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As entertainment critic Roger
Ebert once said, "If you disagree with something I write, tell me so, argue
with me, correct me--but don't tell me to shut up. That's not the American way."
So, who gets to advocate for their dead children? Do we get upset when a white Mom or Dad goes to the press, makes a huge fuss when their kid disappears in Aruba or Utah or is killed in California?
Why should black, or other minority, communities just sit on their hands when their kids are killed or harmed, but white parents and white communities that have money or time are allowed to use the media and the government at much as possible? We don't say it is racial, and only racial, when white parents do the exact same thing.
Sure, some fusses will be made of cases where the killing/harming is one that should not have a fuss made over it, but I think that Trayvon's parents weren't going to shut up about it isn't really any different than any of the pretty white girl's parents not shutting up about it, either.
Who do you think has the right to make a fuss over their dead kid? Who is allowed to rally their community around them? Is it bad when the Mormons get all the other Mormons to rally around them? Or is it just black people who should never get other black people on their side? You can only rally the troops if they are not your troops, only if some group you have no connection with decides to rally behind you? And if your own troops rally behind you, shut them down, immediately. Do not under any circumstances accept or encourage their help or outrage.
Do you think they would have been just content and happy if some black neighborhood watch guy apparently targeted their kid? Really? They would have clapped him on the back and told him good job? If that black guy had a myspace page bragging about how he got two felony with violence charges dropped down to misdemeanors and said some things that indicated he was willing to say biased things against certain types of people in public? (GZ's lawyer confirmed it was his page)
It is hard for the system to get rid of all racial (or other) biases and profiling as a lot of it is institutionalized and reinforced by a lot of other parts of society and I'm not sure there is a deliberate act by people consciously and specifically saying this one black kid's death may not be prosecuted, etc. But it is very hard for people to avoid going along with institutional biases as sometimes it doesn't even seem that there is anything that bad going on when you look at just any one case. You really only see the magnitude of the problem when you look at the bigger picture. I don't think this case was completely free of some of the biases that are prevalent in very small ways every day in every society that has ever been and ever will be. I really hope we can get to the point where all men and women are treated as if they really are created equal and we see each case for its unique situation and never use judgments, biases, generalizations, or assessments from other situations to color what we are doing in this case. But we are human, we love to stick this new thing in an old box.
It is like the stats from one school district I saw recently where black males caught with a cell phone in school on a first offense are probably going to get suspended where other kids caught for the same thing generally only get a warning. You can't say in any one case that it is a deliberate and specific racially motivated act, but when you look at the overall situation it is clear there are some biases in the system and some people are routinely more likely to get punished severely than others. Even a small difference in who you think they are texting can make a difference in how they get punished. And yes, sometimes one small portion of a group is doing something that tends to need more severe punishment, but it ends up being everyone who is anything like that identifiable group gets caught in the same net rather than each case being checked to see if they just were worried because their Mom was sick vs they needed to keep track of when the dealer was dropping off the drugs at the school. If they assume a reasonable reasons for people in this box and assume an illegal reason for the people in that box you can get a big difference in how often one box gets screwed over. If your kid was suspended because a another kid with the same hair style once was dealing drugs would you be happy? Would you say the system is unbiased if only kids with that hair style got suspended?
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