I've written about how I will not don a hoodie or hijab in a notion of "solidarity" for victims of racism -- I don't think that's the human rights approach and I want to dissent from this latest liberal fad.
As for the Trayvon Martin case, I've been meaning to blog on this for a long time, but like many, I was held back by fear of political incorrectness. I hate that. It's terrible to feel you are silenced. I've waited to see how the case would play out -- and most of all, I've waited for the news media to cover the other side. Not Zimmerman's side. The side of the victims of eight robberies by black men that formed the rationale for Zimmerman's wrongful action. Their existence and their reality doesn't make Zimmerman right whatsoever. He's wrong. But they count, too, and they are part of the story. Now, Reuters has finally reported this.
First of all, there's no doubt that George Zimmerman should get more than just some misdemeanor punishment. He was told by 911 not to engage with a person he thought was suspect, and he went after him anyway. He used deadly force on an unarmed man. It doesn't matter if Trayvon was taller or if he jumped him and cracked his head -- a gun was not warranted in this situation, and Zimmerman provoked it, from all accounts.
Zimmerman had a history of assault, aggressiveness, and anger at criminals that made him completely unsuited to any "neighbourhood watch" role, and he went against their own rules of engagement. So there should be some kind of serious charge coming out of this and adequate sentencing. I'm all for justice in this case, and justice for the unarmed against the armed, and for yet another attempt to try to curb guns.
I won't be attending the million-hoodie march, however, and not only because I oppose identity politics as a solution for society's injustices but because I don't think the prevention of more George Zimmermans is about merely trying to get people to drop their stereotypes, as laudable as that is. I think it's much more about gun control and about getting at the root causes of the criminality of the underclass in the first place -- and I don't think those root causes are mere unhappy childhoods even if poverty and lack of education and opportunity do play a role.
Why? Because my mother, a white liberal who taught in integrated inner-city schools until she was the last white teacher in an all-black school, was hit over the head by a black male student and robbed. I've been a victim of violent crime and theft by black males four times myself, and my son has been assaulted three times in his city schools by black males and a black female. That's why. I will never forget the night that I and a group of my white liberal friends thought we would do the right white liberal thing and talk in a friendly manner with a group of black males that suddenly came up to us at a bus stop and asked us if we knew when the bus was coming. We weren't prejudiced, we told ourselves, although are instincts were to run away fast. Instead, we went along with their ruse, despite our common sense, chatting with them, and the next thing I knew, one of the men was grabbing my purse as I started to board the bus, the bus driver took one look at the gang and drove away, and the next thing I knew after that, I was shoved up against a car and hit over the head because I ran after the robber.
In each and every case with my son's assaults in his horrible dysfunctional city high school, the person responsible was a young black man and in one case a black female. Most of the crimes in the city schools are committed by young black men. The ACLU prefers to view the findings of reports on this problem as racism and discrimination and overkill; I don't, from my multiple personal experiences. Nobody who has been through the horribly mismanaged and violent city school systems of New York will ever say the problem is racism. It's lousy educational theories rewarmed from the 1960s and 1970s that didn't even work then; it's poor supervision and poor teaching. To be sure, there is also white flight to private schools because of the heavy black violence in the schools, making their "integration" a total fiction.
But the problem isn't discrimination -- black children are bussed far from their neighbourhoods into white neighbourhoods and even integrated schools with good reputations; there just aren't enough white parents willing to keep sending their kids to them due to the constant police presence and the metal detectors and the knife fights, and there just aren't enough black parents forced to keep sending their kids to city schools able to raise their voices above the din. Pull up the web sites of the city's school and see the appalling graduation rates -- 40 percent or less in many. Some of them will mention the number of police visits; if they don't, ask them before you send your kid there -- you will be shocked.
If anything, the problem is black principals and vice principals giving young black men a pass, as a management method. If they are forgiven again and again and kept in the ambit; the theory is that they won't escalate their violence. I've seen this time and again, in person. I've seen white principals do another thing -- let black kids smoke pot and look the other way as a "management tool" as well, on the theory they are "quieter". This is all so awful, you have no idea.
Well, you say, just because you can point to eight cases of criminal assault and theft by black men involving your family, does that mean you have to distrust all black men? Of course not. My mother spent her career teaching black children in urban schools, and we were the only family in our white suburban tract that had black guests in our home in the 1960s. Did yours? My kids go to schools where they are in the very distinct white minority. Do yours? I live in a mixed neighbourhood of all races. Do you? I have black male neighbours who go to work or are retired and they are part of keeping the neighbourhood's kids in order -- including my own, when they act up and do something wrong. Obviously, I'm not going to run away from my own neighbours I know by sight, but if I'm walking back home late at night and I see a kid in a hoodie and expensive sneakers follow me, I'll quicken my pace. And so will you, even if you're on your way home from the trendy million-hoodie march. Political correctness gets you absolutely nowhere in this town as I've discovered by being literally a liberal mugged by reality.
And so I can't see the deadly tragedy of Trayvon merely as a problem of racial hatred. Reuters finally reported what one black woman called "The Elephant in the Room"
A criminal justice student who aspired to become a judge, Zimmerman also concerned himself with the safety of his neighbors after a series of break-ins committed by young African-American men.
Though civil rights demonstrators have argued Zimmerman should not have prejudged Martin, one black neighbor of the Zimmermans said recent history should be taken into account.
"Let's talk about the elephant in the room. I'm black, OK?" the woman said, declining to be identified because she anticipated backlash due to her race. She leaned in to look a reporter directly in the eyes. "There were black boys robbing houses in this neighborhood," she said. "That's why George was suspicious of Trayvon Martin."
There were eight robberies in Trayvon's neighbourhood, and they were all said to involve black males. How did they know that? Because of video cameras, and because the victims were confronted in some cases. This frustrated people in the community terribly, because the police hadn't come on one occasion, and weren't managing to catch the robbers. Enter George Zimmerman and his gun.
There is a problem of a minority of a minority committing a lot of crimes in this country, in your city, in your neighbourhood, and mine. This problem fills up the jails, and fills up the school detention halls, and many want to reach for "discrimination" as the answer and "don't punish" as an answer. But identity politics can't save this situation any more than it can save the hate crimes against Shaima or Trayvon. We need to firmly call out and address the black males who commit crimes just as we address the white males who commit crimes. That I call for both is is viewed as horribly racist and politically incorrect, but it shouldn't be, because the people harmed the most by violent black males are first and foremost black females and then other black males.
I feel we need to take on the perspective of the victim, and few are willing to do that for some reason when it comes to black male crime, even when the victims are other blacks. I have a vision of the hoodie marches, but across the street, I have a vision of a single file of brave black, white, Hispanic, and Asian men and women -- and it will be mainly women -- each quietly carrying a sign "I am Trayvon...but I am a victim of a crime committed by a black male, too. What can we all do about this?" Guns are not the answer; but suppressing the legitimate experiences of these victims isn't, either. They are part of the equation; validating their experience is what changes the situation.
There are lots of things we need to do to fix this situation -- it is about better schools, better isolation of the violent from those who want to study, better alternative sentencing programs, a better bail system, better opportunities for jobs. A lot of these have been tried. A lot of these already partly work. But whatever you try and whatever you prescribe, you do not succeed if you can't tell the truth about the real problem -- if you want to wish away the George Zimmerman problem by invoking racism, or the problem of too many black kids in detention in my kids' schools by saying they are victims of racism. Human rights solutions for me have always started with a factual report. It's not factual to say that the problem of my kids' schools or George Zimmerman's neighbourhood are only about "racism"; they are about the high incident of black male crime, too.
In Zimmerman's case, he was indulging in "guilt by association" -- on the heels of eight robberies by black men. Sure, he could have done the correct white liberal thing and not chased someone he thought he was suspicious. Had he not engaged in guilt by association, Trayvon would be alive today!
But there really were those eight cases. His response isn't right but it is in a context Reuters has finally reported -- and should have started with on week one, when those same facts were known, rather than wait for the Rev. Al Sharpton to incite everyone. It starts with a climate where it is seen as impolitic even to mention the fact of the prior situation. Trying to write off school crime, when there are appalling cases where kids have thrown chairs out of a window, and hit and injured a pregnant women (in our neighbourhood), or thrown a shopping cart off a parking lot ramp and put a woman into a coma and caused her permanent disability in the Bronx -- and so many more crimes -- it's not fair to the victims to keep up this pretense.
The Village Voice has a very interesting piece on the "broken" bail system. I'm here to say this system is broken for whites as well as blacks. There is so much wrong with it at every level. It starts with families not even getting information about where to go to get a bail bond (lawyers and court personnel are prohibited from recommending them), and too-strict requirements and massive amounts of personal data required to get bail bonds -- which aren't free, and are costly with non-refundable fees. The system should be totally reformed, so that it works another way instead of like a loan: anyone who can produce a driver's license and leave a deposit of $100 or $250 or $500 in cash depending on whether the bond is $500, $2000 or $3000, or a valid credit card with that charge, should be able to take their relatives home in non-violent cases. Neighbourhood assistance groups that put up bail for people should be legalized.
The bail-bond system exists for people with relatives or friends with W-2 jobs, plenty of resources and a good deal of cash up front, and a good credit record. Many people who wind up in jail don't have those things. As the Voice reported, if you can keep people out of jail, you can keep them out of jail period in most cases.
The system of every single case structured as plea-bargaining also has to be reviewed. It was never intended to be used so often -- it is clearly used in order to move the overload of cases through the system. So often people are needlessly over-criminalized because they simply agree to a lesser charge just to get the prolonged and bureaucratic experience over with. Let's not pretend they shouldn't be detained and this is all about "stop and frisk" -- I've been down to 100 Centre Street numerous times and seen case after case of domestic violence. I've personally witnessed police dream up a greater charge to slap on a detainee, knowing full well that they will be in a system where it will be pled down to a lesser offense -- and they do that so that they get "something," because so many violent criminals are let go. I do not believe drug legalization is the answer (see above about the deliberate dumbing down of our youth), but there are reforms that could be made. Alternative sentencing programs are often also a joke -- too many warehousing programs that are hard to get to with too much make-work. Educational classes teaching basic life skills and sessions one-on-one with social workers and therapists would probably have a better impact.
We need justice for Trayvon, but wearing hoodies isn't the answer. Justice must be served, and to prevent the spiral of violence, justice has to be available for the eight victims of robberies in George Zimmerman's neighbourhood, too. Moreover, the reasons that contribute to black male crime have to be addressed, and this starts with an accurate and frank reporting by experts and the media, and an end to pretending that if we talk about the "elephant in the room" as the black neighbour of Zimmerman did, we should fear retaliation.
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