What the Left Hath Wrought.

[_Droopy]

Who Is 'Racist'?
By Thomas Sowell
4/24/2012

Whatever the ultimate outcome of the case against George Zimmerman for his shooting of Trayvon Martin, what has happened already is enough to turn the stomach of anyone who believes in either truth or justice.

An amazing proportion of the media has given us a painful demonstration of the thinking -- and lack of thinking -- that prevailed back in the days of the old Jim Crow South, where complexion counted more than facts in determining how people were treated.

One of the first things presented in the media was a transcript of a conversation between George Zimmerman and a police dispatcher. The last line in most of the transcripts shown on TV was that of the police dispatcher telling Zimmerman not to continue following Trayvon Martin.

That became the basis of many media criticisms of Zimmerman for continuing to follow him. Only later did I see a transcript of that conversation on the Sean Hannity program that included Zimmerman's reply to the police dispatcher: "O.K."

That reply removed the only basis for assuming that Zimmerman did in fact continue to follow Trayvon Martin. At this point, neither I nor the people who assumed that he continued to follow the teenager have any basis in fact for believing that he did or didn't.

Why was that reply edited out by so many in the media? Because too many people in the media see their role as filtering and slanting the news to fit their own vision of the world. The issue is not one of being "fair" to "both sides" but, more fundamentally, of being honest with their audience.

NBC News carried the editing even further, removing one of the police dispatcher's questions, to which Zimmerman was responding, in order to feed the vision of Zimmerman as a racist.

In the same vein were the repeated references to Zimmerman as a "white Hispanic." Zimmerman is half-white. So is Barack Obama. But does anyone refer to Obama as a "white African"?

All these verbal games grow out of the notion that complexion tells you who is to be blamed and who is not. It is a dangerous game because race is no game. If the tragic history of the old Jim Crow South in this country is not enough to show that, the history of racial and ethnic tragedies is written in blood in countries around the world. Millions have lost their lives because they looked different, talked differently or belonged to a different religion.

In the midst of the Florida tragedy, there was a book published with the unwieldy title, "No Matter What ... They'll Call This Book Racist." Obviously it was written well before the shooting in Florida, but its message -- that there is rampant hypocrisy and irrationality in public discussions of race -- could not have been better timed.

Author Harry Stein, a self-described "reformed white liberal," raised by parents who were even further left, exposes the illogic and outright fraudulence that lies behind so much of what is said about race in the media, in politics and in our educational institutions.

He asks a very fundamental question: "Why, even after the Duke University rape fiasco, does the media continue to give credence to every charge of racism?"

Harry Stein credits Shelby Steele's book "White Guilt" with opening his eyes to one of the sources of many counterproductive things said and done about race today -- namely, guilt about what was done to blacks and other minorities in the past.

Let us talk sense, like adults. Nothing that is done to George Zimmerman -- justly or unjustly -- will unlynch a single black man who was tortured and killed in the Jim Crow South for a crime he didn't commit.

Letting hoodlums get away with hoodlumism today does not undo a single injustice of the past. It is not even a favor to the hoodlums, for many of whom hoodlumism is just the first step on a path that leads to the penitentiary, and maybe to the execution chamber.

Winston Churchill said, "If the past sits in judgment on the present, the future will be lost." He wasn't talking about racial issues, but what he said applies especially where race is involved.

[_Bond James Bond]

I read the whole article and there's nothing about the "Left".

[_Joyful]

Yeah, whats up with that Droopy??? haha

Beyond The Hoodie: Guns and the Law .


Monday, 02 April 2012 16:09 Local Talk News Editor
.

The Travon Martin case is one that really has people in an uproar. Travon was a 17 year old who was unarmed and shot and killed in Sanford, Florida on February 26, 2012 by George Zimmerman, who was conducting a neighborhood watch.

The neighborhood where the fatality occurred was a gated community, and Travon was there visiting the house of his father’s fiancé. Travon Martin is from Miami, Florida.

Now I was not there, so I cannot tell you what happened. But after listening to the many accounts and versions of the story, I can say this: something terrible went wrong, and a young life was taken away.

George Zimmerman has been interviewed by the Sanford Police Department, but has not been arrested.

What is troubling to me is that we have people shot and killed in our community, (The Hood) and we never see the amount of outrage that we are witnessing in this case. Just a few weeks ago in Chicago, a 6 year old was shot and killed by a stray bullet. In Newark, a pizza man was shot and killed in the store on South Orange Avenue. Two weeks ago, a Black male was shot 9 times because he had on a red shirt at 3 a.m. on the corner of 18th and Stuyvesant Avenues. Just last summer, 13 people were shot in one day in Newark with fatalities.

Where was the national outrage? We cannot be selective…we have to mad at EVERY shooting.

People all over are outraged. They are outraged about the way the shooting went down, they are outraged because Zimmerman is not in jail, and the people are outraged because of the way the Sanford P.D. has handled the situation, and rightly so. But they need to have the same outrage when Black folk kill Black folk.

Travon's body was in the morgue for three days before it was identified, and the family is very upset about that, not to mention that their 17 year old son was murdered.

A lot of this case will revolve around the “Stand Your Ground” gun law, a law that they have in the state of Florida that was signed by former Governor Jeb Bush. But does the law apply to George Zimmerman? That is the question.

The “Stand Your Ground” gun law, is in 23 states: Alabama, Georgia, Kansas, Michigan, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Nevada, just to name a few. This law is used when a person feels that he or she is threatened and has a gun on them, the person can use it and claim self-defense.

George Zimmerman is claiming that he felt threatened by Travon Martin. But all accounts show that Zimmerman was following Martin because he deemed him suspicious and walking around in the community.

The Sanford Police Department report says that an altercation took place between Zimmerman and Martin. However, the police may have botched this case in such a big way that the community is not believing what the witnesses or the police are saying.

“Stand Your Ground” gun law states that a person may use deadly force in self-defense when there is reasonable belief of a threat, without an obligation to retreat first. In some cases, a person may use deadly force in public areas without a duty to retreat. Under this legal concept, a person is justified in using deadly force in certain situations and the “Stand Your Ground” gun law would be a defense or immunity to criminal conviction.

Many of the laws were originally advocated as a way to address domestic abuse cases - how could a battered wife retreat if she was attacked in her own home? Such legislation also has been recently pushed by the National Rifle Association, and of the Gun Rights groups.

From 2005 to 2010, there were 94 cases of people invoking the “Stand Your Ground” law. 65 of the people were unarmed.

We have seen marches, rallies, protests, and churches telling their church members to wear their hoodies in memory of Travon Martin.

The hoodie became a focus of the shooting after radio talk show host Geraldo Rivera made a statement on air saying that if Travon did not have on his hoodie, he would possibly be alive today. That statement created anger across the country, and people started wearing their hoodies all over as a way to protest what Rivera said.

One may never really know what happened in the Travon Martin case, but the people cannot operate on emotions and emotions only. They have to look for the truth in this case in order for the family to get justice.

We have too many guns in this country, and too many irresponsible people carrying them.

( I don't agree with this last statement)