The Seattle Times misfires again, presenting so-called "environmentalist" Cordelia Scaife May as a gender “icon”

Some people might remember the “Just Say Julie” show when MTV used to be good. Well, maybe not, but there was an episode where Julie Brown suits up as an environmental “superhero,” and dispenses with polluters and litterbugs with all the subtly of a blowtorch: “Of course I’m crazy—that’s why they call me ‘Eco-Gal’.” The reputation of environmentalists have run the gamut from amateur nature buffs, concerned scientists, politicians looking for an angle, advocacy organizations, “direct action” crusaders, and so-called “eco-terrorists.” Other groups have more subtle—and more sinister—agendas behind their environmentalist façade. A few days ago, the Seattle Times—which never passes-up an opportunity to publish a story prominently that extols the virtues of a woman of power and means—printed a story above the front page cutline featuring  one Cordelia Scaife May, who died years ago but is apparently still newsworthy. Unfortunately for the Times, it didn’t read the fine print in the LA Times story, although admittedly the author only skimmed the surface of the truth about Scaife May.

Scaife May has been variously praised as a “philanthropist,” which is about the best that can be said about someone born into extreme wealth and hadn’t worked a useful hour in her life. She was the daughter of Alan Scaife and Mellon banking heiress Sarah Mellon, and inherited $800 million of the vast family fortune. Scaife May’s equally indolent brother Richard Mellon Scaife is a chip off the politically far-right family block as well; Scaife  is given to crude language (in 1981 he told a Wall Street Journal reporter inquiring about his funding of “New  Right” causes "You fucking Communist cunt, get out of here"), far-right conspiracy theories (he owns a large share of the far-right paranoid-fantasy Internet site Newsmax, which habitually tells us that the next impeachment-worthy scandal about to befall Barack Obama is only days away), and has given extensively to far-right causes—particularly to groups that the Southern Poverty Law Center has identified as anti-immigrant hate groups (FAIR, NumbersUSA, Center For Immigration Studies).  

Scaife May’s own influences include Margaret Sanger, whose “population control” ideas were influenced by “scientific” racism and eugenics, which were also espoused by Scaife May’s good friend John Tanton, an “environmentalist”-turned-white supremacist, whose anti-immigrant beliefs are based solely on ugly racial stereotypes. She gave generously to the Pioneer Fund and even distributed its Nazified literature;  according to its website, eugenics and "race purity" are legitimate fields of research, and “However harshly today we may judge support for policies such as sterilization of those deemed to be ‘unfit,’ prohibition of racial intermarriage, and severe restrictions on immigration — it is wrong to equate these ideas with ‘Nazism,' gas chambers, and some of the worst mass murders, war crimes, and crimes against humanity ever committed." 

In other words, Nazi racial philosophy was “correct”—but the Fund just doesn’t want to be associated with all of its “methods” for carrying it out. 

While some of Scaife May's “philanthropy”—most notably through her COLCOM Foundation—is “legitimate,” that has been mostly for “pet” projects with only local application. Her long-term “vision” was almost exclusively in the area of “population control,” which she meant to be immigration control, and specifically immigration by “inferior” races—who allegedly are not as environmentally “sound” as wealthy white people who are most responsible for environmental and resource destruction. 

Scaife May's  fascist friend Tanton at one point expressed doubt about whether racial minorities, if they became the "majority" and whites the "minority,"  would share white people's environmental "values."  Of course, white folks have no one to blame but themselves for their procreation difficulties, but then again I never thought the world was worse off with fewer Hitler Youth. One may note with no small amount of irony that it is the white Right that is most opposed to environmental “values” and protection; but then again, racism and environmentalism has had a long history of entanglement—even within such established organizations as the Sierra Club. 

In fact white supremacists have always seen environmentalists as “natural” allies. The SPLCenter has compiled an interesting timeline detailing the historical record; here are some of the “highlights”—in which Scaife May’s best buddy Tanton is a recurring character: 

1968

The environmentalist Sierra Club (SC) publishes The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich, who was encouraged to undertake the project by David Brower, a longtime SC executive director. The book, defining population as an environmental issue and suggesting coercion be used in underdeveloped countries to depress fertility, surpasses Rachel Carson's landmark 1962 work Silent Spring to become the best-selling ecology book of the 1960s. Also published in 1968 is ecologist Garrett Hardin's famous Malthusian essay, "The Tragedy of the Commons." Hardin is a believer in eugenics (the "science" of selective breeding aimed at producing better humans) whose research is backed by the racist grant-maker Pioneer Fund (PF). The essay concludes, "Freedom to breed will bring ruin to all."

June 1970

Michigan environmentalist John Tanton attends the First National Congress on Optimum Population and the Environment in Chicago, where he meets population-control activists including Ehrlich and Hardin. 

1971

Tanton becomes chairman of the SC's National Population Committee, where he will serve until 1975. Also in the early 1970s, Tanton is active in his hometown Petoskey, Mich., chapter of the SC and other environmental groups.

1977

Tanton quits ZPG (“Zero Population Growth”) after the group moves away from treating immigration as a major cause of population growth.

May 5-6, 1978

The SC urges the federal government to examine the impact of immigration policies on population trends and environmental resources. It argues that each region of the world must achieve a balance between population and resources.

1979

Tanton founds the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) with the help of other former ZPG members angered by ZPG's lack of interest in immigration restriction.

1980

SC officials testify to the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Reform that it is "obvious that the numbers of immigrants the United States accepts affects our population size" and adds that it is an "important question how many immigrants the United States wants to accept."

1986

Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS) is founded by former members of the California chapter of ZPG. Unlike ZPG, CAPS blames high immigration levels for ravaging California's environment. On its board are Otis Graham, a close Tanton friend, and UCLA astronomy professor Ben Zuckerman. An emeritus board member is David Brower, the SC's first executive director. In later years, CAPS will accept funding from the PF, which supports studies linking race and intelligence.

March 30, 1988

Tanton writes Gregory Curtis of the far-right Cordelia Scaife May Foundation regarding immigrants' purported lack of environmental values. "What will happen when [the white population] goes into minority status, and the groups that comprise the new coalition majorities don't share the same [environmental] values?" Tanton wonders. "Will all the gains be lost in the twenty-first century, when there is no longer a majority to defend them in the legislature?"

September 1988

Tanton's 1986 WITAN memos are leaked to The Arizona Republic in the midst of a battle in Arizona over a law that would mandate that all government documents be written in English. At the time, Tanton is head of U.S. English (USE), which is backing the proposal. The memos warn of a coming "Latin onslaught" and fret that high Latino birth rates will lead "the present majority to hand over its political power to a group that is simply more fertile." Tanton also asks if Latinos will "bring with them the tradition of the mordida [bribe], the lack of involvement in public affairs." Arnold Schwarzenegger and Walter Cronkite both quit the USE board over the memos' racially inflammatory language, as does executive director Linda Chavez, a conservative commentator. Tanton resigns from USE.

Spring 1989

The SC issues its strongest immigration-restriction policy statement to date, saying, "Immigration to the United States should be no greater than that which will permit achievement of population stabilization in the United States." It adds: "Sierra Club statements on immigration will always make the connection between immigration, population increase in the U.S., and the environmental consequences thereof." But the SC says it is interested only in the numbers of immigrants, not who they are.

1994

CA prop 187 The People of California find and declare as follows: That they have suffered and are suffering economic hardship caused by the presence of illegal immigrants in this state. That they have suffered and are suffering personal injury and damage caused by the criminal conduct of illegal immigrants in this state. That they have a right to the protection of their government from any person or persons entering this country unlawfully.

Feb. 24, 1996

The SC board abandons its restrictionist 1989 policy, opting to "take no position on immigration levels or on policies governing immigration into the United States," and forbidding anyone speaking in the club's name to call for immigration reduction as a way to reach U.S. population stabilization. The board refuses a straight up-or-down vote on the resolution, instead adding to that year's internal SC ballot a proposal affirming the statement and calling for action against the "root causes of global population problems." That decision spawns a countermovement by SC members who propose a resolution that calls for a "reduction in net immigration."

Early 1997

Carrying Capacity Network (CCN) and the especially hard-line anti-immigration group Americans for Immigration Control (AIC) sponsor two conferences that bring together environmentalists and anti-immigration activists. After one, Eric Draper, a senior vice president at NAS, says he "was uncomfortable" with the tone of a FAIR speaker and tells a reporter that "I think the attempt to marry the environment with immigration is a very hard sell and I don't think most people will buy it."

August 1997

Representatives of 40 smaller environmental organizations — groups like LA Earth First! and Friends of the Sea Otter — reportedly gather in Estes Park, Colo., along with openly bigoted groups like the California Coalition for Immigration Reform (CCIR) and Voice of Citizens Together (both of which are later listed as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center, or SPLC). Together, the groups form the Alliance for Stabilizing America's Population, or ASAP! The event, organized by PEB, features speeches by former Sen. Gaylord Nelson, University of Colorado emeritus physics professor Albert Bartlett, and syndicated columnist Georgie Anne Geyer, all close Tanton friends. ASAP! calls for a five-year ceiling on immigration at 100,000 a year and alleges, contrary to well-settled law, that the 14th Amendment does not guarantee citizenship to children born to undocumented workers.

October 1997

The Detroit Free Press reports that Tanton and SC board member Dave Foreman, co-founder of EarthFirst!, are introducing a proposed SC anti-immigration policy for a direct vote by the entire membership. Anne Ehrlich, whose husband Paul wrote The Population Bomb, officially sponsors the measure. In the next year, advocates will gather enough signatures to get it on the SC's internal ballot.

Dec. 3, 1997

The SC's Pope tells the Lewiston [Idaho] Morning Tribune that the Ehrlich proposal "is not America at its best. It's America at its worst. And for the Sierra Club to be dragged into this kind of cesspool is very unfortunate."

1998

NUSA releases a video, "Immigration by the Numbers: An Environmental Choice," that is narrated by Monique Miller of Wild Earth (a group that later disappears). In the film, Miller blames sprawl on immigrants.

February 1998

The SC's 550,000 members receive ballots asking them if they support "Alternative A," requiring the SC to advocate ending population growth, in part by restricting immigration, or "Alternative B," which reaffirms the SC's 1996 policy of neutrality on immigration. Alternative A, which also calls for no more than 200,000 immigrants to be admitted annually, is supported by Kuper, Foreman, Nelson, Paul Erhlich, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society leader Paul Watson, Rainforest Action leader Randy Hayes and Worldwatch Institute leader Lester Brown.

April 25, 1998

After a heated campaign featuring charges of "the greening of hate," the SC announces its members have voted 60%-40% against changing the club's neutral stance on immigration (although just 13% of SC members voted), a position also supported by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the NAS and Friends of the Earth. Still, nearly 30,000 people vote for the anti-immigration position. SC Executive Director Pope says "overpopulation is, without question, a fundamental cause of the world's ills," but that a vote in favor of Alternative A would mean that the SC "would be perceived as assisting people whose motivations are racist."

April 2001

Changing tactics again, SUSPS gets a statement on the annual SC ballot that blames sprawl on population growth, which for SUSPS is mostly driven by immigration. At the same time, Zuckerman, backed by SUSPS, runs for the board. Both Zuckerman and the ballot proposal are defeated.

August 2001

SUSPS Chairman Bill Elder testifies to the U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims, blaming an "immigration boom" for damaging the environment. Also testifying in the same vein are Frank Morris, a FAIR board member and former executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, and David Pimentel, a Cornell professor of entomology who is also on the board of CCN.

Fall 2003

SUSPS announces a major push to win an SC board majority opposed to immigration. The group endorses Robert van de Hoek, three-time Colorado governor Richard Lamm (who joined the SC earlier in the year), Kim McCoy, Morris and Pimentel. Lamm and Morris both serve on the board of FAIR, while Pimentel is on the CCN board. Pimentel is interviewed by Tanton's The Social Contract.

September 2003

Nativist groups start alerting backers about the upcoming SC elections. The Social Contract urges supporters to join the SC in time vote for those concerned with "endless U.S. population growth." The National Immigration Alert List urges followers to vote for directors "who are concerned about the environmental consequences of our immigration-driven U.S. population growth."

Oct. 21, 2003

Citing notices in the nativist press, the SPLC's Mark Potok writes to SC President Larry Fahn to warn of a "hostile takeover attempt" by anti-immigration forces.

January 2004

Zuckerman sends fellow SC board members an article from the virulently anti-immigrant VDARE.com website that claims Latinos are spreading disease and crime in the U.S., and that "Hispandering politicians" are allowing this to happen. During the same month, Barbara Coe encourages members of her CCIR, listed by the SPLC as a hate group, to join the SC. (In 1998, Coe made a similar effort, later claiming that 6,500 of her members joined the SC and voted for "Alternative A," the proposed nativist policy, even though she then told a reporter she was no "tree-hugger.")

Jan. 8, 2004

SC member and virulent nativist Brenda Walker, a contributor to Tanton's The Social Contract, asks VDARE.com readers to "join the Sierra Club NOW and have your vote influence this debate." She adds, "The prize is enormous." 

2007

The Sprawl City website goes up, focusing on "how uncontrolled immigration levels threaten America's environmental stability." In particular, immigrants are blamed for creating sprawl. Registered to NUSA, the site says it relies on research by NUSA leader Beck and Kolankiewicz.

2008

The ATB website is inaugurated. Don Weeden, brother of Alan Weeden and another principal of the family foundation that bankrolls both major nativist groups and environmental organizations, tells a CIS panel that the ATB will take on the population consequences of immigration to the U.S. environment. The ATB website is run by Elder. Another ATB member is Colorado State University philosophy professor Philip Cafaro.

June 2008

Full-page ads appear in The New York Times, The Nation, Harper's Magazine and other publications seen as liberal, signed by a new group calling itself America's Leadership Team for Long Range Population-Immigration-Resource Planning (ALT). The group is a coalition of five existing organizations — CAPS, NUSA, FAIR, TSC and AICF (the last three are listed as hate groups by the SPLC, and all five have received funding from Tanton). "We're the nation's leading experts on population and immigration trends and growth," boasts one of the ads. Pitched to environmentalists, the ads claim that an immigration-fueled population boom will dramatically worsen traffic congestion and destroy pristine land. One shows a highway clogged with vehicles above the caption, "One of America's Most Popular Pastimes." The other depicts a bulldozer clearing forest above the words, "One of America's Best Selling Vehicles." They are designed by Davis & Co., which FAIR pays $983,802 in 2008 and $348,442 in 2007, according to its tax returns.

Jan. 21, 2010

NUSA's Beck, who describes himself as an environmentalist, speaks on a panel, "Perverse Incentives, Subsidies, and Tax Code Impediments to a Sustainable Economy," at The New Green Economy conference sponsored by the National Council for Science and the Environment. 

Feb. 26, 2010

Mixing environmental with "cultural" concerns, FAIR issues a revealing statement: "Immigration policy must be limited to conserve our environment, open space, and natural resources. It should enhance our national culture, not radically alter or Balkanize it."

March 2010

PFIR releases "From Big to Bigger: How Mass Immigration and Population Growth Have Exacerbated America's Ecological Footprint," by Kolankiewicz, who now serves on PFIR's board of advisors. Kolankiewicz argues that "immigration is increasing America's Ecological Footprint, pushing our country deeper into ecological deficit," and laments environmentalists' scant interest in the issue. He writes that "the Environmental Establishment dropped its advocacy and retreated into uncomfortable silence and abject denial on U.S. population."

As you can see, environmentalism and racism—cloaked in the guise of immigration—is sometimes hard to distinguish, despite the efforts of some legitimate environmental organizations to distance themselves from the more radical ideas. It is interesting to note that China—which has four times the population of the U.S.—has a land mass of similar size. Thus the only explanation for the rhetoric is white fear of being a “minority,” although if they have anything to fear, it is a consequence of their own attitudes. That of Cordelia Scaife May, unfortunately, continues beyond the grave, as those white supremacists and xenophobes she placed in charge of her foundations are merely carrying out her wishes.

What happens "After Trayvon"? Current rhetoric of denial suggests more of the same

I was sitting in the lobby of  a dentist’s office when I observed a recent issue of TIME magazine on a table. “After Trayvon” it asks rhetorically. If it is a question, the answer is that we’ve been asking a variation of this question for fifty years. In 1961 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. asked the question to a church congregation in St. Louis:

Do you know that Negroes are 10 percent of the population of St. Louis and are responsible for 58 percent of its crimes? We’ve got to face that. And we’ve got to do something about our moral standards…We know that there are many things wrong in the white world, but there are many things wrong in the black world, too. We can’t keep on blaming the white man. There are things we must do for ourselves.

If Dr. King knew Trayvon Martin and the criminal-in-training that he was—despite the fact that Martin had the benefit of a comfortable middle class existence—he would almost certainly condemn his “moral” standards and “content of character.” He would certainly point to Martin—who had a choice, and chose to be a “gangsta”—as an example of what is wrong, not right.

The TIME article contained commentary from people unable to look reality in the face, still searching for scapegoats. What happens “After Trayvon”? There will be those who have achieved success and will be self-righteous and continue to decry the “racism” that somehow was not so great an impediment to prevent their success. Not that it still doesn’t exist; there are still some whites who only believe in those who they share “commonality” with, and do not trust “strangers” who are only known to them by the stereotypes they hold. 

But what cannot be denied is that young black males continue to murder each other at rates far in excessive of any other demographic (including Latinos). That will continue “After Trayvon.” Far higher rates of theft, robbery, assault and other crimes will continue “After Trayvon.” High drop-out rates in school will continue “After Trayvon.” 

Why will these things continue “After Trayvon”? Partly because of the lack of reliable work in urban areas, but mostly because some people will continue to search for scapegoats (like the Latino George Zimmerman), and attempt to concoct self-serving personal rationalizations to explain away the behavior that Dr. King decried 50 years after. All the advocates and activists can muse is if Dr. King were alive today, would he wear a “hoody?”

Many players in the media's abject failure to divine the truth in the Zimmerman case

There is a reason why juries are supposed to be "sequestered"--if they are allowed access to media coverage that does not even pretend to be objective, and gives the impression that "everyone" shares its viewpoint, then jurors who are easily swayed by emotion usually reach an unjust verdict. Listening to juror B-29 on ABC, it is clear that since the George Zimmerman trial,  whatever rationality and objectivity she had has faded as would any person with a weak will. Now she claims that Zimmerman "got away with murder," and now there are "suggestions" that the jury didn't "understand"  their instructions; of course one wonders what a mostly black jury didn't "understand" when it acquitted O.J. Simpson of a brutal double-homicide, and why certain people cheered in a shocking display of  jubilation over it (you do know, of course, that a soaked leather glove--even with blood--shrinks so it doesn't "fit"). The reality remains that this was a self-defense case, not a racial case save in the way a Latino has been demonized by both blacks and whites. The problem with the media when it gets it wrong  after being so invested in a conviction is that it cannot stand embarrassment, and continues to flail about hoping to convince as many people as possible that it was "right" all along.

Meanwhile, the UK Daily Mail still claims that “America” is “erupting” over the Zimmerman verdict, which only confirms that the Brits are as clueless about Americans as the American media is. Since Barack Obama’s comments on the Zimmerman verdict last Friday, it seems as if it had a mild effect on the level of rhetoric. Not that it was needed to cool heels in every forum; NPR hasn’t talked about the verdict and its aftermath at all, but that is only because discussing the race angle impinges on NPR’s gender agenda. The president was presumably attempting to placate part of his base by acknowledging the sensitivities of blacks who feel they are unjustly stereotyped as having criminal tendencies. This is undoubtedly a belief that has a measure of truth—although if they are using Trayvon Martin as an example of “innocent” youth, they could have picked a better poster “child “ It also should go without saying that Latino males are also targets of “clicking locks” and being followed in malls; in fact I would say that white folks are much more self-conscious about the way their mannerisms are perceived by black males than the way they convey their attitudes toward Latino males (especially women); but to say so would dilute the victimization politics at play. 

Obama also tried to address the feelings of those who believe a much bigger problem in the black community are the self-inflicted wounds, using the word “dysfunction” to describe some aspects of the “culture” that the media and the market have helped nourish, because it “sells.” Black conservative Shelby Steele was a little more pointed in his assessment of the lack of acknowledgement of relativism in the current rhetoric; writing in the Wall Street Journal recently, Steele observed that “One wants to scream at all those outraged at the Zimmerman verdict: Where is your outrage over the collapse of the black family? Today's civil-rights leaders swat at mosquitoes like Zimmerman when they have gorillas on their back. Seventy-three percent of all black children are born without fathers married to their mothers. And you want to bring the nation to a standstill over George Zimmerman?”

There is no doubt that the Zimmerman case has had a profound effect on my view of the world. It hasn’t turned me into a conservative by any stretch, but it has soured me on my perceptions of who my “friends” are. The left-wing press, after all, is in part responsible for much of the negative perceptions of Latinos in this country (such as scapegoating them for low-wages and unemployment), and some of the rhetoric is beyond what my stomach can hold. Ever since the verdict, the left-wing media, unable to face the fact that their total lack of objectivity has blown up in their faces, have been reduced to flailing-up more controversy when polls show that two-thirds or more Americans believe that the verdict was properly aligned with the facts of the case, or continuing to make embarrassing fools of themselves. 

For example, there was news recently that Zimmerman and a friend encountered an overturned vehicle on a highway after the trial, and helped to extricate the passengers from the wreck. The people who were assisted have since come forward to refute “rumors” that the rescue was “staged,” but also that they fear that any connection to Zimmerman might “endanger” their lives. What inanity can they be talking about? Here is some commentary from “progressives” Bill Press and Stephanie Miller:

Bill Press: Well, I would hope that if you come across a car accident that anybody, even a murderer, would get out and help them out, right? Not get out and kick them in the teeth or something. But so, two questions I have about this to both of you. Number one, what does it matter that he helped somebody out of a car? Doesn't erase the fact that he shot and killed Trayvon Martin, right? 

Two people present provide an emphatic “No.”

Press: Unjustifiably in my opinion and I think the facts show that. But secondly, all right, I know I'm going to get in trouble for this, do you really think this happened?

One person says “No” and explains 

Yeah, I don't think so. It smells, it stinks to high heaven!...Where are the pictures or video?...Yeah!

Stephanie Miller: All right, join us if you're calling bullshit on this George Zimmerman rescued story. ... Oh, this just in regarding the Southwest Airlines flight, breaking, Zimmerman steps in and acts as nose gear for plane and pulled out 300 passengers from the wreckage.

See what I’m talking about? Now, I’m not going to tell you that there are no Latino males who are “punks,” “thugs” and “gangstas.” There are. But is Zimmerman one of them? Although Miller and company make outlandish accusations and personal attacks based on base ignorance, I don’t see the evidence.

I’m not letting the Latino advocate press and organizations off the hook, either. In fact, they have been as pathetic and mendacious as anyone in the media. The National Council de la Raza, for example, has always seemed to be group more focused on the concerns of a narrow demographic, that is the white (as in Caucasian) elite. It has never been in forefront of issues of discrimination, xenophobia and demonization of Latinos that the illegal immigration issue has served as a convenient excuse to express. After all, Pat Buchanan wasn’t just talking about illegal immigrants when he blathered “Hispanics are out to destroy America.”

Completely ignoring how the “mainstream” media has trampled on Zimmerman’s right to due process and the facts of the case, and the reality that as a Latino male he represents an easy target for both blacks and whites, NCLR president Janet Murguia fumed that “While we respect the legal process and the jury’s decision, we are deeply disappointed and saddened by this verdict…However, we believe that it is still possible to achieve some measure of justice for Trayvon Martin and his family, so we are joining with our brothers and sisters in the Black community in calling on the Department of Justice to weigh in more forcefully on the matter." Brothers and sisters in the black community sounds nice in theory, but is it true on the ground? I would agree that blacks and Latinos should have “common ground,” but that doesn’t take into account of the very real resentment that many blacks feel toward Latinos as “competitors” for jobs.

Meanwhile, Antonio Gonzalez, president of William C. Velasquez Institute, told a credulous Fox News Latino the Zimmerman case “does not have a ‘Hispanic angle’ because Hispanics usually rally on the perception of injustice ‘When there is a clear ethnically based perception that somebody is being wronged, Hispanics will rally. This is like a square peg in a round hole…it just doesn’t fit.’” Latinos in general are not that dumb; they can see that the demonization of Zimmerman goes beyond simply him. He serves as a proxy for negative perceptions of Latinos by both blacks and whites; I know this from the not infrequent accusatory and malevolent stares from complete strangers I observe, even in so-called “progressive” Seattle. 

There has also been some discussion concerning the problematic issue of what exactly is Zimmerman’s “race.” The absurdity of this discussion began when the white media misread the black community’s resentment of what Zimmerman personified, and labeled him “white” merely because of his name. To anyone presented with just his face, Zimmerman is Latino. This isn’t a “coincidence.” It is a biological fact that darker skin color and eyes are “dominate” genes. That is why a child born of one parent with brown eyes and another with blue eyes has 75 percent chance of having brown eyes. As we can see with Pres. Obama, having a white mother (and being raised by his white grandparents), has not assisted anyone for mistaking him for “white.”  Zimmerman is not “white” and the reaction of many people toward him has everything to do with the fact that he isn’t.

Robert Zimmerman, Jr. has gone on record to say that he and his brother do consider themselves to be “Hispanic” and that the reason that they declined to mak a point of it was because they wanted to avoid bringing race into the trial. He mused, however, that if their name was “Lopez” or “Gonzalez” the media might have taken a different tack. But that hasn’t stopped some people of making a mess of things, particularly people who have a victim complex they want to protect. Sometime CNN contributor Roland Martin, who is black, insisted that there are “white” Hispanics, which I took to mean that he believes that the  Zimmerman/Trayvon dynamic really is a black/white issue. 

Well, it isn’t. It’s a Latino/black issue (with the white media manipulating the proceedings), and commentators like (Roland) Martin wish to keep the racist theme intact, instead of addressing black attitudes toward Latinos. Martin recently mentioned a CNN meeting to discuss whether they should use the term “white Hispanic” to describe Zimmerman as such. Martin says that people are “ignorant” when they say there is no such thing as a “white Hispanic.” Well of course there are; the problem is that Zimmerman is not one of them. A “white” Hispanic looks like Texas’ Sen. Ted Cruz, who I’ve mentioned before is 100 percent Caucasian, like the other Euro-elites who control everything in Mexico.

Jonathan Tobin had an interesting article in the magazine Commentary entitled “Hispanics and the Zimmerman Narrative.” He noted that during a forum held by Obama with journalists from the Spanish-language television networks Telemundo and Univision, the Zimmerman case was never mentioned. While the Latino press has a right to decide what is or isn’t a concern to the Latino community, Tobin noted a level of hypocrisy in it as well:

While the prevailing narrative of the case has been to portray the tragic death of Martin as a symbol if not a practical example of white racism against African-Americans, Zimmerman isn’t white. He’s Hispanic. So it is telling that not only have none of the leading lights of the Latino media claimed him as a member of their community, but in doing so have consciously abstained from dealing with the issue of race relations in America that has become the primary topic of political discussion since Saturday night. At least as far as these interviews were concerned, the Hispanic media seems determined to do nothing to alter the prevailing narrative in which Zimmerman is stripped of his own identity as a minority in order to make the point about racist America in a way that allows the left to wave the bloody banner of Jim Crow unimpeded by concern for the sensitivities of Hispanics.

Tobin further observed that despite the fact that Zimmerman was obviously not white, the media and the Trayvon Martin partisans went extraordinary lengths to deny this fact in order to maintain the “narrative”:

Though race was not part of the actual trial that hinged on the facts of the case and the details of the confrontation between Zimmerman and Martin, since the verdict was handed down the discussion in the country about it has focused almost entirely on identity politics and race. Martin has been transformed in much of this discussion from a youth with a mixed record who got into a fight with an armed man into a martyr who was murdered because he was black. But in order to make that narrative persuasive, Zimmerman must be viewed as a “creepy ass cracker”—Martin’s description of Zimmerman according to Rachel Jeantel—and not the son of a woman from South America whose Hispanic appearance doesn’t exactly make him a likely recruit for the Ku Klux Klan. But in order to really think of Zimmerman that way, we must forget his origins and his looks and focus only on his German-sounding last name.

Nothing in Zimmerman’s background suggests that he was a “racist”—in fact the evidence suggest the opposite. But this suggestion was simply intolerable for those wishing to define this case as “evidence” of a country still in the clutches of racism. It is, to an extent, but was this the case to “prove” it?

One needn’t agree with the verdict in order to understand that stripping Zimmerman of his Hispanic identity and making him an honorary member of the white supremacist conspiracy against minorities has been an integral element in the process by which he has been demonized and the case has been inflated into the new paradigm of American racism. Those who only concentrated on the facts of the case rather than the politicized agitation that accompanied it—a group that includes the jurors that acquitted Zimmerman—found it to be a complex and confusing incident that told us little, if anything, about racism in America. But eliminating the defendant’s background makes it easier to think of it as a morality play about racism.

The Latino “advocacy” press and organizations—more out of cowardice than a desire to see “justice” done—completely missed the chance to start a discussion about what it was about Zimmerman in reality which enraged both whites and blacks in such a visceral way, instead joining them in the demonization process with total contempt for due process: 

Perhaps it’s understandable that Hispanic journalists wouldn’t want to risk upsetting their liberal colleagues by disrupting this rhetorical formulation by pointing out Zimmerman’s background or even raising questions about assumptions about race. But their failure to do so is playing a part in perpetuating a distorted discussion that has done more to obscure the truth about race in America than to shed light on it.

Steele, meanwhile, chastised the civil-rights leadership for using “its greatly depleted moral authority to support Trayvon Martin…This young man was, after all, no Rosa Parks—a figure of indisputable human dignity set upon by the rank evil of white supremacy. Trayvon threw the first punch and then continued pummeling the much smaller Zimmerman. Yes, Trayvon was a kid, but he was also something of a menace. The larger tragedy is that his death will come to very little. There was no important principle or coherent protest implied in that first nose-breaking punch. It was just dumb bravado, a tough-guy punch…There are vast career opportunities, money and political power to be gleaned from the specter of Mr. Zimmerman as a racial profiler/murderer; but there is only hard and selfless work to be done in tackling an illegitimacy rate that threatens to consign blacks to something like permanent inferiority. If there is anything good to be drawn from the Zimmerman/Martin tragedy, it is only the further revelation of the corruption and irrelevance of today's civil-rights leadership.”

And so it goes. Zimmerman isn’t the “problem,” and never was. The killing of Trayvon Martin did deserve to be a matter of discussion—only not the “discussion” that the media has been having with itself. And don't bring "God" into this. Outside the fact that Martin was killed, virtually everything said about him by his partisans have been one lie after another. Martin was not going to "heaven" before he was shot, and death hasn't made him a saint; "God" knows what was in his "heart" as he was beating Zimmerman.