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.
The truth is Trayvon’s father was in the best position to keep his son alive that day. Instead he let him go out at night to snoop in windows and jump some resident who questioned his right to snoop in windows. But, the article here does not address the fact that a jury of somebody’s peers, not Trayvon and not the half Mexican half jew Zimmerman, found Zimmerman not guilty. There is a provision of the Fifth Amendment called the Double Jeopardy Clause. The Supreme Court held in 1958 in the Bartkus case that no federal court could try a man who had been acquitted in state court. I suppose that the author of the article will trot out the Separate Sovereign apCray that has not footing, reference or basis in the Constitution. I note that when the Framers of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments passed those provisions they did not repeal the Double Jeopardy Clause. No, the Congress had the right to pass a criminal law to enforce each one of those three Amendments and such a law is on the books. It probably relies on the 14th but possible the 13th Amendment. But the Double Jeopardy Clause trumps a prosecution (without the Donald) where the state has already had a trial and the defendant was acquitted. So now we are waiting for Al Sharpton to hound the Justice Department into filing a criminal case against Z.
AY,
“Does it make any difference to you, that one is considered black? Would that then make you a racist……”
No and no.
Gene,
This is becoming tooooo comical…… A lot of of agree that Bush, Cheney, Obama et al should be tried for war crimes…. Does it make any difference to you, that one is considered black? Would that then make you a racist……
“Over the years, blacks have included women & more recently Hispanics to their minority status.”
Blacks don’t determine who is or isn’t included in “their minority status”.
That’s a function of both demographics and a finding of legal fact that may affect a persons rights to services or participating in programs, ability/preference for biding on certain government contracts, be relevant to the prosecution of certain types of crime, etc. Minorities can be both ethnic, religious and/or racial classification. For example, consider California Public Contract Code § 10115.1 (which contains both ethnic and racial definitions of minorities as relevant to state contracts):
“(d) “Minority,” for purposes of this section, means a citizen or lawful permanent resident of the United States who is an ethnic person of color and who is: Black (a person having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa); Hispanic (a person of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, or other Spanish or Portuguese culture or origin regardless of race); Native American (an American Indian, Eskimo, Aleut, or Native Hawaiian); Pacific-Asian (a person whose origins are from Japan, China, Taiwan, Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, the Philippines, Samoa, Guam, or the United States Trust Territories of the Pacific including the Northern Marianas); Asian-Indian (a person whose origins are from India, Pakistan, or Bangladesh); or any other group of natural persons identified as minorities in the respective project specifications of an awarding department or participating local agency.”
Women, by contrast, come in all races, ethnicities and creeds. According to the 2011 U.S. Census, the number of females in the United States in 2011 was 158.3 million. By contrast, the number of males was 153.3 million. This makes women by definition a narrow majority of population.
That does not mean, however, they are not discriminated against in ways that the government should/could be addressing, such as equal pay for equal work.
Latinos are not a separate race.
Hey Juliet:
What’s the difference between Latinos & Hispanics?? And by the way, we politically correct Americans use the terms Latinos & Hispanics when referencing illegal aliens entering the U.S. across the Southern border. Would you perfer we call them for what they are – Mexicans ??
Sorry for the confusion. Here is the link I mentioned:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/13/nyregion/stop-and-frisk-practice-violated-rights-judge-rules.html?hp
It seems to me that some questions of race really are subtle with difficult choices.
But the issue of ‘stop and frisk’ is glaring and obvious. It is does not lower crime rates, is not effective at capturing perpetrators, and violates constitutional protection.
But you don’t have to take my word for it. Here is a link to the NYT article describing Judge Scheindlin’s ruling on ‘stop and frisk’.
I am sure there will be appeals. I just don’t understand why Mayor Bloomberg and NYC would waste the money.
Quite the discussion on race. It reminds me of the 1985 Hearns v Hagler fight.
bfm,
“For accuracy, I should add that not all data sets and tables broke out ethnic and minority groups.”
Yep. And yet posters like anon never pause to wonder why. Couldn’t be because race isn’t causally connected to crime now, could it?
And Anon and Squeeky lose yet another day’s worth of arguments.
Okay, I’m going to apologize first because I’m going to rant, it won’t be pretty because I’m tired of the effing racism. “Race-based preferences” is racism. Jim Crow is racism. Positive, negative, it’s still racism. It doesn’t matter if it makes you feel good, or it makes you feel bad, it’s racism.
You all sat back and watched California make it hard for Asians to get into a University, but clucked over how good “race-based preferences” are in California. You watched black students put into colleges where they had little chance of succeeding, clucked again over how non-racist you are, and never gave a thought to “they weren’t prepared” for that level, and said and did nothing when they failed.
And WTF is white? Do you mean Brit, Finn, Swede, German, Spaniard (oh wait, they’re not white, they’re Hispanic), Portuguese (psuedo white so long as they aren’t tanned and don’t speak Portuguese), Italians (were Italians “white” for most of the first 50 years of the 20th Century? no they were Catholic, only Protestants were “white”, talk to the Irish), Hungarians, Roma, what is white in this country consistently until we made it black/white? And forgot the Asians…
Drop “race-based preferences”, make it “economic-based” and you’ll raise all races, and the blacks that need it most of all.
I’d go into “race-based preferences” on mortgages, and what damage that did for people who couldn’t afford what the government pushed, but it would be just a re-hash.
Mike, I’m not picking on you.
I too have have listened to and read more than enough about discrimination. Start with it’s only offensive if a white person uses the word nigger. Conversely, black people are free to use the word as they like and, in addition, blacks can call white people anything they like and it is not racially motivated or offensive. Then, one black teenager is shot by a Hispanic in self defense but, 50 blacks beating one white person into a coma from which he may not recover and even if he does, he will be a vegetable for life.
This is beyond a doubt the most ridiculous posting I have read ever read. Most people truly believed that electing Barack Obama would end the racial issue once and for all. People who had absolutely nothing to do with slavery or racial discrimination have been forced to endure social remedies such as affirmative action which are nothing more than government sanctioned discrimination. Along the way, the government insisted ” we must ” provide ( quality ) low cost housing to low income families only to turn around and tear whole complexes down. That said, the strongest evidence that Barack Obama is Constitutionally eligible to hold office is a forged copy of his long form birth certificate. Barack Obama and Travon Martin have both had their records sanitized & sealed. Now then, before we canonize Travon Martin to Sainthood and before we beatify Barack Obama, let’s unseal their records and see who they realy are. I have nothing but contempt for anyone who stereotypes the Zimmerman / Martin incident as racially motivated and those who do, they almost always try to make it a black vs white issue rather than a Hispanic vs. black incident.
Racism is not really involved significantly in the Zimmerman case. There are some biases involved, racial biases too, but not racism. Racism is when someone believes that a particular race is superior to another race. For example, when the Black Panthers speak of Black Power! That is racism. Or the way Hitler denigrated Jews and expressed the superiority of the Aryan race, a belief fostered by Social Darwinism. That is racism. But when a person tends to side with someone of their own race, like the Blacks overwhelmingly do in thinking Zimmerman deserved a murder conviction, that is not racism. That is just racial bias at play. Suggesting that we must eradicate racial bias would be unrealistic and unattainable.
There are other factors at play here that are being ignored.
Gun Rights –
One factor ignored is the bias created by a person’s perspective on gun rights. Those who believe citizens need to be armed are going to look at the self defense aspect of this situation much differently than someone who thinks nobody needs to be carrying a gun. Your bias in this regard is clearly obvious when you speak of Zimmerman creating the dangerous situation by carrying a gun.
Role of Government –
Another factor ignored is the bias from the ideology of government being solely responsible for public safety and security. Some believe that the only duty a citizen might have is to call authorities and rely completely upon them to take care of the matter. Others believe each individual has a duty and responsibility for their own safety and the safety of their community. Such creates a divide in how a person interprets Zimmerman’s actions because Zimmerman is actually in the middle ground here, doing a little bit of both.
All of our biases come into play when we interpret an event for which we have limited facts. People choose what to believe and what not to believe, and they make assumptions that are different depending upon their own personal biases. The verdict of the Zimmerman case is unsettling to you because your own biases lead you to think Zimmerman got away with killing a teenager. At the end of the day, you have to take a deep breath and realize that your perspective is shaped by prejudice on issues related to the case. You make numerous assumptions, each of which might be wrong. If there is even the remote possibility that Zimmerman might have gotten into a situation where he feared for his life and had to kill Martin to save his own life, that should be enough for you to be content that the jury got it right. Better that 10 guilty men be set free than 1 innocent man suffer unjustly.
I’ll start with I haven’t read a single comment. That’s not because I think whatever has been written is without worth, but because I’m replying to Mr. Appleton and not any of you.
Mike, and I take liberty using your first name, in 1968 the rhetoric against gays makes today look like a love fest. In 1968 it was argued that gays should be deprived of housing, deprived of a job, deprived of hospital visits to a loved one, deprived of anything the rest of could easily have, even without marraige. I’ve had gay friends in middle-school, in High School, in the military, lived with gay relatives, and gone to gay bars. There is no comparison to today, a few loud voices today are just sound and fury signifying nothing. To make them more than that is to hold to an ideology not a reality.
But on race, when you use the term “race-based” to justify anything you’ve gone to the other side where race is the basis. “We saw its ugliness in both election campaigns. ” Do you mean where Obama’s campaign started the sexism against Hillary Clinton? Or where Obama based, even into the second election, it’s “Bush’s fault”? Was that racism of a Black on a White? Of course not, it was politics, though Obama’s campaign against HC was pure sexism.
“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. ” But they were arguing that much earlier, well before Bush II, without a Black President (I really hate the American rule of “one drop is black”, it’s seldom followed in the rest of the world, and so indicative of our continued racism apart from Mike’s arguements).
“Throughout his time in office, the President has been castigated as a socialist, a Muslim (or Muslim sympathizer), a despot and an illegitimate pretender.” Which is only racist because he is called “Black”, and you’re basing your whole argument on his “blackness”. Other Presidents, and candidates have been and still are called “socialists”, some “fascists”. None have been called Muslim, but then none have been raised, however briefly, in the Muslim faith until now and after 9/11 with all the paranoia. McCain’s legitimacy was questioned too, given he was born in Panama. But both ran for the Presidency and one won. You could argue totality, but then I’d have to ask is it really RAS, let alone PC.
Bush was called a monkey, pictured as a monkey, was that racist? Bush was excoriated to a point matching or exceeding Obama, but the former was reasonable, the latter racist? Your examples as proof are without context other than by a racial lens. You might look at cartoons of A. Lincoln. That a poll one month showed an animus to blacks tells me nothing, as any other poll months before or after may show differently. I have no idea that that poll was about Obama, or some crime linked to a black that caused a spike. Police hit a nadir below 50% one month, at which time we went anti-cop?
Obama certainly hasn’t lived up to his promises: he’s worse on transparency than even Bush; he’s taken Bush’s policies to the point of caricature (drone strikes on Muslim Americans is what?); with Snowden, and the revelations of our intelligence gathering being used by the DEA and local PDs, with fake stories to hide where the info came from, we are hitting a nadir on civil liberties, all continuing under his watch. He isn’t a good President, nor was Bush.
As for Zimmerman, the guy is an HIspanic, in fact, he’s part black on his mother’s side. I have never read “white Hispanic” untiI Zimmerman, and that only because the press screwed up with the usual race presumption by name, then had to back track. Hispanics are brown, black, white, asian, and all mixes. It’s an ethnic group not a race, and based on language and/or cultural identification. How you doing on Linda Ronstadt and her “mexicaness”?
“eroding the foundations of race-based preferences “. I don’t like the Roberts court either, but that quote has all sorts of irony from MLK’s “character not color” quote, especially throwing in Zimmerman. Yep, racism is based on eroding race-based preferences.
Mike, I know what you mean, and I understand the efforts necessary to try to make up for Jim Crow, even while California was shunning Asians from their Universities. Oh wait….
That was snarky, but making an argument about racism and using the phrase “eroding the foundations of race-based preferences” is just oxymoronic, especially when California was excluding Asians from their Universities unless they scored higher than Whites. It was just race-based preferences after all.
MLK was right. Untill we see character, we only see race.
Certainly, there are legitimate reasons to criticize Obama but it is difficult to deny that many of his detractors use race to demean him.
As President Barack Obama spoke in Phoenix Tuesday about responsible home ownership, hundreds of people stood outside protesting his policies, many shouting and carrying racially charged chants and signs.
“Bye Bye Black Sheep,” the protestors shouted at one point, a reference to the president’s skin color, according to the Arizona Republic.
Another protestor carried a sign that said “Impeach the Half-White Muslim!”
“He’s 47 percent Negro,” one protestor shouted.http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/anti-obama-protest-turns-racist
Rodeo Clown with Obama Mask. What Could Go Wrong?
A rodeo clown wearing an Obama mask made a stir at the Missouri State Fair rodeo Saturday night as the announcer got the crowd roaring asking if they wanted to see “Obama run down by a bull.” The state’s Republican Lt. Gov quickly denounced the spectacle.
Perry Beam, who was among the spectators, said “everybody screamed” and “just went wild” as the announcer talked about having the bull run down the clown with the Obama mask.
“It was at that point I began to feel a sense of fear. It was that level of enthusiasm,” Beam, a 48-year-old musician from Higginsville, said Sunday, referring to the reaction from the crowd that filled the fair’s grandstand.
…
“They mentioned the president’s name, I don’t know, 100 times. It was sickening,” Beam said. “It was feeling like some kind of Klan rally you’d see on TV.”
Josh Marshall Talking Points Memo
“It was feeling like some kind of Klan rally you’d see on TV.”
Many do not realize it but during the early part of the 20th century there is evidence to suggest the Klan was about as strong and influential in the mid west as in the south.
I have long felt that the expressions of racism differs in different parts of the country but the breadth or depth of antipathy – not so much.
One lesson to be learned from the Zimmerman case is the need of “civil-rights” leaders & groups to perpetuate themselves, even if at the expense of the good of people as a whole. To survive and prosper financially, too many anachronistic entities, “jobs”, and people playing at being self-styled leaders, must have their martyrs.
It would have been an injustice if Zimmerman had walked. He entered into a situation for which he was responsible with a gun. The subsequent tangle between the men, even if initially begun when the Black kid punched Zimmerman (I would have done the same if I was just walking by myself during the early A.M., and was descended upon by an aggressive stranger), ended with Trayvon Martin’s death.
While clearly neither 1st or 2nd degree Murder, it was a classic crime of Manslaughter or, if appropriate Negligent Homocide (I know in different jurisdictions charges can vary). The facts should have been examined & Zimmerman charged. Charged with the crime he committed.
I do not think it unwise for special-interest groups to have descended on an exurban Florida County to ensure justice was done. But somewhere along the line “justice” for a dead teenager was sacrificed so certain groups could continue their existence. Continue to pursue what has become to many groups, a business.
Once these civil-rights groups got their high-profile mode claws in the matter, Manslaughter, whether 1st or 2nd degree, or G-d forbid a charge of Involuntary Manslaughter/Negligent Homocide, would not do. Money can’t be raised, you can’t make a living at such a “job”, if all that happens is a 1200 mile journey, a flurry of publicity, and an …. Involuntary or Negligent Homicide charge. Your interests require “Murder”. No big time charge=no contributions, speeches, interviews, etc.
The State Attorney’s Office for the County refused the pressure for a Murder charge. So, what to do? Let them pass on prosecuting & use political pressure on the state to ship someone in who would prosecute & try a Murder case. If the prosecutor turns out to be less than ethical, maybe less than competent? That was fine. Win or lose, as long as the charge was Murder, it was a win for the “civil-rights” groups. In fact, losing was actually better for their “cause”.
Of course Zimmerman walked. Anyone who watched a decent part of the State’s case knew that would happen. But, those groups that need to depict 2013 America as 1963 America, got exactly what they wanted. A martyr, media exposure, even a President speaking about something that is none of his Constitutional business. This isn’t exactly the Scotsboro Boys, but what the heck. Talking about the racism he grew up with in Indonesia and Hawaii is so much easier than making real decisions on real matters of importance.
Oh, yeah, Obama never mentioned his youth in Indonesia. That’s too bad. While I understand why he chooses to pass on that (gasoline on the fire of some wingnuts), it would do Americans good to hear about places like Indonesia, where Black people are looked at as being the incapable & very stupid bottom (way at the bottom) of a color-conscious totem pole.
Progressives at work. The dumbing down of America continues.
gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/8th-grade-exam-puts-adults-test
Can You Pass This 8th Grade Exam From 1912?
Sorry for the botched layout in my previous post. One of these days I will have to learn how to submit a table to this web sight.
The data really is there, although not easy to read.