[News] What It Feels Like to be Black in America

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/07/17/what-it-feels-like-to-be-black-in-america/
July 17, 2013


"*No Rights That Any White Man is Bound to Respect"*


  What It Feels Like to be Black in America

by KEVIN ALEXANDER GRAY

/Seminole County, Florida ~ named for the Seminole people who once lived 
throughout the area. The term Seminole comes from the Creek word 'semino 
le', which means 'runaway' and the Spanish word c//imarrón// which* 
*//means "runaway slave."  While the logo of the Florida State 
University Seminoles is that of a white man, Thomas Wright a longtime 
music professor at the school with a free lifetime pass to all athletic 
events, Seminole is the collective name given to the 
amalgamation/intermixing of various groups of native Americans and 
runaway- ex-enslaved Africans who settled in Florida in the early 18th 
century and fought three wars against the United States. The 1st 
Seminole War was from 1814 to 1819, the 2nd from 1835 to 1842, and the 
3rd from 1855 to 1858.* *In 1817, future U.S. President Andrew Jackson, 
called the "Extermination President" for his savagery in profiling and 
annihilating the Native population, invaded then-Spanish Florida and 
defeated the Seminoles in the 1^st war.  And after defeating U.S. forces 
in early battles of the 2^nd War, Seminole leader Chief Osceola was 
tricked, then captured on Oct. 20, 1837, when U.S. troops said they 
wanted a truce to talk peace. In 1946, Jackie Robinson, in Sanford at a 
Brooklyn Dodgers' baseball training camp, couldn't stay in a white-owned 
hotel with teammates and was forced to flee the town in the middle of 
the night to avoid being lynched by local whites opposed to 
desegregation of the team. Fast forward to Christmas 1952, in an 
atmosphere of race terror and state indifference, NAACP leader Harry T. 
Moore and his wife Harriette were killed when the Ku Klux Klan blew up 
their' home on Christmas night.  The closest hospital was 35 miles away 
in Sanford. There was a delay in getting the couple to the hospital and 
getting a black doctor to attend to them. They both died in Sanford. No 
one spent a day in jail for his or her murders. Today the racial makeup 
of the county is 82.41% White, 9.52% Black, 11.15% Hispanic, or Latino, 
0.30% Native American 2.50% Asian, 0.04% Pacific Islander, 3.06% from 
other races, and 2.18% from two or more races. Out of a population of 
54,000, about 57 percent of Sanford City residents are white and 31 
percent are black./

A friend asked me if I'd been keeping up with the George Zimmerman 
trial. My immediate answer was, "Not really. Watching it was really 
angering me." But then I admitted I was lying. I had hedged to temper my 
anger. I also didn't want to try to explain to the white person on the 
other end of the phone how it feels being black in the USA these days.

Like many others, I believe that Zimmerman is a liar, a racist and a 
murderer (with the understanding that 'murder' is a /legal/ term).

I believe that Zimmerman profiled Martin.

And I believe that Martin had every right, even a greater right, to 
fight for his life with all the strength he could muster. He lost the 
fight for his life because his killer had a gun, and Martin had only a 
can of Arizona iced tea and a bag of Skittles.

Yet if you didn't know any better you'd think Trayvon Benjamin Martin 
was on trial, and George Zimmerman the victim.

After the five white, one Latina all female jury found Zimmerman not 
guilty it occurred to me that Martin has been subjected to worse 
treatment over the airwaves than Adam Lanza, the perpetrator of the 
Newtown killings.

I was disappointed with the verdict. I think my disappointment is 
related to the reason why blacks are so overwhelmingly in support of 
Barack Obama.  Because, with all the unfairness that comes with living 
in an environment with pervasive racism and white skin entitlement, 
blacks still consciously and subconsciously desire white acceptance.  To 
many blacks Obama represents that acceptance.   So, though my experience 
told me it was a done deal from the very start of the trial, I had hoped 
that a white judge, white prosecutors and for the most, a white jury 
would be just.

I make no apology for my bias against racist and racism. Oftentimes when 
I'm speaking to a crowd I'll introduce myself as a father and a 
grandfather followed by "they can take your car, house, job, a spouse 
can kick you to the curb, but being a parent and grandparent is 
something they can't take from you."  I was a young black boy at one 
time and I've raised black boys. I know what they face. I know that 
white supremacy does take us out at will.

When I was coming up, I would hear a young white man proclaim that "he's 
free, white and 21," and that meant the world was his. For black males 
the benchmark age is /"35 and still alive."/

So in all honesty, I despise Zimmerman and every racist thing he and his 
supporters stand for. That's the feeling I get by just seeing his image 
online or in the courtroom or even hearing his voice. I've seen too many 
victims of raw, racist power wielded by fools. No court proceeding or 
verdict is going to change that /feeling/ in me or that /reality/ for 
black males.

My friend, knowing me as well as she does, never took my "not really" 
seriously and pressed on until I told her that I had watched most of 
prosecution's case, including Don West and Mark O'Mara's 
cross-examination of prosecution witnesses. I watched most if not all of 
Martin's mother and father, Sabrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, and his 
brother Jahvaris Fulton's testimonies. I saw a good deal of the medical 
examiner, Dr. Shiping Bao, who conducted Martin's autopsy. I watched 
Alexis Carter, the instructor who taught Zimmerman's criminal litigation 
class and instructed him on Florida's self-defense laws. And I watched 
prosecutors Richard Mantei, Bernie de la Rionda and John Guy. I saw very 
little of the defense's case other than a couple of minutes of 
Zimmerman's mother Gladys's testimony and O'Mara's closing. I didn't 
waste time or emotional capital watching much of the defense. I saw 
some.  But basically, I saw what I expected to see in their 
cross-examinations. To me, any witness they put up only served to 
bolster Zimmerman's lies.

Even so, I went on to tell my friend how excruciating it was to hear the 
defense argue that Zimmerman, against the instructions of the police, 
initiated a pursuit of a stranger who was not committing a crime, and 
that Zimmerman had a greater right of self-defense than his victim.

That Martin's fists and the concrete sidewalk were his "deadly weapons."

That Martin was basically a "homicidal maniac."

But for all Trayvon Martin knew Zimmerman could have been a Jeffrey 
Dahmer-type.

Yet many Zimmerman supporters will only ever see black boys and men as 
"dope smoking," "gang-banging" "thugs" and "low-lifes" with no right to 
exist.

That's what Zimmerman's father, brother and backers were saying before 
the start of the trial. They hired attorneys to advance their racism and 
assert their demand for white privilege. They even found Chana Lloyd, a 
young, black, attractive female third-year law student to sit behind 
them in court. Lloyd claimed in an interview that she asked O'Mara, "Is 
George a racist?" to which he responded, "I wouldn't work for him if he 
was."  I won't be surprised to see Lloyd land a spot on Fox News, where 
Zimmerman has said he also hopes to be.

Obviously, knowing history is not a requirement for a law degree.  If it 
were Lloyd would have had to recognize O'Mara's Klan defense strategy.  
That Zimmerman was protecting white womanhood.   That's why in his 
closing argument he showed the jury of six women, five of whom were 
white, a picture of Zimmerman's white woman neighbor, defense witness 
Olivia Bertalan.  The defense invoked the same justification for the 
killing of Martin that the Ku Klux Klan used to lynch black men in the past.

O'Mara held up a picture of a "thugged-out version" of Martin, shirtless 
and wearing his gold "gangsta grill" in his teeth. The implicit message: 
"George Zimmerman was protecting, not just himself, but white womanhood 
from this vicious, black thug."  When he held up a big chunk of concrete 
all I could think about was the old racist joke where the white sheriff 
and his deputies pull the body of a black man killed by the Klan out of 
the lake wrapped in chains and his response is: "See boys! Just like a 
nigger. Stole more chains than he could carry."

In the months leading up to the trial, Robert Zimmerman Sr., the father 
of the accused, said, "Racism is flourishing at the insistence of some 
in the /African-American /community." He called the Congressional Black 
Caucus "a pathetic, self-serving group of racists... advancing their 
purely racist agenda." And that "all members of Congress should be 
ashamed of the Congressional Black Caucus, as should be their 
constituents," adding, "They are truly a disgrace to all Americans." He 
called NAACP President Benjamin Jealous "a racist" and said his 
organization "simply promotes racism and hatred for their own, primarily 
financial, interests" and "without prejudice and racial divide, the 
NAACP would simply cease to exist."

Like father, like son, Robert Zimmerman Jr., the defendant's brother, 
sent out a series of racist Tweets and photos before the trial. He 
compared Trayvon Martin with De'Marquise Elkins, a 17-year-old detained 
in the murder of a Georgia infant. Both pictures feature the young men 
"flipping the bird" at the camera, with the caption: "A picture speaks a 
thousand words...Any questions?" He also posted several Tweets saying 
that "blacks" are worthy of others' fear, including: "Lib media shld ask 
if what these2 black teens did 2 a woman&baby is the reason ppl think 
blacks mightB risky."

Frank Taaffe, outspoken defender of Zimmerman, has been all over the 
media spewing just about any racist thing he wants to spew.  Such as: 
"The stage was already set. It was a perfect storm." In one CNN 
interview he let loose, "Neighbor-/hood/ (emphasizing 'hood'), that's a 
great word. "We had eight burglaries in our neighborhood, all 
perpetrated by young black males in the 15 months prior to Trayvon being 
shot...You know, there's an old saying that if you plant corn, you get 
corn." So in Taaffe's white supremacist world black people should expect 
to take a bullet for another black person's actions even if there's no 
connection between them.

Then there's Fox News where it seems that the only thing blacks can do 
to make them happy (unless you're against Obama, a hawk, fundamentalist 
Christian xenophobe, Republican, quasi-libertarian or into self-hate for 
the money) is to somehow move to another planet or solar system. One of 
their news hosts, Gregg Jarrett, suggested on air that Zimmerman might 
have been justified in killing Martin because the teen "may have been 
violent" from smoking marijuana.  I thought, the 18 states and the 
District of Columbia where medical marijuana is legal must not have 
gotten the memo.  Ironically, for the most, it's whites leading 
marijuana legalization efforts and smoking more pot than blacks.  Yet 
whites, and white youth in particular, are not criminalized like blacks 
kids in the ongoing war on drugs.

When Judge Debra Nelson allowed Martin's drug test in was a "tell" on 
the way the trial was going to unfold.  How could the prosecutors 
wholeheartedly argue against the ridiculous claim that pot makes a 
person violent when the majority of the people that they prosecute and 
imprison are for marijuana possession charges?  Pot arrests and 
adjudications are the feeding trough of the criminal justice system.  
It's the essence of what Michelle Alexander and others call "the new Jim 
Crow."

The police, prosecutors, judges and defense lawyers are all complicit in 
a system that regularly jails young black drug offenders, the majority 
of which are non-violent offenses.  They are not going to contradict one 
another.

Early on in the trial, before Nelson allowed Martin's drug test results 
into evidence, my wife, who works at one of the big department stores, 
was in the break room on her job. The news played in the background on 
the television set as she chitchatted with about 5 co-workers, all black 
of various ages,
//most either mothers or grandmothers. Into the room comes a 
middle-aged, 50-ish white female employee who just starts up talking 
about the trial. There was no invitation for her to strike up a 
conversation, nor care or awareness as to whom she was talking to. Just 
her arrogant, know-it-all, intrusive whiteness sucking the air out the 
room. Or as my wife put it, "She was talkin' at us."

 From the beginning, the white woman goes in on Martin saying, "Well you 
know he smoked that marijuana!" At that point, so I'm told, nobody 
responded to her. The black women all got up and left the room. And as 
they got out of the cussing-the-woman-out range, the conversation went:

"White people think they can say and do anything."

"He (Zimmerman) had no business following that boy."

"What's smoking pot got to do with anything?"

"He had no right to shoot that boy."

"I was about to lose my job."

"Me too!"

"Me too!"

"Me too!"

As I told that story to my friend she became quiet. I joked; didn't that 
white woman know she was talking to a group of /black /mothers? Then I 
mentioned Trayvon's mother, Sabrina. I went on to say how many blacks 
are extremely proud of the way she and her ex-husband, Tracy Martin, 
have taken the high road throughout this ordeal. "Dignified" is the word 
most often used, although I see it as one of those words that mean they 
didn't cuss white folks out. For the most, the parents have let attorney 
Crump do the attacking. Crump has repeatedly expressed what most blacks 
feel, "If Zimmerman had been killed, Trayvon Martin would have been 
drug-tested, immediately jailed without bond and put on trial for 1st 
degree murder facing the death penalty."  Tracy Martin may have let down 
his guard once in the courthouse if one believes Zimmerman's crew. On 
the first day of the trial, Zimmerman supporter Tim Tuchalski claimed 
Martin called him a "motherfucker." If it happened, he lucky that's all 
he was called.

Even so, I went on to say to my friend that Sabrina Martin was becoming 
somewhat of an icon to many black people, much like what happened with 
Mamie Till, the mother of Emmett Till, who died at the hands of racists. 
I told her that for many blacks, Sabrina represents how they view black 
mothers and wives. And I said that many black women view themselves 
going through hell or high water for their kids, as she has don. That 
her strong bearing, dark-skin, motherly but attractive and sensual look, 
was the kind of woman that most southern black men married.  That women 
like her had our kids and raise our families.  For those who would 
denigrate dark-skinned women the response has long been "the blacker the 
berry the sweeter the juice."

In addition, Tracy Martin, though divorced, maintained a close 
relationship with his son and a respectful relationship with his 
ex-lover, ex-wife and mother of his child. He wasn't an absentee father. 
He seemed to be a good parent. But you just /knew/ that a white man was 
going to play the irresponsible black parent game. Kind of like Obama 
does from time to time even though a Boston College study done a couple 
of years back revealed -- surprisingly to some -- that black fathers not 
living in the same domicile as their children are /more/ likely to have 
a relationship with their kids than white fathers in similar circumstances.

I found myself posting photos of the parents and their sons on social 
media throughout the trial. Many others did as well. I did it because I 
wanted to remind myself and others what the trial was really about. And 
instead of getting angry at the mere sight of Zimmerman, I wanted to 
focus instead on the strength of Trayvon Martin's parents. I used words 
like "respect" and "strength" as captions to cut through efforts to 
dehumanize and denigrate the family and their slain son.

Zimmerman's defense team wanted words like "gang," "gang-related," "gun" 
or "drug-related" added to the story because they know that most of the 
time it strips "the accused" (who are usually black) of their human 
rights and humanity. They know that if some black kid's face on the news 
and the word gun or drug is mentioned, even blacks, unless they're 
family members, most often don't really care what happens to them. The 
defense's goal was to flip the script and make Martin the accused.

And the defense couldn't put the gun in Martin's hands so they did the 
next best thing -- they tried to bring drugs into the game by advancing 
the old "Reefer Madness" myth arguing that "marijuana makes one 
violent." Back in the 80s and 90s, usually after a cop shot someone, 
they'd say the shooting victim was on PCP (angel dust) or crack and that 
the drug gave them super-human strength. I've haven't seen many 
super-strong crack heads in my lifetime but I've seen a lot of them 
wasting away to little or nothing. I've haven't seen all that many 
super-strong potheads either.

Painful as it was at times, I watched defense attorney West attempt to 
tar prosecution witness, 19-year-old Rachel Jeantel, as a stupid liar. 
Jeantel was on the phone with Martin the night Zimmerman killed him. She 
was the last person Trayvon spoke to. He told Jeantel he was being 
followed by a "creepy-ass cracker." Her testimony sparked a courtroom, 
online and television argument and a trumped-up controversy with the 
premise that Martin calling Zimmerman a "cracker" made /Trayvon/ the racist.

Then Jeantel came under attack from the '"Precious"-ghetto-big-black 
(dark-skinned) girl-"mammy"-bashing crowd ... both black and white.

On the side of white privilege against Jeantel was Don West's daughter 
Molly, who posted an Instagram photo showing the family enjoying ice 
cream after West's contentious and contemptuous cross-examination of 
Jeantel. Molly West's picture is accompanied with the description, "We 
beat stupidity celebration cones ... #dadkilledit." Kind of reminds me 
of a lynching afterparty.

In response to the smearing of Jeantel, someone posted online a quote by 
James Baldwin that read: "It is not the black child's language that is 
in question; it is not their language that is despised: It is their 
experience."

On the black side of the attack -- perhaps unknowingly injecting 
"light-skin" "high-yella" privilege" into the mix--was Olympian Lolo 
Jones, who's had past public problems with "dark-skinned" black women 
who are more talented runners but ignored by media for reason of their 
complexion. Jones compared Jeantel to Tyler Perry's character "Madea," 
tweeting: "Rachel Jeantel looked so irritated during the 
cross-examination that I burned it on DVD and I'm going to sell it as 
Madea goes to court." Like many others I went to her website, Twitter 
and Facebook pages to post -- /Shame!/

Coming on the heels of the Paula Deen "n-word" blow-up, CNN devoted 
airtime to debate "Does cracker = nigger?"

I laughed sardonically as I told my friend, "A cracker cracks the whip 
that some poor nigger is at the business end of."

I posted the Last Poet's "Niggers are Scared of Revolution" to CNN's Don 
Lemon's Facebook page as an example of one "appropriate" use of the 
word.  I added: Why should blacks (or whites or any other racial or 
ethnic group for that matter) buy into the idea that there's a /word/ 
that has so much "power" that when said by 'anyone' of another 
racial-ethnic group it causes one to take leave of their senses or 
become out of control? Why should a /word/ be a prelude to fight? Have 
the power to make people act against their interest? Provoke a response 
that empowers the stereotype "These people are guided by emotion versus 
reason"? How can a /word/ be an excuse to forgive violence? It can and 
does signal bigotry and if the bigot is one's employer, it can signal 
and unveil discriminatory employment practices. For the racist, that 
word is tantamount to "sub-human" or "having no rights anyone is bound 
to respect." You wanna talk about power? That word has /power./ Banning 
it just gives it /more/ power. I think it's better to teach, "Sticks and 
stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me." That's what I've 
told my kids through the years.

There are some who disagreed with me. One person suggested to me that 
there are such things as "fighting words" that ought to be banned or 
prohibited or a hate speech code of conduct.  On Lemon's show Columbia 
University professor Marc Lamont Hill said it is perfectly fine for 
black people to use the word but not whites. He said, "You just have to 
accept that there are some things in the world, just, at least one 
thing, that you can't do that black people can! That just might be okay."

I was listening to my young neighbor's (twenty-something) music the 
other night: the song "My Nigga" by YG, Young Jeezy & Rich Homie Quan 
(three southern rappers out of Atlanta). To me, the use of the term "my 
nigger" among black people can mean: "I love (or regard) you even though 
others think you're nothing." It's solidarity between "the damned & 
despised." Obviously, for whites, it's hard to be in "the damned & 
despised" group when you're doing all the damning & despising, thus 
whites using the word has been culturally verboten. Still, there are 
plenty of whites, often in the same socio-economic class, who grew up 
around blacks in an intimate way, who faced similar experiences as their 
black neighbors and are called 'nigger' (to their faces) by blacks. They 
take the moniker as a badge of acceptance, though they rarely 
reciprocate. It was even that way when I was growing up. That said, "My 
nigger" can also have a slavery connotation, as in "My boy."

Late in the evening on the 4^th of July I went outside to sit on the 
front porch.  I was drinking a little rum, puffing on a birthday joint, 
just thinking about things.  Things like the trial, "creepy-ass 
cracker(s)," the n-word, the announced death of the Voting Rights Act, 
the split decision on affirmative action, Paula Deen,  politicians 
talking about building a higher, longer wall on the border with Mexico 
and sending a "surge" of 20 or  30 thousand additional troops to guard 
it-- no talk about a northern surge--the black unemployment rate 
continuing to rise and what it was doing to those around me. Just a host 
of things.  It /all /seemed bad.  Just a ton of bullshit, poison and ill 
will, all aimed at black people and people of color in the "colorblind," 
post-racial" "new normal."  It had rained on and off most of the day but 
it cleared up around 9ish. Fireworks and gunshots rang out continuously 
for more than an hour or so. I took it all in from my perch in the 
middle of a very black southern neighborhood. I could hear a helicopter 
in the distance. Folks were back on the grills they had abandoned 
earlier due to the rain. Across the railroad tracks from me (maybe 200 
yards thru the woods and what's left of an old cemetery where blacks 
committed to the state mental asylum were buried) someone had their 
music turned up really, really loud. Cutting thru the smoke, dampness 
and fog of the night was "My Nigga." I'm sitting and laughing out loud 
thinking the "sweet smelling" black folks and white people would love 
this scene. BBQ and marijuana smells mixed together, gunshots, 
helicopter, black neighborhood, music. I'm also thinking that CNN and 
Don Lemon need to come talk to the folk back in the cut.  And then some 
older person must have taken over the DJ duties.  Frankie Beverly and 
Maze singing "Happy Feelings' took over the air and played for long while.

I go back in the house, jump online to see what's in my news feed and I 
saw a /New York Times/ headline on the trial, "Race is an undertone of 
trial..." /"Undertone!"/ Wow. How about "White supremacy and race 
privilege is everything America is?"

People, such as that headline writer, substituting the word "race" for 
"racism" to soften its true meaning and meanness always gets to me.

Drug testing Martin after the killing and not testing Zimmerman is just 
one of many privileges of racism and white supremacy granted to 
Zimmerman before a single charge was filed against him. I watched trial 
video of Zimmerman riding in a cop car after the killing and taking the 
detective on a tour of the crime scene while crafting his lies. No 
handcuffs. Front seat. I'm thinking, "Wow, they'd never let a/ black 
/person to do such a thing."

I believe the Zimmerman trial is of greater racial and civil 
significance for blacks than the O.J. Simpson trial.

First of all, there's no epidemic of aging black ex-football player 
movie stars (allegedly) killing their young white wives and their 
boyfriends.

But there has been a dramatic increase in the number of black males 
killed by whites under "stand your ground" laws. White defendants who 
assert "stand your ground" as a justification for their acts of violence 
are more likely to prevail if the victim is black. Seventy-three percent 
of those who killed a black person faced no penalty compared to 59 
percent of those who killed a white.

Yet in all likelihood, when a black person in Florida claims 'stand your 
ground' as a defense there's a good chance that that police, prosecutors 
and jury don't buy it.  Not only did it not apply to Trayvon Martin, if 
you buy the jury's verdict, there's the story of  Marissa Alexander, the 
31-year-old Florida woman, charged and tried by State Attorney Angela 
Corey, the very same prosecutor who had jurisdiction over the Martin 
case.  Alexander  is serving a 20-year sentence following her conviction 
on three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for firing a 
single shot into a wall near her abusive ex-husband and his two young 
children at their Jacksonville home in 2010.  Alexander says she wasn't 
trying to hurt anyone and that she was standing her ground against a man 
who had beat her on several different occasions. She said that she 
believed she was protected that day under the state's Stand Your Ground 
Law. Corey offered a plea bargain that would have sent her to prison for 
three years, but she rejected it, hoping to convince a jury that she 
simply had been defending herself. It took a jury /12 minutes/ to find 
her guilty. If Alexander's future appeals are unsuccessful, and she 
serves her full 20-year term in prison, her twins will be 31-years-old 
when she is released. Her youngest will be 22.

Years ago someone said to me: "White folk believe that most blacks are 
criminals even if they've haven't ever been charged with a crime or 
haven't done time in jail." As my lawyer friend Efia Nwangaza put it: 
"To a racist, the average cop, and even the courts, most blacks are 
either busted or bustable. They just haven't been caught."  In a 
nutshell, racial profiling takes away the "benefit of a doubt."

It's not so hard to imagine that Zimmerman's not guilty verdict might 
just give any white stranger the ammunition (pun intended), or gumption 
to approach any stranger black man on the street and ask them anything 
they want. Blacks now face a civilian version of the NYPD's dreaded 
"stop and frisk" in states with "Stand Your Ground" laws. it's 
tantamount to deputizing the six million conceal carry permit holders.

It doesn't take much to imagine questions like: /"What are you doing? 
Where are you going? Why are you here? Let's see some id?"/ And what if 
the stranger black man tells his stranger white inquisitor to "back off" 
--- with or without vulgarities, and the white man he doesn't know 
responds in a menacing way or tries to detain him or attempts to lay 
hands on him, and the black fellow fights for his life or something 
other than surrender himself to the stranger, how is it that /he/ 
becomes the criminal and the stranger white man has the right to take 
his life?

It's nullification of the social contract -- "you go your way, I'll go 
my way" between blacks and whites, especially men---that was established 
after Jim Crow.

It's also really not so far-fetched that this nation is publicly 
ruminating that there are some people within its borders, that can do 
nothing more than completely surrender themselves to an entitled 
stranger or the stranger becomes "the victim" and has the right to take 
their lives.

Sounds a lot like how the United States has treated the Iraqis and  
those it has labeled "terrorists."  But then again, as someone said to 
me as we talked about the war on people of color, here and abroad, "To 
call a nigger a terrorist is redundant."

It's reminiscent of slavery and Jim Crow days whereby if a white man was 
walking on a sidewalk and a black person was walking towards him on the 
same sidewalk, the black person had to step into the ditch or road and 
give the white man the /whole/ sidewalk to pass. It was a time when 
"blacks had no rights that any white man was bound to respect." But as 
Vernon Johns, the preacher who preceded Martin Luther King at Dexter 
Avenue Church in Montgomery, once said, "You have to have a license to 
hunt rabbits in the state of Alabama, but niggers are always in season."

I've also spoken with some black folks at various points during this 
tragedy who are quite open about protecting their children, homes and 
themselves. They say, "We got guns, too." They aren't gangbangers. Most 
are working-class, homeowners, prior military, rural, many sort of in 
the vein of Robert Williams, Jr., former president of the North Carolina 
NAACP, who wrote a book called /Negroes With Guns/ about the right of 
self-defense for black families in the south.

One young family man, who is not suppose to have a gun or be around one 
either because he happens to have a couple of drug felonies on his 
record, told me something often said by 2^nd Amendment supporters: 
"Look, if it's about protecting myself or my family and I need or have 
to use a gun I'd rather be judged by 12 of my peers than carried by six."

One other thing that makes the Zimmerman case far more significant than 
Simpson's is that what Zimmerman is accused of, and the police are often 
guilty of, is denying people of color due process and equal treatment 
with their disparate use of official violence. And they're often willing 
to use deadly force even when their lives are not in danger and their 
victims are unarmed. According to the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, a 
black man, woman, or child died at the trigger of law enforcement or 
"the color of law" /every 28 hours/ in 2012. And in most cases, had the 
alleged perpetrator been adjudicated and found guilty of a crime the 
sentence wouldn't have been the death penalty.

That's not to ignore the fact that black people kill other black 
people.  According to the Justice Department, 93 percent of black 
victims were killed by other black people, and about 85 percent of white 
victims were slain by other white people. A majority --- 51 percent --- 
of the black murder victims are young --- between 17 and 29.  
Comparatively, just over a third --- 37 percent --- of white people 
murdered are between the ages of 17 and 29.  That tells us a couple of 
things.  First, blacks don't kill whites and vice-versa, but laws like 
"stand your ground" might change that. And second, we need to deal with 
the issues that create the conditions for societal violence. 
Approximately 46 murders are committed each day in the U.S. and 27 of 
those will be killed by a gun.  That's a total of about 16,700 each 
year.  What we don't need are laws like "Stand Your Ground" that will 
only/ increase/ that number.

As I was talking to some young brothers the other night, they joked that 
"If Zimmerman had killed a white man, they'd drop the 'white' from the 
'white Hispanic' description of him and he'd be just another mistreated 
'Hispanic' instead of being able to pimp off playing white."

If Martin been a female teen of the same age that laid dead in the grass 
(the race of the victim would have also played a part), Zimmerman would 
have been charged with a crime on the spot.

Despite my contempt for Zimmerman -- I still supported the idea that he 
was 'innocent until proven guilty' or as the jury decided 'not guilty.' 
Especially in the face of a criminal justice process that is routinely 
and institutionally unfair to people of color.

Protecting the theory is a good thing. From a progressive framework, the 
system should protect the rights of the accused whether we like the 
defendant or not. And it shouldn't be a system of revenge.

Revenge is the final, worrisome reaction to this trial. All one has to 
do is check out the comments in almost any article about Zimmerman 
posted on black-oriented media outlets and it's clear   that a lot of 
people wish him dead and many have stupidly and publicly offered to kill 
him. Back in the period between the shooting and arrest, former heavy 
weight boxing champ Mike Tyson (who in 1992, was convicted of raping 
Desiree Washington, a beauty pageant contestant, and served 3 years in 
an Indiana prison) offered a death wish for Zimmerman: "...It's a 
disgrace that man hasn't been dragged out of his house and tied to a car 
and taken away. That's the only kind of retribution that people like 
that understand. It's a disgrace that man hasn't been shot yet. Forget 
about him being arrested--the fact that he hasn't been shot yet is a 
disgrace. That's how I feel personally about it."

Most of the death threats are probably not serious but a few very well 
might be.

A young brother was trying to convince me that had it been his child 
murdered, he'd would have gone up in the courtroom after Zimmerman.  I 
told him he was talking nonsense and asked was he willing to harm or 
kill people that did him no harm just to get Zimmerman?  I suggested 
that it would make him as bad or worse than Zimmerman.  Someone else 
asked about the New Black Panthers.  I said: "What they gonna do?  
Provocative pictures with members wearing bulletproof vest standing 
face-to-face with police? What can they do beyond pose?"

One Zimmerman hater wrote: "He (Zimmerman) has proven that he fears 
blacks and will kill them because of that fear. He's a danger to black 
people and blacks would be within their right to shoot him in self-defense."

After the verdict Atlanta Falcons wide receiver Roddy White Tweeted the 
jurors should "kill themselves."  Doubtless he backtracked the next day, 
as did many other players who in anger expressed violent sentiments. 
Which is pretty much what one would expect from employees in the 
"soft-core" (as compared to war or policing) violence industry.

I think Zimmerman should be in jail. Though that would be a /very 
/dangerous place for him.  Still, I do have the compassion to fear for 
his life.  I don't support the death penalty by the government  or by 
revenge seekers.  To me, that's one of the things that being 
/'civilized'/ is all about.

It's very easy to kill a person.  As /Michael Corleone said to Tom Hagen 
in the movie "Godfather II:"/ "...If anything in this life is certain -- 
/if /history has taught us anything -- /it's/ that you /can kill// 
//anybody/."

Worldwide an estimated 520,000 people are murdered each year. That's an 
average of 1,477 per day per day.  Two-fifths of them are young people 
between the ages of 10 and 29, killed by other young people.   That 
doesn't even include those killed in war.  Like those murdered by U.S. 
soldiers in Iraq.  And the deaths of those like 16-year-old Abdulrahman 
al-Awlaki, the son of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American al Qaeda propagandist 
killed by an Obama ordered drone in 2011 isn't recorded as a murder.  
Not so ironically Robert Gibbs, former White House press secretary, 
sounded a lot like the Zimmerman defense attorney's attack on Tracy 
Martin in a failed attempt to paint al-Awlaki as another "irresponsible 
black father."  Gibbs said the Colorado-born teen should have had a 
"more responsible father."  Some might think I'm off topic here, but to 
me, but I mentioned Abdulrahman al-Awlaki only to remind people that 
Obama did the same thing to him as Zimmerman did to Trayvon Martin.  For 
me, he lacks the moral credibility to condemn Zimmerman and the outcome 
of the trial because he condemns strangers to death every Tuesday.

It's easy to kill, but to be civilized is to help people live and to 
seek ways to end animosity and needless killing.  And it's a parent and 
adult's duty to help young people get through the dangerous and stupid 
periods of their lives, where little things can become life altering or 
ending events.  One can't fall into the trap of criminalizing youth or 
youthful behaviors and fads.  Or using blanket stereotypes.  Or fearing 
and wanting to kill someone because they don't /look/ like you.

On the night prior to the verdict my friend Tony dropped by and the 
television was on with the trial coverage playing in the background. 
Tony, who manages a gospel radio network here in South Carolina, has 
twin 13-year-old sons. He relays to me that his sons have kind of 
followed the trial as kids tend to do. I mean, they're not glued to the 
tube but they're watching the process. So Tony says, "Andrew asked me 
'Dad, what's happening with Zimmerman?' And I say it's with the jury. He 
responds, 'We gotta wait?'" Tony continued, "It was then I realized that 
this was shaping their (his sons) reality. They have white friends that 
they hang out with and now all this goes into their mix."

A number of people have called or emailed or stopped by or asked me to 
stop by to help them sort out what they feel.  Black kids have had their 
world shaken up by this verdict.  They understand it wasn't just a court 
case but a referendum on their value as human beings, and they lost.

I was talking to my son as his neighbor was walking up the street with 
his daughter.  They heard our conversation on the decision and stopped.  
He said he had to talk to his daughter, who couldn't have been more than 
10 or 11.  She was visibly sad.  Yet it was beautiful to see a young 
father walking with his young daughter talking about something important 
albeit tragic.  And their stopping to share their experience with my son 
and me was cool as well.  That's been the positive thing coming out of 
this tragedy.  People are talking to one another in a different way. 
Children facing the prospect of early mortality.  Parents responding in 
lots of ways, but /having/ to respond.  And this doesn't just apply to 
blacks.  Yet for the most, blacks are unified on the wrongness of it 
all.  It's white people who are divided.

As I struggled to finish this record of observations, a young father  
stopped by my house late in the evening.  His 14-year-old son in 
response to the verdict said, "Daddy that's messed up. What we gonna 
do?"  The young father said he was trying to figure out a way to make 
his boy feel more secure and able to take care of himself.  He says he 
is putting his son in a self-defense class and enrolling him in a gun 
training and safety class.

As I said from the start, I have a rock hard bias against Zimmerman. But 
my anger isn't just about him. It's about the repulsive and dangerous 
swirl of racism that is in the air right now in America. It's shaping 
future generations in a very bad way.

Fulton and Martin plan to file a wrongful death civil case.  I did a 
radio show with their attorney Benjamin Crump after the verdict in which 
he reminded listeners that the case would be heard in Seminole County, 
in the very same courthouse.  In the meantime, as Zimmerman supporters 
scream about double jeopardy, the NAACP and others are pressing the 
Department of Justice to bring a federal civil rights case against the 
freed killer. Al Sharpton is trying to corral the rage over the verdict 
in support of the 50^th Anniversary March on Washington in late August.  
I hope this isn't more of 'the best way to control the opposition is to 
lead it..."  The last Trayvon Martin rally I attended in Columbia was 
organized by black Tea Partiers and the main speakers were a black 
democratic representative who supported stand your ground and a young 
wannabe politician who at the time was running for office and using 
Martin's death as a platform for his own aims.

Stevie Wonder has said he'll no longer play states with stand your 
ground laws but that will  mean he'll be mostly playing in Europe . At 
least thirty-three other states in addition to Florida (and counting) 
now have the same law (also called 'Line In The Sand,' 'Make My Day,' 
'Kill at Will' or 'No Duty To Retreat') language and all.  Those other 
states are -- Alabama, Arizona, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii,  Idaho, 
Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, 
Mississippi, Montana, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, 
North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma,  Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South 
Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Washington, West 
Virginia and Wisconsin.  So instead of not going to the states, he ought 
to come in and help mobilize against the law -- not as an entertainer 
but as a citizen.

Doubtless, racism is a hard nut to crack. Yet at the very least, maybe 
the groundswell of public pressure in support of Trayvon's parents 
Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin that forced Zimmerman's indictment will 
spread beyond his trial into a grassroots state-by-state movement to 
repeal "Stand Your Ground" laws.  And as people organize against stand 
your ground, maybe they'll stay organized to take on what happening with 
voting rights, Medicaid funding, aid to the poor and a host of issues 
that we should have been fighting off or fighting for.

One can hope.

And right on cue. The day after the verdict, hundreds of miles away from 
Florida at Benny's Burritos on Greenwich Avenue and 12th in New York 
City. It was reported that a /drunken,// /white, Goldman Sachs employee, 
"angry at both his job and his dissolving marriage" was passing a black 
couple eating at a burrito shop when he stumbled into their table. 
Douglas Reddish, 25, tried to help the man regain his balance, when the 
drunken man lashed out at him./ "This nigger wants to fight me!" /And,/ 
"You niggers are why I lost my job."// /Shortly after that, Reddish 
punched the white guy in the face, knocked him out cold. The man hit his 
head on the curb. Paramedics arrived and rushed the man to Beth Israel 
Medical Center with brain trauma. Reddish took off after the assault, 
but was later arrested. He was arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court for 
misdemeanor assault. He was released on his own recognizance.  The man 
remains in critical condition--as does America.

/*Kevin Alexander Gray* is a civil rights organizer in South Carolina 
and author of Waiting for Lightning to Strike! The Fundamentals of Black 
Politics 
<http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/CounterPunch_Books.html> (CounterPunch/AK 
Press) and a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of 
Illusion 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1849351104/counterpunchmaga>. He 
can be reached at kagamba at bellsouth.net <mailto:kagamba at bellsouth.net>./

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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