Martin case continued...

I suppose that the fact that I am on the “wrong” side of the Trayvon Martin issue makes me a pariah in certain circles, but what I am guilty of in reality is that I recognized in time that I had been conned into believing the initial blast of this story, while most people still haven’t discovered that they have been fooled as well. It’s easy to be self-righteous about a very simplistic story line, but no problem is as simple as “black and white. ” Many people seem to have found it convenient to view one side’s propaganda as their own, because it allows them to engage in mendacious self-congratulation on their sense of “justice,” or at least on this one occasion. It is easy for whites to get behind blacks playing racial politics because the “most hated man in America” conveniently happens to be a “white” Hispanic—which ties in “nicely” with the current anti-immigrant rhetoric and supposed brown vs. black strife, which of course only benefits whites insofar as it exists. And while Latinos are characterized as vermin and pests by the media and public officials with no redeeming value to society (see Pat Buchanan), inasmuch as blacks in this country are frequently subject to insensitive examinations of supposed “pathologies,” this is counterbalanced by recognition of social, economic and environmental causes and effects. Other racial groups seem to be entirely immune from examination of cultural or racial weaknesses; the recent news about a man of Korean descent, One L. Goh, killing seven nursing students at a college in Oakland is eerily similar to the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, when 33 people were shot to death by Seung-Hui Cho, who was also Korean. I cannot help but to observe that some Asians of the mainly lighter-skinned “ethnicities,” like those of Japanese/Korean/Chinese extraction, treat strangers (even Anglos) as if they are something sticking to the bottom of their shoes; but there seems to be no desire to apply a race-based pathology on them as on other racial or “ethnic” groups. This is no doubt due to their status as a “model” minority, and the lack of media attention of the fact that one-in-nine are in the country illegally.

Latinos, on the other hand, are frequently seen as little more than a useless appendage on the American family tree (there are bad apples in every basket, but being a self-flagellant has its limits). Take, for example, something I saw on Comedy Central’s Daniel Tosh show on Tuesday. Tosh makes a living digging-up unfunny videos on the Internet of people injuring themselves while doing numbskull stunts. Occasionally he takes a stab at “serious” commentary; on this particular day, he showed himself standing next to what appeared to be an eight-year-old black youth wearing the same color and style of jacket with “hoodie” that Martin wore. I’ve read comments on the Internet by people who claimed that Zimmerman “beat-up” a “kid” half his size, a gross misperception perpetuated by media propaganda imagery (and failure to investigate the facts), and Tosh was reinforcing this false image. Worse, he revealed his own prejudices when while showing a video of a “Mexican” being tossed from a horse, he “joked” that the injured party should be shot—“The Mexican, not the horse.” Of course such insensitive attitudes don’t surprise me; after all, when Luis Ramirez died of head trauma after being beaten by several white teenagers in a Shenandoah, Pennsylvania park, the prevailing attitude in the town was “If he didn’t want to be killed, he shouldn’t have been here.” Although the perpetrators used “ethnic” slurs, it couldn’t be “determined” if the incident was “ethnically motivated.” Almost no one in the town—including law enforcement—had any real interest in seeing that justice prevailed. A local jury acquitted the culprits; the Justice Department seemed equally indifferent to Ramirez’s civil rights being violated until Gov. Ed Rendell pressed them on the issue. An FBI investigation discovered that the town’s police chief and several officers engaged in a systematic cover-up and witness intimidation; one the officers was apparently in a relationship with the mother of one the accused. Some people would use this case as an example in which to condemn Zimmerman, but the cases bear no similarity; if there is a “cover-up,” it is the one being conducted by the Martin camp and the media. It is interesting to note that if Zimmerman had not been armed, he might have ended up like Ramirez.

While Tosh was aiming for the low-blow, over on MSNBC Lawrence O’Donnell, who took over the fired Keith Olbermann’s slot on the network, tried to take the “high” road—except that it was more like the slime road. O’Donnell is a commentator who can usually be counted upon to flout the corporate media line and disseminate the truth being withheld from public scrutiny by the right. I usually agree with him; but in the Martin matter, he is as sightless and mendacious as anyone who has jumped on the Martin bandwagon. Perhaps more so; his demonization of Zimmerman without even the fig-leaf of fairness is propaganda Joseph Goebbels would have admired. Hell, he might even have hired O’Donnell as his protégé. After a days of raging over the Martin case, last week O’Donnell announced that Zimmerman’s legal adviser, Craig Sonner, would have a chance to “answer” for his client. But Sonner apparently decided against it at the last moment, and walked out of the Orlando studio. O’Donnell accused Sonner of cowardice, claiming that he was “terrified, so terrified of coming on this show that he has literally run away… afraid to face the questioning he would face on this show. Watch out for wherever Craig Sonner shows up next on television,” opined O’Donnell, “because wherever he shows up next on television has an obligation to put him through serious questioning about what he’s doing and what he knows, and the contradictions in the things he’s already said on television.”

It is more likely that Sonner realized that O’Donnell was going to be adversarial and had no intention of give him a fair hearing. Fortunately, when the “facts” do eventually come out, it will be O’Donnell and those like him, who refuse to examine all of the facts with a measured dispassion, who will be obliged to answer for themselves. Of course, what the media should be doing is disseminating the truth now—not their own prejudices and Martin camp half-truths and mistruths—in order to prepare the public for the “shocking” revelation that what they have been led to believe is not true at all. The media must do this in order to prevent riots and the potential spilling of blood by angry mobs who have been fed a continuous stream of malicious propaganda—much like the Duke lacrosse scandal. The media won’t be able to wimp-out like Nancy Grace on the day charges were dismissed against the accused in that case.

It seems that the more I investigate the Trayvon Martin case, the angrier I become at the media’s bad behavior. There is that edited 911 call that made it appear that Zimmerman “volunteered” the information that Martin was black—“proof” that he was a “racist”—when the unedited call made it clear that Zimmerman was responding to a question by the dispatcher. There is the audio analysis “commissioned” by an Orlando newspaper that claims that because there was “only” a 48 percent match with Zimmerman’s voice rather than 90 percent, the person who cried for help “couldn’t” be him; I’m sure his lawyer’s experts will point out that it would be difficult to achieve a “match” based on a “normal” tone spoken into a cell phone to a non-normal tone from a considerable distance (interestingly, Zimmerman’s voice is “high,” much like the one heard yelling for help in the cell phone generated audio—hardly a “master” recording). The Orlando media’s “experts” did, however, admit that they could not verify that it was Martin’s voice calling for help without a voice sample. Martin’s supporters are also grasping in thin air by claiming that police video indicates that Zimmerman had no sign of being attacked; they seem to miss the fact that a police officer is seen looking at the back of Zimmerman’s head, where appears to be a line of clotting blood.

What does the police report say? The arresting officer observed that Zimmerman’s “back appeared to be wet and was covered with grass, as if he had been laying on his back on the ground. Zimmerman was also bleeding from the nose and back of his head.” The officer also stated that while fire department paramedics were attending to Zimmerman’s wounds, he overheard him say “I was yelling for someone to help me, but no one would help me.” The officer states that at no time was Zimmerman directly questioned until after he arrived at the police station. That no one would help him seems to include all these white women doing the talk show circuit self-serving condemning him. That Zimmerman was treated at the scene of the shooting also suggests why there were no “obvious” signs of injury in the video. Subsequently, the autopsy report on Martin showed no marks on his body that indicated he had been in a fight. Given both the police observations and those of the witness named “John” who was only yards away from the scene, this can only mean that Martin was solely the aggressor, whose unexpectedly violent response to Zimmerman’s attentions in large measure dictated his fate.

There are other troubling matters. The Martin camp asks why Zimmerman wasn’t drug tested (apparently an effort to obfuscate the fact that Martin was a drug user). In the police video, there is no indication that he was impaired; he simply complied to all orders and behaved in a normal fashion, given the circumstances. Zimmerman’s expression could only be interpreted as of someone who was thinking “What have I done?” There also has been much made about his arrest for allegedly striking a police officer in 2005; what the national media doesn’t mention is that same year Zimmerman was the victim of an assault while performing security at a party, and then robbed at gunpoint at a Chilli’s restaurant. I don’t know if these incidents are related in some way, but believe me, I know what feels like to be a crime victim and being treated like a criminal.

(I might as well tell this story again. There was a time when I had the frequent attention of Kent police, even though they had no empirical reason to do so save my “ethnicity.” I am not a criminal, but I have been a victim of a crime three times in Kent—once a stolen wallet, another time an attempt to steal my laptop, which I retrieved after chasing down the thief across the Kent Public Library parking lot, and when I was mugged early one morning on my way to work by someone who looked like “The Rock,” Dwayne Johnson, two summers ago. The mugger mistakenly ripped my Port ID badge from my neck, apparently thinking it was an I-Pod because I was wearing earphones. I was further distressed by two (black) women in the airport ID access office who treated me as if I was liar (if the ID was merely “lost” I would have to pay a $250 replacement, quite a chunk out of my meager pay). I lost nearly two weeks of pay because I refused to confess that I had “lost” my badge. They claimed that the required a police report, which I supplied them, but they insisted it wasn’t sufficient. I lost an additional week of work because the police officer who filed the incident report was on vacation for the next week, or so I was told. When the officer reported back on duty, she expressed mystification why the ID access employees refused to accept the police report. When I gave ID access employers the officer’s phone number so that they could explain to her what else they needed, they called my supervisor instead. When the supervisor arrived, he took me into a room and had me to repeat what had happened that morning; he accepted my story, and informed me that my ID badge had been mailed back anonymously a week ago. When I “discussed” the matter with him, and he eventually agreed that it made more sense that whoever sent it back probably had good reason not to identify himself).

I also find particularly irritating the “debate” about the difference between “race” and “ethnicity,” which is being used to deny that the unfair treatment of Zimmerman constitutes racism. Much has been made about Zimmerman’s alleged “racism,” but the facts remain that in the original, unedited, 911 call, Zimmerman makes it plain that he is reporting a person who was acting “like he was on drugs” and looking at houses in a “suspicious” manner. Zimmerman was too far away to make a positive determination of race, telling the dispatcher (when he was asked) that the subject “looked” black. Later in the conversation, Zimmerman merely confirmed that he was black; there was nothing inherently “racist” about this. If anything, Martin’s own subsequent actions suggested a racial motivation against someone he regarded as "uppity" or "inferior." The fact is, according to a story in The Miami Herald, Zimmerman was well-liked by blacks who knew him: "One black neighbor recently interviewed said she knew everything in the media was untrue and that she would trust George with her life. Another black neighbor said that George was the only one, black or white, who came and welcomed her to the community, offering any assistance he could provide. Recently, I met two black children George invited to a social event. I asked where they met George. They responded that he was their mentor." How does this mesh with the image that Al Sharpton is trying to push? Or rather, why should we be surprised by that? Some of us are still trying to recover from being duped by the Tawana Brawley and Duke lacrosse hoaxes.

The hypocrisy is almost too much bear. Marcos Breton of the Sacramento Bee—a self-described “light-skinned Hispanic” who looks like your typical Anglo Caucasian, and your typical “Hispanic” token—wrote in that newspaper that Latinos cannot excuse their “racism” because of their “ethnicity.” Is he certain he is not talking about himself? A black commentator, Edward Wyckoff Williams, complained about the “ignorance” concerning what it “means” to be Latino; all he managed to do is display it himself:

“First, despite so much ignorance about what it means to be Latino or Hispanic, it is imperative to note this is an ethnicity, not a race. Hispanics can be of African, Asian, European or Indigenous descent. To that end, "Hispanics" have never been a monolithic, identifiable group.”

Fine—except for one thing: White, African, Asian and Indigenous descent are all separate racial categories. If he went to any Latin American country, he would discovery that no one regards themselves as “Latino” or “Hispanic”—but Colombian, Peruvian, Panamanian, whatever. And he would find the same racial divisions in those countries as there are in this country; Breton should know this quite well, if he was even half honest with himself (which I doubt). When people observe Latinos in this country, they are basing their stereotypes on their racial make-up and skin color—not their “ethnicity.” Ethnicity defines variations within racial groups—not outside of them. Europeans can be described as an “ethnicity” per their country of origin; the various Asian peoples are also “ethnicities.” But the original inhabitants of the new world were a “race” distinct from the Caucasians that essentially stole their lands; they were only an “ethnicity” within the racial group they belonged to. “Mestizos” are mixed-race, but they are defined by those looking in by their dominant racial trait, which tends to be indigenous people—thus a “race” separate from Caucasian; to call them “white” would be akin to calling Barack Obama “white.” I am sorry to say that yes, Mr. Williams (and your colleague Trymaine Lee at the Huffington Post, who is trying to construct a “history of violence” surrounding Zimmerman out of hearsay that suggests only that he showed his temper when frustrated), if you choose to treat Zimmerman without any regard to examining all of the facts dispassionately, then you can be accused of doing so out of racism (by the way, I’ve encountered some calls to Latinos to remember this effort to demonize Zimmerman by the black community come election time; personally, I think that this would be a short-sighted response).

Another disturbing trend: Why is Zimmerman being accused of being an “aggressor” merely because he followed Martin? I’ve been followed many a time by “security” personnel; were they following me because of racial profiling? Probably; I don’t like it, but I’m not going to make things worse by expressing my displeasure in physical way. Last Sunday I was walking across an empty parking lot on my way the bus stop to go to work—like I’ve done four times a week for four years. On this occasion I was spotted by some bozo driving in a miniature cart; I thought he was just going to take a look at me and keep going. But he didn’t; he stopped and asked me where I was going. I told him I was going to work and kept on walking, which I knew would annoy him. He turned his cart around and followed me; he asked me if I “wanted a ride,” and I told him to bugger off. I knew he was following me as I walked on, but I ignored him and kept walking; it would be a mistake to engage him in conversation—I needed to keep moving until he was satisfied I wasn’t going to be a “problem” for him. But I made my point: Sure he was an annoying jerk, but I wasn’t going to show him that I was intimidated by him. And as long as he didn’t put his hands on me or physically obstruct my progress, I didn’t consider what he was doing to be “aggressive.”

But despite the fact that the media continues to insist that the “evidence” is “contradictory,” the reality is that as best as can be determined, the facts suggest that Martin was the sole aggressor. Again, the police report on Zimmerman’s condition and Martin’s lack of marks suggestive of being struck would seem to confirm the version of events by Zimmerman’s and the witness named “John.” Aerial photographs of the neighborhood pinpointing the locations events show that Zimmerman first saw Martin from a distance of about a hundred yards or so near the clubhouse. Zimmerman's conversation with the dispatcher indicates he is sitting in his vehicle observing Martin’s actions: “He’s just staring at houses,” and “Now he’s staring at me.” Fifteen seconds later, “He’s coming toward me,” and “He’s coming to check me out.” Zimmerman’s is parked at the bend in the road; rather than following hip until this point, Zimmerman is indicating that he is stationary, and that Martin is walking toward his vehicle and looking at him. If anyone seems to be “intimidated” by the actions of the other, it is Zimmerman. The next thing we hear is “Shit, he’s running.” A few seconds later we hear a truck door closing. Zimmerman tells the dispatcher he believes he is heading toward the “back entrance.” It is only at this point that Zimmerman follows Martin, but only to inform the dispatcher where he is headed; Zimmerman runs to the back entrance but did not see Martin. Zimmerman stated that he walked back to his truck, where he had told police they could find him when they arrived. Where was Martin? Was he hiding, or was he was in or near his father’s girlfriend’s townhouse about 100 yards further down? Is Martin’s girlfriend, who claims to have been talking to him on her cell phone at this time, not telling the “whole” truth about what Martin told her—like, say, he was going back to “kick his ass?” If “John” is telling the truth—and there is certainly more reason to believe his account than the other “witnesses” since the denouement occurred right outside his front door—then it is plain Martin was looking for a physical confrontation, and sucker-punched Zimmerman when he didn’t like his answer to “Do you have a problem?”

And finally, why does the media keep referring to Zimmerman as a "killer"—as if that was his intention? The only reliable witness states that he saw Martin on top of Zimmerman beating his head into the pavement, with Zimmerman shouting for the help that no one would give him. How would you have reacted if you had a means to defend yourself, if you thought your life was in danger? You wouldn't want to use the gun, but in the heat of a frightening encounter with a 6'3" "kid” who was beating on you, could you honestly say you would have acted differently? Uneven encounters like this happen countless times every day; we only hear about the rare times when a gun is actually used as an “equalizer.” You could, of course, do as I do: I own no weapon and do not wish to; to “protect” myself, I avoid human contact whenever possible.