17yr old black kid shot and killed for walking in white suburbia?

[broncofan]

Hard4Janira,
what you say isn't very clearly thought out. When crimes are committed against African-Americans, they are frequently bias crimes. It's not just the race of the victim that matters but also the motivation. The ethnic background of the victim or perpetrator only become relevant when someone is targetted as a victim because of their race. Therefore, if there is a murder and an African-American happens to be the perpetrator it is not the equivalent of an African-American being targetted for murder because of his/her race.

African-Americans have been the victims of lynchings, of the most heinous hate crimes you can imagine, including as Giovanni Hotel mentioned, the dragging of an African-American from a pickup truck. In the past, those who have lynched African-Americans and bragged about it publicly were either not tried or were tried and acquitted despite the admissions of reliable confessions. It is highly immoral to try to whitewash this past by pointing to crime rates by race or by creating an equivalence between those crimes that were committed on the basis of race hatred and those with other motivations.

Now, you may say what many other racists say when confronted with such an important distinction. "How is the law making somebody's thoughts a crime; I don't believe there should be such a thing as a hate crime". Well the legislature does think so and further it has always been within the province of the law to look for mitigating factors and aggravating factors and charge someone accordingly. Intent matters and has historically been used to determine the degree of murder and consequently the length of the sentence for committing that murder.

Further, self-defense, particularly that requiring deadly force is only justified by a deadly threat. The police should be vigilant anytime somebody has killed an unarmed man without a very good explanation as to how his life was in danger. Your opinion of crime statistics by race or the collective guilt of African-Americans based on the actions of other African-Americans has nothing to do with whether Mr. Zimmerman can make a valid self-defense claim. I don't believe he can. Stand your ground is a red herring because it does not justify an escalation in violence from the threat one was confronted with.

[hard4janira]

Wrong again. Boilerplate SYG laws was designed by ALEC and slipped through conservative state legislatures before most Americans knew what was happening. Part of the outrage directed at the botched handling (by the police and legal system) of Martin's demise is directed at these SYG laws which have suddenly sprung up like ugly weeds all over America. You are among the very few who see any justice in what Zimmerman did or what the police didn't do on the night of Martin's murder.

SYG is not what's at issue here - quit pretending that it is. If it were two white people or two black people or two hispanics or a hispanic and a black person... this story would be a blip on the radar. The ONLY reason this story has been blown out of proportion is because Zimmerman is half-white and Trayvon is black. Period. All you see is racism. If it were two black people and one was at home having dinner with his wife, you wouldn't give a fuck and I'd call you a liar if you said otherwise.

First of all, let's see some reliable numbers here rather than capitalized adjectival phrases.

Seriously? You know I'm fucking right. And I get screwed like anybody else at people shuffling funny money around on Wall Street (although your embezzlement clain is a bit silly).

I presume you mean if Zimmerman was black. If so, true enough.

Thanks for admitting that. I knew it.

The outrage is over the fact that justice was ignored. Thanks to the outrage, justice was only delayed. But the question remains, why the delay? What was at work on the night the cops and the legal system let Zimmerman walk away from a probable second degree homicide? Here is where the two factors that make this a media story come into play: racial profiling and SYG.

WHAT JUSTICE??? He hasn't even been tried yet. Oh wait.... you already know what happened right? You already know he deserves the death penalty because he commited a hate crime.... Please... spare me already.

And stop with your bullshit, made up, FAUX outrage at SYG. You didn't even know or care about SYG until this happenend. Your outrage is at Zimmerman because he is half-white. End of story. You want him to see the electric chair because you have already said that he commited a hate crime.

Subtract (1). What do you get: Vigilante Shoots and Kills Unarmed African/American Seventeen Year Old Walking Through Gated Community Talking on Cell Phone and Eating Skittles. Perp Arrested and Trial Pending. Perp is Expected to Invoke SYG. That may be a fine headline for a local paper, indeed it's front page, but it's not going national.

More idiocy on your part. It's hard to get lacerations on the back of your head and broken nose if you are taking pot-shots at people eating Skittles. Grow the fuck up.

It's the failure of law enforcement to do their perceived job that is the key ingredient here, though the other ingredients fan the flames.

The only reason you and all the people like yourself who are whipped up in a frenzy over this think that law enforcement failed to do thier job is becaue Zimmerman is half-white.

[broncofan]

And you see a lot of the same arguments popping up in this thread along the lines of "imagine if the races were reversed". Systemic racism against African-Americans by law enforcement officers and a history of lax prosecutions of those who killed African-Americans is relevant to how people view this. You can't expect everyone to wake up one morning and pretend not to be aware of this history or not see something that looks vaguely and disappointingly familiar.

[broncofan]

Hard,
You are right. The story is interesting to the media because you have an African-American youth who was killed by a half-white man, who was only given a short looking over by the police and who was not arrested. Most people find this very unusual given how difficult it is under the law to show you required deadly force. Many people also think that it looks like another African-American who has been targetted by law enforcement and then killed without legal justification.

Caucasians have not historically been victims of mob lynchings, were not restricted from testifying in court, have not had laws tailored in a specific way so that they could be harassed by law enforcement. Vagrancy laws were designed and used for the express purpose of harassing minorities.

This is a picture that everyone with a sense of history gets. You don't get it and we can all see why by the way you dehumanize African-Americans in your posts, referring to them as creatures and suggesting pre-emptive justice against them. Very sad indeed.

[hard4janira]

'Creatures'??

You mean like....animals???
Hard4janira, you're a stone cold racist. Your momma is probably one, as are most of your blood relations.

Yawn.. That word means nothing to me. It's some made up bullshit that is nothing but a political weapon used to discredit people.

Using crimes committed by Blacks to somehow justify your racist attitudes is a dodge. If Blacks NEVER committed violent crimes, you'd still be trying to legitimize your irrational hate of Black people.

And I'm sure that you and people of your ilk will forever use the history of white on black racism to justify your communites perpetual acts of violence and crime against other people. Just keep making excuses.

Throughout the history of this country, hundreds of thousands more Blacks have been raped/murdered/killed by White hands than in the reverse, but you won't see me generalizing that there's something inherently defective and sociopathic in the genetic code of White people.

I was waiting for this. This will FOREVER be your crutch. I get it - I understand it. I just won't accept it. Ever.

BTW, show me a story where three Black guys get a White guy drunk, chain his ass to the back of 4x4 and drag him down an asphalt road until his head pops off?

You don't want to play that game. You will lose badly. I'm not saying you won't find a few good examples, you will. But you will look like a goof if you want to match it up one for one.

You can't murder innocents because 'statistics' are on your side.But hell you're probably one of those cats who would be in favor of actively aborting Black babies to lower future crime rates.

I like it!

[broncofan]

Hard-on,
your posts, which are written in much the same style as the thoughtful expositions at stormfront and other racist sites, provide the exact reason why this case is very much about race. People such as yourself are so infected with racial bias that you're not even able to focus on whether George Zimmerman was guilty and instead you waste energy at once celebrating that an African-American is dead and reciting crime rates.

And there is a reason being called a racist means nothing to you, because you are one. It's not because the term has no meaning, but because you don't see it as a moral indictment.

[trish]

SYG is not what's at issue here - quit pretending that it is.

Sorry, but it's part of the discussion. Quit pretending that it isn't.

WHAT JUSTICE??? He hasn't even been tried yet.

And it was clear before the outrage that he wasn't going to be tried...THAT INJUSTICE. That injustice is the source of the outrage.

And stop with your bullshit, made up, FAUX outrage at SYG. You didn't even know or care about SYG until this happenend.

You don't know me sir. If you just look at my history of posts over the last few years, you know that I've always been concerned about gun laws. In this quote you have revealed yourself to one who profiles, guesses at what people think and do and rarely if ever seek for the evidence. From here on out, stick to the topic, not what you think I think.

More idiocy on your part.

Here you're being deliberately dense. I was not speaking at all to Zimmerman's quilt or innocence. I was speaking to whether the story would have gone national if the law enforcement and the justice system had arrested Zimmerman and set a trial date. Clearly not. Had the headline read...

...Vigilante Shoots and Kills Unarmed African/American Seventeen Year Old Walking Through Gated Community Talking on Cell Phone and Eating Skittles. Perp Arrested and Trial Pending. Perp is Expected to Invoke SYG...

...the nation as a whole would have yawned.

[natina]

CNN;Zimmerman's wife arrested, CHARGED WITH perjury

http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/12/justic...ife/index.html



June 13, 2012: MediaTakeOut.com is happy to announce that yesterday the wife of George Zimmerman was charged with perjury. The third-degree felony is punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 . Shellie Zimmerman was released on bond. Her husband, neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman, 28, killed the Florida teenager Trayvon Martin on February 26.

Now it is alleged in court documents that Shellie Zimmerman used money transfers to hide the couple's finances as they fought for his release on bond. The arrest affidavit alleges that records show that just days before an April bond hearing for her husband, Shellie Zimmerman, 25, transferred $74,000 in eight smaller amounts ranging from $7,500 to $9,990, from her husband's account to hers.

It also alleges that $47,000 was transferred from George Zimmerman's account to his sister's in the days before the bond hearing.

CNN;Zimmerman's wife arrested, CHARGED WITH perjury



http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/12/justic...ife/index.html

[natina]

BREAKING NEWS: Trayvon's Killer Zimmerman Is ACCUSED OF Assaulting A BLACK POLICE OFFICER!!! (And He Served NO TIME In Jail For It)

March 27, 2012: MediaTakeOutcom learned today that George Zimmerman, the man who MURDERED Trayvon Martin, was charged in 2005 with ASSAULTING a police officer. The mainstream media is GLOSSING OVER this fact, claiming that it was some sort ofmisunderstanding.

Well MediaTakeOut.com spoke with AN INFORMANT, inside the Orlando police department, who tell us that the officer who ZIMMERMAN assaulted - was AFRICAN AMERICAN.

This dude is an ANIMAL. He really believes that he can do ANYTHING to Black people, whether they're OFFICERS, children, armed, or UNARMED.

He really needs to be off the streets!!

http://cdn.mediatakeout.com/55039/br...il-for-it.html

[natina]

NEW! zimmerman evidence released

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bes...-zimmerman.cnn