstrated, to be young and black is to be an adult for purposes of arrest, the gas chamber, or imprisonment.
Historically, black people have been treated by whites as though they are children in regards to political matters. Thus, the contemporary rhetoric from conservatives that African Americans are childlike, zombies, on a plantation, or somehow hoodwinked or tricked into supporting the Democratic Party. Despite all of the available evidence, grown folks who were either heirs to, or participants in, a Black Freedom Struggle that salvaged and saved American democracy from its own weaknesses, lies, and hypocrisies, are depicted as naive infants, unable to be full and equal political actors.
The sociological imagination draws many connections. To point, Trayvon Martin's murder is also a surprising (and for many, counter-intuitive) complement to The New York Times' excellent series of essays on race, interracial marriage, and identity.
As someone who has loved across the colorline, and also believes that there are many ways to create a family, I have always held fast to a simple rule.
In this society, in this moment, and given what we know about how race impacts life chances, if a white person is going to have a child with a person of color (especially one who is African American or "black"), a parent is committing malpractice if they do not give their progeny the spiritual, emotional, philosophical, and personal armor to deal with the realities of white supremacy.
By implication, young black and brown children must be made to understand that they are not "special," "biracial," or part of a racial buffer group that is going to be given "special" privileges because one of their parents is white. These "multiracial" children are some of the most vulnerable and tragic when they are finally forced to confront the particular challenges which come with being a young black boy or girl in American society. In post civil rights America, this notion is politically incorrect. Nonetheless, it remains true.
Here, Thomas Chatterton Williams offers a great comment on blackness and the dilemma of "post-black" identity:
Still, as I envision rearing my own kids with my blond-haired, blue-eyed wife, I’m afraid that when my future children — who may very well look white — contemplate themselves in the mirror, this same society, for the first time in its history, will encourage them not to recognize their grandfather’s face. For this fear and many others, science and sociology are powerless to console me — nor can they delineate a clear line in the sand beyond which identifying as black becomes absurd.
Question: what happens for those young people who do not see themselves as "black" or "brown," yet run into the deadly fists of white racism? Do they have the skill sets necessary to survive such encounters whole of life and limb?
Because we are both part of a diaspora, the wisdom of our Jewish brothers and sisters is also instructive here. Continuing from The New York Times piece:
For Judt, it was his debt to the past alone that established his identity.Or as Ralph Ellison explained — and I hope my children will read him carefully because they will have to make up their own minds: “Being a Negro American involves a willed (who wills to be a Negro? I do!) affirmation of self as against all outside pressures.” And even “those white Negroes,” as he called them, “are Negroes too — if they wish to be.”And so I will teach my children that they, too, are black — regardless of what anyone else may say — so long as they remember and wish to be.
Trayvon Martin was likely taught the life lessons necessary to survive an encounter with the police (or their posse cousins) by his parents and other elders. Because black life is cheap, a young person of color can do everything "right" and still end up dead. What does this mean for blackness, when a century or more after the end of slavery, and decades after the end of lynch law, that your guilt is still assumed?
Whiteness and White privilege involve the luxury of being able to decide how, in what ways, and under what conditions, you will be allow yourself to be uncomfortable. White privilege also involves the luxury of not having to have a conversation with your kids about how to avoid being murdered by the cops because of your skin color. In many matters of life and death, white supremacy remains, in many ways, unchallenged. Black and brown folks, if they are responsible parents, cannot avoid such conversations with their children. The foot-dragging by the police in regards to the murder of Trayvon Martin reveals this ugly truth.
Dr. King is gone. A black man is President. Yet, life remains unfair...does it not?
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Kerry Lauerman
Joan Walsh
Salon.com
Comments
Regarding the conduct of the police, I posted the following open letter to the Secret Service on the Huffington Post:
“Dear Secret Service:
Please do NOT trust the SANFORD POLICE DEPARTMENT to do anything to help protect our President of the United States should he visit their community.
Clearly, based on SANFORD POLICE DEPARTMENT behavior in the TRAYVON MARTIN MURDER they would excuse anyone who made an attempt on the President's life based on the justification that they "PERCEIVED" President Obama to be a "THREAT" because he shares the same "SALIENT" characteristics as TRAYVON MARTIN.”
Bravo. / r
You have used the words I would have left.
But I do urge you to write more often about what you see, for you do so well using just the right amount of words.
Write more often.
My humble apologies.
Trayvon's death, and the resultant lack of arrest, are a tragedy on so many levels. The presumption that the "authorities" will investigate, and do the right thing is very likely a bad presumption. And, if they don't do the right thing, barring a miracle, they will not be held accountable. Internal affairs, Departments of Justice, ACLU, FBI? Good luck.
The public outcry will help .It also helps that Trevonn is such a beautiful looking kid.
I have to go now but will come back later.
Rated in hope for justice.
It is in no way comprehensible that crimes like that can happen today and the person accountable for it can get away with it.
I am simply shocked as I was shocked when Troy Davis was executed.
Herein lies the lie of false equivalence, and the source of so much of the struggle to perform identically on socially biased educational tests.
"Dr. King is gone. A black man is President. Yet, life remains unfair...does it not?"
Indeed. But our BLACK HAWAIIAN FEARLESS LEADER is not at all African American by descent, not one iota, he is black by the one drop rule, and not Hawaiian, but instead a "Chicago Machine" south sider by inference, ignorance and easier to understand categorization.
"These "multiracial" children are some of the most vulnerable and tragic"
BUT NOT IN HAWAII!!!!!!! Here they are, in a word, average, the norm, the majority.
The FBI and Justice Department are the only answer here. I started college life in the KKK section of Florida- and left ASAP ... simply too much hate, and, like our children of color in school today, it was highly disruptive to my studies.
"Americans are cowards on race."
AG Holder, and now it is his time to step up.
Auwe (Alas)
Oddly enough, when I commented on this situation in the US to American friends, I was accused of "America bashing." From what I can glean from your writings, America could, it seems, do with a whole lot more "bashing" at times.....
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Colonial America wasn't too different in many respects.
Native Americans were an "Inconvenience" to be dealt with in the most efficient, least troublesome fashion.
Like the Iraqis, and Afghans.
The following conversation took place BEFORE Rand Paul took office, while he was only promoting the destructive (Regressive) policies we're familiar with today.
AS PREVIOUSLY POSTED, Conversation with "Conned".
Yes, of course. The “Native Americans” Conned was reviling SHOULD be given the “BAD” label, of course.
That’s because they were sitting on resources that “Colonists” were vying for, an easy comparison would be George W. placing U.S. troops in Iraq based on OIL INTERESTS.
Resources have always been targeted by colonialism, George W. (IE the Imperial President) wasn’t the least bit timid about demonstrating THAT.
So the Iraqis became “BAD” when we decided to take their petroleum.
But early “Native Americans” were running all over Europe plundering for GOLD and various other resources, right? Hence the “Bad” label? Conned?
Because of that, they deserved WHATEVER punishment colonists decide to inflict on them, right?
Oh wait, no they weren’t. That was the “Colonists” plundering the ENTIRE GLOBE.
So the REAL CRIME of Native Americans is that they were sitting on territory that the “Colonists” valued, right?
Suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that Libertarians like Conned support Colonialism, Rand Paul likely does too.
Rand WOULD like to revoke most of the CIVIL RIGHTS gains of the last 1/2 century, if he NEXT proposes taking away federal prevention of SLAVERY that wouldn’t be too much of a surprise either.
Which is what much of 17th century Colonialism was ABOUT, right Conned?
Human beings met the definition of RESOURCES at that time as demonstrated by the abundant slave trade recorded during early U.S. history.
And I’ll bet Conned would like to blame Native Americans for THAT too.
FURTHER ON:
Colonialism is the subject I addressed in the main, you’ve not answered for THAT or the actions of your former officeholder of choice, George W., actions taken on behalf of the entire United States by him IE Pre-Emptive war and the ensuing OCCUPATION of Iraq.
What a shame that McPain didn’t make it into office, ruinous GOP policies could have dragged our failing economy even further into debt in service of their “War Profiteering” enterprises.
Pakistan, Yemen, Iran, so many targets, so little time.
We’re STILL in Iraq much to the regret of non-Neocons like myself, and over half of the U.S. population agrees with me to date, George W. imposed his IMPERIAL petroleum ambitions on the rest of us with our troops paying the brunt of the price, along with AT LEAST hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis.
That falls under the definition of thinly-veiled Colonialism.
Behavior the Native American tribes CERTAINLY didn’t engage in.
As I’m sure you’re aware, Conned, Native Americans weren’t inflicting slavery on any other CONTINENTS, the “Whites” (and assorted Portugese/Spanish/International Traders) engaged in THAT since slave trade relied on sea lane trade routes.
Don’t pretend that being White/European/”Civilized” excuses Colonial behavior, Conned. Not against Native Americans or the Iraqis.
Rand Paul (namesake of Ayn Rand?) is mistaken in thinking that telling the TRUTH about the policies behind Libertarian politics will gain him public respect.
That’s because his opinions, now on display at the National level, reveal those policies to be indicative of him being a NUTJOB, particularly as pertains to civil rights and his OPINION that the Federal Government shouldn’t impose legislation related to discriminatory policies in PRIVATE Business.
Bottom Line BS.
We should all appreciate that he wasn’t clever enough to cover up those opinions until after the election :-)
_______________________________________________
And yet Rand Paul WAS elected, incredibly enough.
MUCH further conversation followed, think I'll post that elsewhere.
Point of all of this, Chauncey, is that effects of Colonialism never quite diminish to the point of being overcome, can't be ignored even if less "active" today.
Effects of Centuries Old Colonialism are still being "Echoed" in the damaged results of our current society.
And the effects of CURRENT Colonialism (Middle East) will likely prevail for centuries to follow.
Thanks NeoCons. Thanks George, Dick, ET AL.
Some people, both black and white, seem to have a hard time with that notion. "If one parent is black, then she should identify herself as black." I heard it right here from a black mother raising her baby with her white husband. "She is BLACK," she told me.
I say, society will judge people by their brown, black, and tan skin anyway. Shouldn't the person living inside that skin decide who and what they are? ~r
I can't believe that this would still be an issue 2012.
It sounds much like the apartheid in South Africa.
All this discussion,unfortunately,is not helping the boy to come back to life.A destroyed future,a broken family.Of course I had to think about Martin Luther King as well,and I always had the impression that J.F.Kennedy was killed for the same reason,as he was supporting the Black movement.
One of the calls is chilling: You can hear Martin screaming for help again and again until a gunshot is heard in the background and there is silence. I've never seen someone scream for help while they were attempting to take someone's life. That recording alone is pretty damning evidence against Zimmerman. This was a cold blood murder.
@Joan, you wrote "Shouldn't the person living inside that skin decide who and what they are? ~r"
I am all for radical self-autonomy. But, we must also prepare our children who are "multiracial" (a silly word by the way, but I digress) for reality. Sure, they can be "mixed" (whatever that means) but they must also understand how society will see them as a person in a raced body. They must also be mindful of how the "mixed race" movement is also an exercise by some to get some degree of white privilege as anything other than black or brown for their children.
There can be strength from that legacy--much so actually. Also, one's "blackness" is not separate and apart from one's "whiteness" or other identity. As I fondly said to a friend as I reflected on my own adventures, I almost married a Chinese American woman, one of my rules was the kid is black but his mom is Asian. No contradiction there...at least to my eyes.
...and yet racism seems to be rampant in more insidious ways than ever before. When did people come up with all these euphemisms?
I live in a city and area of SoCal where there is still a lot of "driving while brown" infractions and even checkpoints. I always thought that San Diego would be a bit more enlightened than that.
How many more generations do we have to go through before this is done? Or is the answer that it will never be done?
I hope the Feds can prosecute him for violating Trayvon's civil right to life and get the psychotic, blood-lusting freak off the streets. It's logically impossible to claim a reasonable perception of danger when he's the one who initiated the incident.
Then the legal murder law should be challenged and dismantled by federal authority. It's about time Americans put a halt to the NRA and the Republican right-wing freak show.
Is there racism in America? DUH..... THere is racism in Africa were Blacks are massacring other tribes for genetic differences I couldn't detect. We have whites killing whites in N.Ireland and in the Balkans.
AMerica is flawed but, it is the greatest place in the world to be black,white green yellow or pink. Let's start from that premise and fix the details.
Throwing at the feet of Bush when the streets are full of blood tonight with black on black crime might make Cornel West another 100k on his white guilt lecture tour but, the real damage was done by LBJ.
In 1960 85% of black births were in a two parent family. The black family survived reconstruction two world wars,racism and a depression, what it could not overcome was a "helping hand". Call me a bad guy but please don't call it a coinicidence.
The only real choice is what we do with these social identities. Can we ignore them, if they put us in peril due to others' hate. Disadvantage us in the workplace, etc.
We cannot.
Should we claim them? I do, but my identity as Black goes beyond the social construct to my identity as an African. That no-one can take and I can use it as an affirmation.
The lesson is here is you cannot be colour-blind unless everyone else is.
Where I grew up, in the 50s & 60s, effectively all-white world, the cops routinely brutalized white boys, mostly working class. When he was about 16 my brother had an encounter with some cops in my neighborhood, where they didn't brutalize white boys and they didn't brutalize him. When it was all over I spoke with him on the phone and his response to the cops was a contemptuous, "Chumps." He was contemptuous because the cops had been polite to him when he expected to be beaten up for no reason at all. Or at least treated very rudely. Does this translate to the black experience? Do authorities/white people not get that ... oh never mind. Of course they don't.
So one night this winter I was in a supermarket parking lot and a black man who was parked next to me asked me if I had jumper cables he could borrow. I told him that I didn't and he didn't believe me. He said, "Oh, come on, of course you do." WTF? I said, "I have two sets in my garage but I don't carry them." I am a late middle-aged middle-class(ish) white matron and I have both AAA and Allstate road service plus a healthy, strong car battery. I have no need to carry jumper cables with me. So I opened the back of my car and invited him to take a look. Which he did. And I said, "Sorry, I'd lend them to you if I had them. Good luck."
Then, driving away, I felt foolish, questioning if I had acted on white liberal guilt letting the guy call me a liar in a parking lot where a black man had recently been shot by a white man pursuing the black man for mugging a woman (of unpublicized race.) I wondered if it would have been smarter of me to have feared the black man, (he was a very big man) refused to speak to him and gotten the hell out of there as fast as I could have. Now I'm kinda I didn't because, really, what I did was just respond to him like he was a regular person. Which he was. Except that I think he assumed a white woman would lie to avoid interacting with him. Was he facing me down unthreateningly - I never felt threatened - because he was sick of that?
And why should either of us have had to play any of these thought games? It all just makes me so angry.
Sorry for the length, Chauncey. You write the best stuff on OS.
Conned, is that you? First name Neo, right?
So you've difficulty with following a thread nothing to be ashamed of. Much ;-)
But you've never (Seriously?) considered that bigotry, racism, presumed white privilege of today, they're all interconnected?
And that those "Accepted Behaviors" are actually descended from a literal "lineage" of ambitious, repressive policies that brought about and perpetuated Slavery early in our national history, haven't considered that?
Hence my mention of centuries of enforced Colonial Empire in support of Slavery and other resources. (Above)
But FEAR is what's really behind the current Right Wing agenda :-)
POSTED ELSEWHERE: Conservative Bigotry
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Which brings us to the core of their behavior, FEAR is what drives the outward anger displayed by "Fringe" racism.
Combined Fear, Anger, and stupidity, of course. Unwillingness to learn or compromise, failure to overcome Dogmatic principles of Conservative "White" self-aggrandized identity.
Adaptation would require that they LEARN and acquire traits foreign to their "Supremecist" leanings, in order to gain insight into the repression they've imposed on others they'd have to be able to "Sympathize" and have "Empathy" for others, not going to happen.
Since they'll never learn to adapt, they'll never overcome their fears and accept EQUALITY of current minorities. Entrenched Conservative values (Doctrine, actually) won't allow for such adjustment of their current privileged vantage point.
The white majority is finally forced to face the likely outcome of one day becoming the "minority", the prime fear of hate groups (KKK, Skinheads, Supremecists, Neo-Nazis) throughout the U.S.
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ALSO PREVIOUSLY POSTED: Religious and Racial Intolerance Supported by the GOP
Right Wing leadership recognizes that those emotions can be twisted into Political Capital, insecurities of today's "White America" can be played upon for GOP profit.
It's an old and proven method, a "Call to Arms".
Like "Shrub" George W. did when he pushed our troops into Iraq for his Imperial Petroleum ambitions.
By playing on the insecurities of US citizens in support of the GOP "Fear Agenda" after 9-11, blending Politics and Religous Bigotry to suit their needs, to cover for policies that the public would never have otherwise allowed. For instance, show me a Liberal who’s in favor of RENDITION or PREEMPTIVE WAR.
How many of today's GOP are following this formula, sewing the seeds of "hate groups" to play on the insecurities and fears of anxious whites, nothing new going on there.
END
That Zimmerman felt threatened can hardly be an excuse, since the evidence strongly suggests this guy was paranoid to begin with. And how is it that someone who assaulted a cop is able to get a permit to carry a handgun?
Let's assume for the sake of argument that Zimmerman, despite the order given him by the police operator, accosted Trayvon and demanded to know what he was doing in the (white) neighborhood? Certainly, Travmon had no duty to answer that question or otherwise respond to a belligerent white man who showed no identification establishing him as an authority figure.
And let's assume that Zimmerman, emboldened by the 9mm tucked in his belt pushed the issue and stepped into Trayvon's path and continued his belligerent demands. And let's suppose Trayvon, who in such a situation would be the one who was actually threatened, tried to push past Zimmerman.
From that point on, any further escalation by Zimmerman was -- or certainly should have been illegal. In most jurisdictions, he was already guilty of assault and any physical contact with Trayvon would make him guilty of battery as well.
But instead of returning to his vehicle as he had been advised by the police, he chose to escalate the confrontation. It's possible that words and blows were exchanged. But there seems to be no evidence or any real suggestion that Zimmerman was in imminent danger, and thus there was no need to "stand his ground".
In fact, the most telling evidence against Zimmerman are his own words -- "they always get away with it". Leaving aside the hateful aspect of who "they" are, this clearly indicates motive and intent to commit a crime, that is to take the law into his own hands.
At any point, Zimmerman could have just walked away. Had he done so, he would not be facing a real threat to his freedom, and if incarcerated, a likely real threat to his life, given the nature of this case.
But far more importantly, had Zimmerman done so, Trayvon could have walked away, too.
If colour really didn't matter then no one would find it necessary to say, "Colour doesn't matter."
There are always those, like cops and wannabe cops, who have such an innate, well-deserved low self-esteem that they will use any excuse they can find or manufacture to put themselves 'above' someone else. Any excuse will do but if they can, inside their own group of sad, sick jocks, agree on a readily identifiable section of our society, then they can get out there and try to build themselves a rep while using mistreatment of that group as a pass to enter into and be admired in their own group.
Needless to say, developing severe prejudice against the target group is a necessity in order to establish a "differentness" for their own group. It is that "differentness" that allows them to feel superior to the targets they have chosen. When that feeling of superiority over the target group is combined with even the smallest amount of power over a member of the target group it becomes imperative to their own self-identification as "superior" that they attempt to maintain that perceived superiority at any and all costs.
Killing the children of the target group is just another one of those costs.......
;-(
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............... *•.¸.•* ♥⋆★•❥RIP (ツ) & ♥ L☼√Ξ ☼ ♥
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Your posts just make you feel better, there is no advice and little reality.
I am not a Neo-con, I hate war and I actually quit a lucrative job at GE when I realized we were selling parts that were going into road side bombs that killed our soldiers. GE's CEO is on Obama's advisory board and gets incredible tax breaks from him. IS that the lobic of a NEO-CON.
What oil will/have we every gotten out of Iraq. THere is more oil in the US than in all Iraq and if we changed our liberal policies then, we would stop funneling money to those that hate us most and provide enough tax revenue to bring down this oppressive debt that will destroy our ability to help those you so feel oppressed going forward.
Neocons are dangerous but, the true enemey is far closer to your door than you want to believe.
America is the place where the reality of slavery and dehumanization of a human being based upon one's hue is our national pasttime.
America's best practices begin with the rule that Black folks are not worthy of due process, the benefit of doubt , we remain an aferthought .
America lost it's patience with negroes and colored folks decades ago when we became Black and African-American tour country created the culture and license of 'negrophobia' other communities of color and even progressives who once were our comrades in the quest for humanity have now purchased 'whiteness' and this condition frees one of principal and dignity when it comes to relations with Black folks.
Negrophobia is the standard and best practice which lubricates our nation's people currency.
Murder, Poverty, Contempt, Excuse, Denial, Avoidance, Dismissal, all live in the place we now know as NEGROPHOBIA.
Trayvon and Zimmerman both played their parts both were the outcomes of decades of NEGROPHOBIA it is a reality that wounds and stains even those who wear the hue of Blackness.
Such is the nature and the state of affairs and best practices in the land of NEGROPHOBIA.
"Your posts just make you feel better, there is no advice and little reality."
And You're the one to inform me, right JR?
REGARDING IRAQ
We're in the middle of OIL EXPORTATION AGREEMENTS in Iraq, JR, unless you've not followed the news for the last several years I'm sure you SHOULD BE aware of that too.
fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/104724.pdf
http://tinyurl.com/333whjr
www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL34064.pdf
Last I heard those agreements include a percentage of revenue to the UNITED STATES regardless of whether the product is exported by the U.S. or the European Union, Etc. This will translate to TRILLIONS over time, siphoned out of their economy by virtue of SPOILS OF WAR.
BP is a big contract player in those agreements too, not surprising.
The fact that there's very little exportation going on now reflects the STATE of WAR we inflicted on that country, JR.
Something Neocon supporters like you ALSO pretend not to know.
Former GE employees, right? Who won't admit to being a former George W. "Shrub" supporter, I'll bet ;-)
We can't leave Iraq (completely) without a stable government in place there, as I'm sure you ALSO know fully well. The entire USA is familiar with the "Pottery Barn" theory that once we have troops on the ground we're committed to remain until that stability is achieved. Certainly we won't be leaving until the Iraq provisional government has signed off on the current version of the EXPORTATION AGREEMENTS linked above.
Which is a large part of why we STILL retain troops and advisors on the ground, although they've been much reduced.
Dragging us there IN THE FIRST PLACE is entirely the responsibility of W/Cheney, WAR INCORPORATED, a completely separate issue from withdrawal, and YES I DISAGREE with the "Oil Revenue Sharing Agreements" that are being contracted in Iraq, since they reek of the IMPERIAL COLONIALIST policies I've already pointed out.
Obama is in a position of not wanting to ENTIRELY DISCARD our investment there (Troops, effort, $ spent), meaning that before withdrawal he'll see thru our obligation to protect the Iraqi citizenry by emplacing a stable government.
AND he'll allow the exportation contracts to be carried out, not that I agree with that.
But even as far back as 2008 it was a difficult DEAL to get the Iraqis to sign off on.
www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2444187920080624
And future Iraqis aren't likely to want to align with these agreements since they're being signed with U.S. Occupation Forces on the ground, an obvious THREAT OF FORCE, otherwise known as EXTORTION.
Just keep pretending that Petroleum wasn't on George W. and Cheneys agenda when we breached the border of Iraq, JR. (REVISIONIST HISTORY).
Our nation has become a ugly nation where the majority still seeks to express it's divinity. Individualism has taken on the posture of celebrity . The Zimmerman's of the world like the Goetz's of this culture seek to become the town marshall and the guardians of this civilization. These cowards are on a mission to save pristine America from the primative negroes who wear hoodies and trespass in sacred areas and venues of white privledge.
The legacy of white privledge has now contaminated a whole array and spectrum of colored people in our nation. White teens are joined by other non-whites that polluted the internet with nappy headed negro rants lapoons about Black Americans.
The code of conduct now is demonize Black folks not in whisphers at the water cooler but out open up front and personal.
Words even those of the caliber of this author no longer have any currency with people like me I am no longer interested in drafting words that speak to the realties of injustice and inhumanity. I am pass singing gospels, marching, talking , protesting. America needs to feel the wrath of the reality it has created for Black America even in the post racial world of Obama .
If your child had been killed, I imagine you would not be so sanguine.
Good God--an innocent child was killed for no reason. The police won't arrest the offender. Where is your outrage?
As I write this, a North Chicago cop beat a suspect to death. No trial. No judge. The cop did apprehend the guy -- but does this have to be accepted. Like rain. Traffic jams. Where the Hell are we now?
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/hate-map
Shameful truths here in this essay. Thanks for taking the time to open some eyes.
Why dont you research where you are all from, and take a good look at where YOU are from. Because we all come from somewhere, and If you think you are born american blood, then you are claiming to be native american then you can hang youselves, and put the fire water to the flames. How would you feel if you child was murdered for his race? Its the hate you bred into the innocent.. and there will be a repercussion of that. It called God.
p.s if you think I am black then wake up!! there are non-black people thinking like me.. so be aware, because your ignorance is my greatest enemy, You make us look bad? then pay the price!
Each time I see Trayvon's picture, or see his parents on TV, I get physically ill. I am so saddened for his family to have to go through the rest of their life without their son. All of this tragedy due to having a wanna- be- cop, with a violent, hateful history be in this type of authoritative position. When will human beings take the time and energy to see beyond our physical differences, and live in harmony? How can we help things change? Thanks for this.
@ To Mr Robinson..love your comment!
It’s interesting reading about the shooting of Trayvon Martin (a tragic event) from the perspective of it being a purely racially motivated crime (which I may have been), the perspective of cops being racially motivated and about white supremacy. It’s good for me to read/listen to others views. However (and of course you where waiting for the however) I don’t not agree with Chauncy De Vega assessment of the situation, as whole. I find his argument limited, perhaps trapped in a past that no longer is 100% accurate. Not to say the past isn’t who we are today, but that to applied it in such a extreme and limited way to a problem boiling it down to White supremacy and its all based on race- I just cannot do. The examples listed by Chauncy are easily applied to support other arguments that oppose his view. Maybe it comes down to your world view, the individuals experience, their culture, ones religion and etc… One could argue that in order to eliminate acts of discrimination based on race, creed and etc. we as a society would need to eliminate multiculturalism and focus on building a single culture. My point is…it’s just not as simple as Carlston is white and therefore can never understand Black, that in and of itself in bigotry. Indeed the arguments of race will have to be left behind by all in order to forget it completely.
Everyone should rest assured that Zimmerman will be prosecute. The admitted facts (in his own words) and the plain language of the statute assure he is toast.
Thank you for this perspective.
This might also interest you. See Trayvon Martin: Defense a Pig-Sty Beneath a Racist Facade?