Trayvon Martin was a victim of racial profiling. Every day, American drone plane operators do the same thing, deciding who lives and dies in Afghanistan and Pakistan based on nothing more than the appearance, clothing and location of their victims thousands of miles away. People have been killed mistakenly simply because a drone operator thought they were wearing a black long-tailed turban, favored by some Talibs because they come from tribes that wear them.
Racial Profiling
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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Exactly. We ignore all the killing going on every day and every minute, and get sidetracked into this Traynor vs. Zimmerman bullshit. I really don’t care if Zimmerman was not beaten enough, and i really don’t care if Traynor had a bunch of stolen jewelry in his bookbag along with old marijuania bags.. I simply don’t care becuse no one is excited by Shawn Tyson killing a couple of tourists, and why a couple of black boys felt they had to light a white boy on fire in return. These stories never get heard, but anything that be be misconstued is. This is a wake-up call for America that the Blacks are still berserkly waiting for anything that can be racist, and that they are FAR more racist than the whites are. If Zimmerman had been black – we would never had heard about it.
Whoa, Rickster, really? That wasn’t my point at all.
Didn’t you get the memo from the media Ted? You aren’t supposed to talk about this Martin thing anymore, now that the cat is out of the bag, and it was a Hispanic man who shot a black kid. That’s just your day to day minority on minority crime that they don’t care about. Too bad that mexican dude looked a little white, or the whole deal could have been avoided (it never happened if its not covered right?) Meanwhile in Afghanistan random killing continues. @riskster- If the media had known the shooter was a Mexican right away this would have never been a story.
Mr Rall doesn’t read the news. According to the New York Times, since Obama took office, the only civilian casualties were the 17 unfortunate victims of Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, who had suffered brain injuries from a terrorist attack and may not have been responsible for his actions. Every authorized US military action killed only terrorists, not a single civilian.
If you can’t trust the New York Times about these things, you must be a conspiracy nut. The news clearly shows that they were ALL terrorists: men, women, children and infant terrorists. And these terrorists are very sneaky, many didn’t even have any weapons.
But for those of us who believe the New York Times instead of conspiracy theories, every last one of those killed by authorised US strikes was a terrorist.
Back to the good old days of non-judicial due process.
Allow twelve American citizens in conference to decide whether another man is to live or die. It happens all the time: it’s called a jury, but it’s really only a collection of twelve men somehow elevated to a God-like status over the life of another by the presence of another fallible human symbolically elevated by the wearing of a robe—black, not white, in this case and—let’s not forget this—knowledge of law and due process. It’s what differentiates a jury from a KKK clan meeting.
So why, the power elite might ask, do we need a judge to bless the decision of twelve men to kill one?
I would think that a couple of black men would find the introduction of KKK-style non-judicial due process into the White House to be objectionable. Maybe the white folk advising them were just funnin’ with them to see what they would fall for, and then let it go too far. Too bad they fell for it. This is so embarrassing. This could be a real setback for affirmative action.
But then again, when you find yourself in the White House and are trying to figure out what acceptable behavior might look like to white folk, you might think it best to act the way you think a white man would in the same place—say, someone like George W. Bush. It is a shame, but to be expected, that a couple of simple black men have come to think that all white men think like members of the KKK. This backwoods provincial intellectual characterization applies amazingly well to both Bush and Obama, despite divergent styles otherwise.
Again, excellent, Ted! But I should another observation: not a week goes by in the good ole USofA that a regular policeman (not a cop wanna-be like Zimmermann) does exactly what he did, or worse, to mostly black and brown victims (but also white ones) and gets away with it, protected by the thin blue line and the powerful and active police unions.
Yet you don’t hear a peep from the official press or from hucksters like Sharpton.
Michaelwme, I hope that is an attempt at sarcasm, because there have been reports of many civilian deaths, granted, not covered by the media at this point, but they are there. Sometimes sarcasm is difficult to see in written words.
“This is a wake-up call for America that the Blacks are still berserkly waiting for anything that can be racist, and that they are FAR more racist than the whites are.”
Ah, the eternal whine of the bigot. “Buh-buh–they’re exactly like me but worse!”
If Zimmerman had been black, we would have all heard about it, because then racists would be complaining that the police hadn’t arrested him, which the media would have erroneously concluded made them strange bedfellows with non-racists calling for justice (similarities on specific policies are no real similarities at all).
Just so you know, as a matter of definition, while bigotry is a game that anyone can play, you can’t actually be racist against an in-power majority since said majority has institutional control, and without the ability to enhance a public policy against a victimized group, it’s not racist.
But hey, don’t let facts get you down. Feel free to ignore the fact that the banks targeted minorities with illegal, bait-and-switch mortgage loans. Feel free to ignore the fact that school segregation is worse now than it was thirty years ago. Anyone with any sense knows that despite any anti-government crowing you may spew to cover up his racism, if Ted ever gets a quarter of the overthrow he’s looking for, people like rikster will be first up against the wall.
Thanks, Ted, for putting the murder of Travor Martin into perspective. A fish, they say, rots from the head….
Henri