I must be either really stupid or horribly naive because, for the life of me, I cannot see how this case is about race. Absolutely not ONE SHRED of evidence was produced to remotely insinuate Zimmerman is a racist. Not one shred.
Profiling, yes, OK, I can see that. But as I said early on, we all profile every day and certainly it's part of the education in any form of law enforcement, psychology, all walk of life, really. Racial profiling, no, didn't happen. Unless you want to say Z was suspicious of a person sauntering around his neighborhood on a rainy night and that person happened to be black.
Where the HELL is this coming from? Who gives this claim any credence? The UN??? DOJ, again??? Really??? Where is the EVIDENCE? Just because the claim is made does not make it true. Or even "investigatable". Every death is tragic and this one certainly is tragic, of course. But not every death of a black person by a non-black person involves racism. Most do not, I feel confident in saying.
So where the hell is this coming from? I can see why the media is continuing to perpetuate this, but why does the government want to dwell in this fantasy and stoke these hateful fires?
Someone please give me a link to a book on hate. I guess I've got a lot to learn about how this fits into that mindset.
I totally get what you're saying, but the reason why I think it
is about race is because it's something a lot of us don't have to worry about. White kids with hoodies aren't followed and persecuted the way black kids are.
Indeed, the recent burglaries in the area were committed by young black men. GZ did a very natural thing in the profiling we do every day, whether we like to admit it or not.
However, he went a step further. He went far beyond suspicion, down the road of assuming the kid was guilty of something, though there was no actual basis for that thinking other than the fact that he racially fits the profile of recent burglars.
My neighborhood watch captain told me this: "A good neighborhood watch captain would have put the suspicion on the backburner of their mind, and then actually rolled down the window and invite to drive the kid home so he can get out of the rain. By doing that, you establish connections with your neighbors and the residents in the area, you know his face up close and can remember it for future reference, and you figure out where he lives."
Of course, GZ didn't even think to do any of that, did he? He racially profiled a young man and escalated the tension instead of defusing it with well-known common sense approaches to being a volunteer in the neighborhood watch program.
Doesn't make GZ a "racist", but I think it does make this case about race and the subtle prejudices that exist in our thinking. And I also think the decision is about race, because it suggests that TM deserved his own murder because he was a typical "angry black man", which is a syndrome only put on to them by white people, and which has no basis in actual reality.
