Yet More 'Comments' to the NYT article:
[Commenter quotes Obama] "You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said that this could have been my son,” he said. “Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.”
----"Mr. President, why don't you react the same way when a white or oriental teenager is shot? Why does your reaction depend on skin color? Isn't this what racism is all about?"
" Like many, I have been considering the verdict, its aftermath, the errors of the prosecutor, and the obvious errors Zimmerman and Martin made on the night in question--errors that cost a life.
I also remember that when I was a teenager back in the 70s, growing up in Charlotte, I was tailed by security guards and kicked out of a mall for looking wrong. I, too, have heard the click, click,click of car doors locking as I walk past. Although I obviously have a lot in common with Obama, there's one big difference. I am a Southern white male. It occured to me that young males scare people, regardless of their race.
As I reflected on Obama's comments today, I remembered these events from my life and considered the President's leadership. I thought about the fact that the President, a Supreme Court Justice, the Attorney General, and a former head of the Joint Chiefs are all African-American. How much better if Obama had chosen not to identify himself as a co-victim? How much better if he had exercised real leadership by speaking truth to the power-brokers (Jackson, Sharpton, et al) whose very survival depends on perpetuating racial disharmony and the culture of victimhood? The country needs forward-looking leadership, not retrospective wallowing like what we got from Obama today. I wish our President had the leadership skills of Charles Barkley, who showed sensitivity to the victim, his family, the accused, and also moved the entire conversation in a positive direction."
" Does he or anyone address the question as to why young black men are stopped in stores, in residential areas, etc? Is it a reflexive and odious racist belief that black men have an innate propensity for criminal behavior? Is it crime statistics that show a very high and disproportionate rate of criminality on the part of young black men and the profiling of such is neither racist nor irrational? Why are young black men subjected to such scrutiny relative to other minorities; e.g. Asians, Hispanics? There is an understandable correlation between suspicious scrutiny ( Jesse Jackson's notable comment of twenty or so years ago about his feeling of relief that the footsteps behind him were those of young white men rather than young black men ) and crime rates. What rightly or wrongly are perceived as racist attitudes on the part of mainstream society will persist as long as high crime rates on the part of black men persist. "
".... I'd like President Obama to take a leadership role in reducing murders of black people by other black people. Has anybody seen any recent news on the murder of Hadiya Pendleton? Probably not. She was the delightful 15-year old who performed at Mr. Obama's 2012 inauguration and was shot-to-death in a Chicago park several weeks later. The accused are two gang members who mistook Miss Pendleton as a member of a rival gang. Now that was murder in the true sense.
Google "Chicago Teen Shot". It's chilling. Most of the murders are black teens killing black teens. This is not about guns. They would kill with knives, baseball bats or tire irons. How about the President, Mayor Emanuel and Chicago's black leadership put the same amount angst and energy applied to the Zimmerman case towards reducing the dreadful number of murders of black teens in Chicago. A lot of the males probably looked like Trayvon."
" I can appreciate the President's perspective, but these "conversations" (at least in the media) always seem to be one-sided. Those who want to prevent their communities from becoming crime-ridden also have direct experiences that inform how they see the world, and they are just as legitimate as anyone's. "
" [Commenter begins by quoting Obama]
'Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.'
Is the president saying that he would have jumped out 35 years ago and begin pummeling a man to the ground because he was being followed? Is he identifying with straddling that person MMA style while smashing his head on the concrete?
I fail to see how this is a race issue. I fail to see how this is a gun issue (suppose he'd just picked up a loose rock while on his back, and stuck Travon dead? Would that change people's views?). There was no way that Zimmerman could know how far Martin was prepared to go once he had him on the ground. According to Zimmerman, Martin told him he was going to kill him.
Neighborhood watch groups follow people they don't recognize as being from their neighborhood. That's pretty much the raison d'etre of neighborhood watch groups. One would be hard pressed to describe the function of a neighborhood watch group without including the identification of people unknown to that neighborhood. That's not "profiling." That's just common sense. "
"Although the investigators close to the case and the law enforcement personnel with whom Zimmerman was in contact right before the confrontation thought -- all of them -- that racial motivations were not involved in Zimmerman's actions in any substantive way, and although the jurors who have spoken have indicated that they perceived no particular racial element in Zimmerman's behavior and actions, that factual reality, which speaks volumes, has been trashed. Instead, race, and race-baiting, has been, outrageously injected into the case and, worse, made the fulcrum of the discussion. That President Obama, under pressure from his perceived "constituency," sunk to this tactic, in the context of the incendiary level obvious vis-a-vis various portions of the American landscape and vis-a-vis the massive threats on the life of a person found not gulity, reflects very poorly on him. I'm a veteran of the civil rights struggles of the 60s, 70s, and beyond. If this is what has become of struggling for civil rights for all, stooping to racialism when the opportunity is either ripe or the mob's demands are just too hard to resist, I want no part of it. " |
