Nothing more racially polarizing has happenend in the US since Rodney King. White People just point to our US Justice System, and reasonable people ask: But where is the justice?
White people want to know what is wrong with acquitting Zimmerman according to the law of the land, the rest of us are outraged that White People do not see the injustice. Regardless who Zimmerman or Martin are, what character they have, what the defense said, what the jury decided in the end a 17 year old kid is dead. That tragedy is the focus of reasonable people, but not the focus of White People. I mean, if you really don’t know what I mean, think that he was a 17 year old white kid in Sanford Florida. Can’t even do it, can you? If you don’t think the situation would be different if he were white you are only kidding yourself.
There was a very similar situation near Rochester NY in 2009.
http://rochester.ynn.com/
The situation was so similar it is eerie except that no racism was involved.
Of course Black People are wrong too. Error comes in all colors. The most interesting reactions come from Hispanics who do not have such a savage history of slavery and opression of blacks. The Spanish rulers exploited the native and imported populations pretty equally. What interests me most is the respect all sides seem to have for the cause of the problem: The US Justice System. There is very little justice in the Justice System, and what little justice there is skews wildly against those you are likely to see outside on city streets, or on any streets or outside of a house in a gated community in Florida.
The inanity of the White People response includes the tweets and updates like “Fuck sensitivity, Zimmeraman Acquitted” and “Repeal Stand Your Ground – make the streets safe for muggers, thieves, and thugs of all persuasions” and my favorite “Of all the young black shooting victims in this country, you can name one because you’ve been trained like a circus seal to bark on command.” I also want to examine two points of view that come to mind: that Zimmerman was also a minority so racism can’t be involved, and second that the character of 17 year old Martin was the issue.
Let me mention the Hispanic response. The people of Hispanic America were under repressive colonial rule to an extent we in America do not understand well. And the repression was more shared, the poverty was and still is more widespread than in the US, and the indigenous communities were not treated much better than the imported blacks. The Spanish rulers lost more and more influence and just disappeared, mostly, without a fight. The opression continued under successive native governments who did not distiguish communities any more than the Spanish. The shared misery left people calling others names related to their shade of skin color without malice and generalizing racial traits like no American would dare to do in public. But their racism is toothless. A Latino might agree with an American about the laziness or criminality of Mexicans unless they themselve are Mexican. But then a Mexican might agree that Guatemalans indeed are lazy criminals. White People cannot fathom there is a difference of national image between two hispanics assuming they are a race, like black people, are a race. The obvious truth here is that we are all individuals and race is a misperception.
