By Mike Appleton, Guest Blogger
“However, law is not color-blind. Law, as the great Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said, is about experience. Culturally competent law practice requires that one understand societal realities and experiences and the legal implications they evoke. To do otherwise is to engage in wishful thinking at best.”
– Wendell Griffen, “Lessons from Florida v. George,” wendellgriffen.blogspot.com (August 1, 2013)
The best man at my wedding in 1968 was, and is, a gay man. We were roommates as freshmen and he became my best friend in college. He has had a very successful career and has been in a committed relationship for many years. We don’t see each other often, but we remain good friends to this day. And if you had told me in 1968 that forty-five years later there would be preachers urging that homosexuals be confined behind electrified razor wire, or politicians lobbying for the death penalty for the “crime” of being gay, or pseudo-therapists insisting that sexual orientation is a “lifestyle” choice amenable to counseling, or seemingly rational people arguing against full legal equality for all human beings, I would have dismissed your opinion as absurd fantasy. And I would have been wrong.
But I would likewise have rejected in 1968 any suggestion that almost fifty years thence racism would still permeate American society. After all, most of the landmark victories in civil rights had occurred by that year. The courts had issued decrees ending the legislated segregation that had successfully held a race in bondage for a hundred years following the abolition of slavery. Martin Luther King had cajoled and shamed a nation into adopting laws prohibiting discrimination in education, employment, housing and public accommodations. The right to vote, that most fundamental guarantee of participation in the life of the nation, had finally become real for millions of citizens. Racial intolerance would be forever buried with the bodies of its then living adherents. And I would again have been wrong.
The election of Barack Obama as President in 2008 was heralded by many as the dawning of a new age, the age of post-racial America. In his 2004 speech at the Democratic National Convention, then Sen. Obama had declared, “There is not a Black America and a White America and a Latino America and an Asian America-there’s the United States of America.” Liberals wanted to believe that the election results had validated that speech. The political right argued that the election of a black President meant that racial equality had become a reality and demanded an end to affirmative action and other programs deemed oppressive to whites. The Supreme Court under John Roberts has been happy to oblige conservatives, steadily eroding the foundations of race-based preferences and, most recently, virtually emasculating the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Contrary to the hopes of liberals and the beliefs of Justice Roberts, the notion of a post-racial America remains a dream. If anything, the Obama presidency has brought into clear focus the extent to which racism remains a core feature of society. We saw its ugliness in both election campaigns. Throughout his time in office, the President has been castigated as a socialist, a Muslim (or Muslim sympathizer), a despot and an illegitimate pretender. An Associated Press poll taken in October of 2012 found that anti-black attitudes had increased among whites from 51% to 56% between 2008 and 2012. When he arrived in Orlando two days ago to speak to a Disabled American Veterans convention, the President was greeted by a number of protesters, some of them bearing signs reading “Kenyan Go Home.”
But for me the most telling reminder of the sad state of race relations in this country was the recently completed trial in the case of State of Florida v. George Zimmerman. I know. The demands of due process were satisfied. The jury has spoken. As a lawyer, that ought to be sufficient for me. Anyone who has tried cases before a jury has had the experience of winning a losing case and losing a case that ought to have been won. The system has been crafted over hundreds of years to enable decisions based upon relevant evidence of facts and reasoned principles of law. We strive for the approximation of justice, because that is the best that we can do.
Yet the verdict in the Zimmerman trial is disturbing. I cannot bring myself to accept the result as approximate justice. And I am not alone. Recent polling by the Washington Post disclosed an even split of opinion among Americans on the verdict. An overwhelming majority of black Americans disapproved of the jury’s conclusions, and only a slim majority of whites supported it.
The sides lined up long before the trial even began. Blacks widely portrayed the death of Trayvon Martin as an act of cold-blooded murder. Supporters of Mr. Zimmerman in turn described Mr. Martin as a teenager out of control, a thug with a history of violent fantasies and an attitude prone to trouble. The public was certain that the case was about race. And despite the efforts of Mr. Zimmerman’s lawyers to eliminate race as an issue, it was in fact the unspoken them of the entire defense. I say this because the legal justification for Mr. Martin’s death was predicated upon a series of assumptions that are fundamentally racist. Consider the following themes:
1. As a resident of the subdivision and a self-styled neighborhood watch captain, Mr. Zimmerman had a right to be present in the neighborhood that was superior to that of Mr. Martin.
2. Because Mr. Martin was an outsider, Mr. Zimmerman had a right to question the legitimacy of the former’s actions.
3. Mr. Martin had a duty to justify himself to Mr. Zimmerman.
None of these assumptions was seriously questioned in the course of the trial. The defense created a foundation which wholly lacked any consideration of reciprocal duties. The jury was told that Mr. Zimmerman had a right to follow Mr. Martin. The jury was told that Mr. Martin had a responsibility to explain himself. Why? Mr. Martin had neither a legal nor moral obligation to account to Mr. Zimmerman for any reason. Yet Mr. Zimmerman was somehow clothed with quasi-official status.
Moreover, Mr. Zimmerman created the conditions which directly led to Mr. Martin’s death. First, he unilaterally determined that Mr. Martin was likely preparing to engage in criminal activity. And the evidence for that conclusion? Mr. Martin was black, was wearing a hoodie and was walking down the street after dark. Second, Mr. Zimmerman continued to follow Mr. Martin after being told by a sheriff’s dispatcher that he should relent until the police arrived. Does anyone seriously believe that a black 17 year-old walking down unfamiliar streets at night while being followed by an unknown person in a vehicle might not have reason to become alarmed? Third, Mr. Zimmerman was armed, a blatant violation of the rules under which bona-fide neighborhood watch volunteers are supposed to operate. Mr. Zimmerman crossed the line from vigilance to vigilantism. The fact that Mr. Martin may have initiated the physical altercation is both understandable and pathetically deficient as a justification for homicide.
The response to the verdict was also predictable. The black community compared the case to Emmett Till, the black teenager viciously murdered in Mississippi in 1955. Many whites shared the views of Ann Coulter, who routinely reminds us that a substantial investment in an elite education does not always produce beneficial results, and who concluded, “Trayvon committed the first (and only) crime that night by assaulting Zimmerman.”
The truth is that Mr. Zimmerman was in the best position to prevent the death of Trayvon Martin. But he made a series of faulty assumptions based upon race. As a result he became a predator who, when confronted by his prey, killed him. Racism provided the occasion of Mr. Martin’s death; a dangerous extension of the law of self-defense provided the justification.
We legislate morality, but we cannot legislate moral thinking. The elimination of statutory racism and the election of an African-American President are important milestones, but they are only steps in a long journey. Trayvon Martin was not Emmett Till. His death was not the result of institutionalized and state approved violence. He was instead the victim of the racism of profiling, the racism of generalization and false assumptions. It is racism once removed from the protection of the law. But it is a racism which still kills.
Here is some data from the FBI’s uniform crime reports.
It shows number of murders in 5 major metro areas from year 2002 through 2010. I choose to begin with 2002 because my recollection is that is when ‘Stop and Frisk’ began in NYC. The data is available back to 1980. When I checked the table this data is drawn from only included 2010. Data for NYC is available through 2012. Murders in NYC for 2012 were 419. As you look at the numbers, it might be useful to remember that murders in NYC reached a peak in1990 with 2245 and have been trending down ever since – though there have been increases in some years.
Do you see how murders in NYC are declining much faster than in all the other metro areas because of ‘stop and frisk’?
If you do please let me know. It seems to me that NYC is middle of the pack with nothing to suggest that activity in NYC is much different from the rest of the country. So much for the effect of ‘Stop and Frisk’ on crime rates.
When I have some time I will look at similar data for the several categories of violent crime collected in the URC tables. My recollection that the violent crime data did not look very different from the murder numbers in terms of rate of decline.
Agency/Year 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
LA Police 654 515 518 489 480 395 384 312 293
Chicago 648 598 448 448 468 443 510 458 432
NYC 587 597 570 539 596 496 523 471 536
Phil, PA 288 348 330 377 407 392 331 302 306
Houston, TX 256 278 272 334 377 351 294 287 269
I can do this all night. For every video you can produce of white people being violent I can produce 10, 20, 30 in return.
OS, you are far more likely to be attacked and robbed by a black person than a white. This is statistically correct.
Gene, I did not even remotely lie about anything I said.
I do not foam at the mouth. I leave that to people like you who btw went on a rampage and started laying in with the insults. Hypocrisy is strong in people like you so that is not surprising.
@Elaine:
You know, sticking with stuff that works may be stupid to some, but I kind of think it is smarter in the long run. That is probably how those less-intelligent mechanics and truck drivers actually fix cars and get trucks from point a to point b. Meanwhile the more-intelligent teachers can’t wait to dump “See Spot Run!” to dash off to new curricula which result in half the kids not be able to read. It’s just that the results of the folly are delayed, and you don’t see them until years later.
Or like on one thread today, where the dumb old staid, slow moving type people who wanted to keep Glass-Steagall lost out to all the brave new thinkers with those derivatives.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Yep. I’m calling it a night too, OS.
You feel free to foam at the mouth some more, anon.
I’ll stop by and laugh at you some more tomorrow.
Sure you have, anon. Sure you have.
One more thing, and I am done for the day. An enormous body of social science research shows black young men are targeted for law violations at a much higher rate than white males of the same age. Several years ago, a study was done at one of the major southern universities in a large city. Student volunteers, equally matched for age, car they drove, socioeconomic status, and attire were asked to put bumper stickers on their cars. One bumper sticker was from the Black Panther Party, and one from a white power group, which IIRC, was the White Citizen’s Council. The volunteers were to drive the same route to and from class each day, and be careful to obey all traffic laws. The experiment was scheduled to only last a couple of weeks. At the end of that time, the cars with the Black Panther Party stickers had amassed an astounding number of traffic tickets. The students with the Citizen’s Council bumper stickers: none.
What does this tell us? Those numbers of arrests may be for crimes that were never committed. If that is the case, and there is evidence to indicate it is, then the numbers cited are totally worthless.
Little known facts
1. I voted for Obama in 2008
2. I am a Registered Democrat
3. I have dated black women as well as a muslim
You people are a disgrace. Arrogant idiots.
“1. I voted for Obama in 2008
2. I am a Registered Democrat
3. I have dated black women as well as a muslim”
Well know fact. Posters who call themselves Anon can lie shamelessly about any details of their life and probably due which is why they’re anonymous.
I’m a racist, eh, anon? I’m sure my current girlfriend – who is black – and the two Korean, one Japanese and one Mexican women I’ve dated would be really surprised to hear that. As would anyone who knows me.
Do you know what the “Big Lie” method of propaganda entails, anon?
That’s a rhetorical question.
Elaine, it is my experience that the most mentally deficient people around are usually partisan period, regardless of party.
The most truly pathetic ones are the psuedointellectual progressives who fancy themselves smarter than everyone else when the reality is they are actually the most ignorant. People like Gene are the perfect example of narrow minded one track minds. They go through life with blinders on and refuse to accept any other possibilities if it interferes with their political and philosophical ideology. Hitler comes to mind.
“Elaine, it is my experience that the most mentally deficient people around are usually partisan period, regardless of party.
The most truly pathetic ones are the psuedointellectual progressives who fancy themselves smarter than everyone else when the reality is they are actually the most ignorant.”
“The most mentally deficient people around are partisan pseudo-intellectual [sic] progressives”. Seems a rather partisan statement, or rather admission of Anon’s own mental deficiency.
” where the crime rate has been driven down to levels unseen in decades?”
The fact is that crime rates began rising all over the country as early as 1980, began declining in the early 1990’s and had fallen to very low levels by the early 2000’s when ‘stop and frisk’ was implemented (my recollection 2002).
If you look at the decades long rise and then fall in crime rates it really seems less likely that ‘stop and frisk’ caused the decline and more likely that politicians latched onto a social pattern and claimed success.
If ‘stop and frisk’ is really the cause for the decline in NYC did it also cause similar declines in the national statistics and in every major metropolitan area that checked in the FBI’s UCR? I doubt it.
It seems more reasonable to believe that the social factors that account for declining crime rates across the nation and in most metropolitan areas also account for the declines in NYC.
‘Stop and frisk’ is not an effective way to allocate LE resources capture perpetrators. We really ought to use ‘look out’ information, the physical description, to initiate stops rather than the random stops of ‘stop and frisk’. It is not reasonable to believe that ‘stop and frisk’ has had a significant, or any effect, on crime rates.
‘Stop and frisk’ is a racist failure that violates constitutional rights of everyone, especially minorities. Reasonable people, who believe social policy should be driven by evidence, will demand that ‘stop and frisk’ be halted.
Elaine,
I’m not surprised by that at all. 😀
Great link. I’m going to save that for the next time the subject of brain structure in conservative beliefs comes up.
Gene H. : Your commentary is dead on.
Anon is a coward by not posting under their real name. Using a Hannity & Colmes clip from December, 2006 as backup to his/her sick world view says it all. ‘Nuff said.
@OtterayS:
You know, you lefty guys throw out the Dunning/Krueger canards the same way the righty guys throw out the Saul Alinsky stuff. My God, America is sooo screwed! Idiots to the left me, Idiots to the right!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
“Idiots to the left me, Idiots to the right!”
Squeeky,
And there you are right in the middle of the idiots, where it seems by your own definition you belong.
Gene you do not judge people by their character. You are so utterly ignorant that you just cannot see it. YOU are more of a racist that I am.
You aren’t very bright, are you? Don’t you think I knew that was what you were going to say based on your scree to date, anon?
Same BJS data:
Hispanic on Other Races – 30%
Hispanic on White – 46.9%
I could give you breakdowns for Native Americans/Alaskan Natives and Asians/Pacific Islander too if you like.