WRAPUP 3-US jobless claims at 4-yr low, lift recovery hopes
* New jobless claims filings fall 5,000 to 4-year low
* Number on benefit rolls lowest since August 2008
* Leading economic indicator rises 0.7 percent
By Lucia Mutikani Thu Mar 22, 2012 1:18pm EDT
WASHINGTON, March 22 (Reuters) - The number of Americans claiming new unemployment benefits dropped to a four-year low last week, bolstering hopes a recent pick-up in job growth will prove lasting.
Initial claims for state jobless benefits fell 5,000 to a seasonally adjusted 348,000, the lowest level since February 2008, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims rising to 354,000 last week.
A separate report showed a gauge aimed at predicting future U.S. economic activity rose sharply in February, pointing to strengthening growth. The data suggests a firming of U.S. economic activity even as China slows and the euro zone slumps.
"Although there is some indigestion, courtesy of China and continued economic and financial market challenges in Europe, domestically things here still support moderate economic growth," said Michael Strauss, chief economist at Commonfund in Wilton, Connecticut.
A four-week moving average of new claims, a better measure of trends, declined 1,250 to 355,000. The data covered the survey week for the government's report on March employment. New claims dropped 5,000 between the February and March survey periods, suggesting another month of solid job growth.
Employers added 227,000 jobs to their payrolls in February, taking the tally for the past three months to 734,000. While the unemployment rate held at 8.3 percent, it has come down 0.8 percentage point since August.
The data on Thursday had little impact on U.S. financial markets as investors worried about the global economy. Other reports showed Chinese manufacturing contracted for a fifth straight month in March, while factory activity in France and Germany declined sharply.
BETTER FORTUNES FOR U.S.
In contrast, U.S. manufacturing activity continues to expand, thanks to stepped-up motor vehicle production, which has led factories to add more workers and extra shifts.
And even the housing market, a major source of pain for the economy, is improving. H ome prices as measured by the Federal Housing Finance Agency were down 0.8 percent in January from a year-ago. In contrast, prices in January 2011 had been 4.6 percent lower than the year-earlier month.
Other data this week showed sales of previously owned homes at their second-highest level since May 2010 in February, and permits for homebuilding approaching a 3-1/2 year high.
Firming labor market conditions helped lift the Conference Board's Leading Economic Index 0.7 percent last month. Economists say while unseasonably mild weather has helped underpin the economy, a true labor market recovery was under way.
"There is more going on here than merely the benefits of a mild winter. We believe that stronger job creation will be sustained throughout 2012," said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics in New York.
The claims report showed the number of people receiving benefits under regular state programs in the week ended March 10 after an initial week of aid fell to its lowest level since August 2008.
Despite the improving picture, long-term unemployment remains a major problem. About 43 percent of the 12.8 million out of work Americans in February had been jobless for more than six months.
A total of 7.28 million people were claiming unemployment benefits under all programs during the week ended March 3, the latest week for which data is available. That was down 142,499 from the prior week.
UPDATE 3-Signs of recovery grow in U.S. housing market
* New home sales fall 1.6 percent in Feb to four-month low
* Median price surges 8.3 percent to eight-month high
* Prices up 6.2 percent from year-ago
By Lucia Mutikani Fri Mar 23, 2012 5:13pm EDT
WASHINGTON, March 23 (Reuters) - The battered U.S. housing market looks to be on the mend as buyers make a tentative return and house prices stabilize.
Sales of new homes in February fell from January but jumped more than 11 percent compared with the same month last year and prices rose, according to data released on Friday that was in line with other recent signs of a slow recovery.
Big challenges lie ahead, most notably in the form of a glut of unsold properties - many of them foreclosures - and tight lending by banks. But even if the recovery is slow and bumpy, the worst of the six-year slump seems to be over.
"The housing market is slowly coming back. It's still a depressed market, but it's getting better. We have a long way to go," said Patrick Newport, an economist at Global Insight in Lexington, Massachusetts.
New home sales slipped 1.6 percent to a seasonally adjusted 313,000-unit annual rate in February, the lowest since October, but were up 11.4 percent in year-on-year terms, the Commerce Department said.
The median new home price jumped 8.3 percent to an eight-month high of $233,700. Compared with February last year, the rise was 6.2 percent.
The report rounded off a week of mixed U.S. housing data and followed a similar pattern seen in the bigger market for existing homes - sales also fell in February, but stayed close to their highest level in nearly two years and prices rose for the first time on a yearly basis since November 2010.
Realtors say they are seeing higher traffic volume and are moving more houses off the market than a few years ago.
"My listings are selling much more quickly compared to the past few years, even approaching 2007 pre-crash levels," said Lindsey Sanders, a Realtor with Muffley & Associates in Atlanta. "I began seeing a meaningful uptick in open house traffic last summer and it has continued to improve. I think this is a combination of sellers finally becoming more willing to ask market prices for their homes instead of bubble-level prices." Builders tell a similar story. An index measuring confidence among homebuilders held at a near four-year high this month and they anticipated an increase in sales over the next six months.
While the pace of home construction fell last month, permits for future projects approached a 3-1/2-year high. Much of the activity is concentrated in the multi-family segment, as demand for rentals soars.
SPOTTY RECOVERY
The recovery remains spotty. According to CoreLogic, for every two homes sold, there is one that could be foreclosed. It estimated the so-called shadow inventory of homes at 1.6 million in January, down from 1.8 million a year ago.
KB Home, the fifth-largest U.S. homebuilder, on Friday said net orders for new homes declined 8 percent in its first quarter as cancellations rose.
"Don't expect this to be a broad-based, rocket-ship recovery," said KB Homes Chief Executive Officer Jeff Mezger on an earnings call. "The overall housing market is better, but this is definitely a localized recovery ... and in some cases, it's a zip-code-by-zip-code recovery."
KB's order decline was in sharp contrast to the strong order growth reported by other U.S. homebuilders, including D.R. Horton, Pulte and Lennar, who have forecast an improving housing market.
While the pace of new home sales held above 300,000 units for a sixth straight month, they are just over a fifth of their 1.389 million unit peak reached in July 2005.
"Mindful that more healing needs to be done, we expect new home sales in 2012 to post their first annual increase in seven years, rising 12 percent," said Sam Bullard, a senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Last month, the inventory of new homes on the market was unchanged at a record low 150,000 units. At February's sales pace it would take 5.8 months to clear the houses from the market, up from 5.7 months in January.
New home sales last month surged in the Northeast and West but slumped in the South and Midwest.
New home sales account for about 7 percent of the overall housing market and face stiff competition from the used home segment despite low levels of stock.
"Buyers have been able to take their time as they have little fear that prices or rates will get away from them. Mortgage rates, though, are beginning to rise slowly and that could continue through the rest of the year," said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisors in Holland, Pennsylvania.
"Add price increases to that and there is a little more urgency to the decision. So while investors may be disappointed by this report, I think better times are just about here so be a little more patient."
Source of 'Etch a Sketch' gaffe is trusted Romney aide Mar. 23, 2012 When a politician messes up, there is often a political guru standing ready to clean things up. But what happens when the guru makes a mess of his own? That is the question for Eric Fehrnstrom, one of the most senior advisers to Mitt Romney. Part enforcer, part alter ego and often grim, Fehrnstrom is usually the one who is vigilant about staying on message. But the morning after Romney's big win in the Illinois primary, Fehrnstrom blunted the Republican presidential front-runner's momentum by saying on CNN that Romney would "hit a reset button" in the general election. "It's almost like an Etch a Sketch," Fehrnstrom said Wednesday. "You kind of shake it up, and we start all over again." Romney's political opponents pounced. Etch a Sketch went viral. Suddenly the image of a children's toy erasing drawings with a simple shake reignited concerns about the certainty of Romney's conservatism. The message didn't help Romney, nor did the messenger. Although Fehrnstrom is one of Romney's longest-serving aides, he, like his boss, has no roots in the conservative movement. Fehrnstrom started out as a reporter in Boston and lives in liberal Brookline, Mass. His work as a GOP operative has been confined to New England -- a region, as he often notes, that's "pretty rocky terrain for Republicans." To some influential conservatives, Fehrnstrom is an enigma. It's not that conservatives don't trust him. It's that some don't even know him. "I've never heard of him. I've been going to conservative meetings since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, and I've never seen him anywhere," said Craig Shirley, an adviser to conservative organizations who has worked for Newt Gingrich, one of Romney's opponents. Despite the gaffe, it appears unlikely that Fehrnstrom will be demoted or lose his job. He is one of Romney's most trusted advisers -- if he worked for President Barack Obama, he would be a cross between David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs -- and Romney is fiercely protective of his loyalists. [...] http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2012/03/23/20120323etch-sketch-gaffe-source-trusted-romney-aide.html [with comments]
police surveillance video of Zimmerman arriving at station upon being brought in the night of/following the killing -- no visible sign of any blood or cuts or anything else on his clearly shown face or the back or any other part of his clearly shown (apparently recently-shaven) head -- let alone any bandaging (video originally released by ABC, on Ed Show MSNBC right now)
Unarmed Black Woman Shot and Killed by Chicago Police Officer Less Than a Month After Trayvon Martin Shooting
Rekia Boyd
By Rania Khalek, Truthout | News Analysis Friday, 06 April 2012 10:15
"Her death certificate says killed by police, but I feel like my sister was murdered," says Martinez Sutton, whose 22-year-old little sister, Rekia Boyd, was shot in the head by an off-duty Chicago detective on Wednesday, March 21. She died the following day at Mount Sinai Hospital.
Boyd's death comes less than a month after the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, leaving many troubled by the regularity with which unarmed people of color are shot, particularly by individuals claiming self-defense. And for those left grieving, the failure of authorities to hold the shooter accountable is the greatest injustice of all.
In the case of Boyd, Chicago police almost immediately echoed the account of the off-duty detective responsible for her death. Police say the officer in question drove up to a group of people in Chicago's Douglas Park around 1 AM on Wednesday, March 21, to investigate a disturbance near his home [ http://www.suntimes.com/news/crime/11437491-418/story.html ]. He rolled down his window and asked them to quiet down at which point police say 39-year-old Antonio Cross pulled out a gun forcing the detective to open fire in self-defense, hitting Cross in the hand and striking Boyd in the head.
But neighbors, witnesses and Cross paint a vastly different picture. Cross told WGN News that he was unarmed [ http://www.wgntv.com/news/wgntv-woman-shot-by-offduty-detective-on-west-side-dies-march22,0,1316666.story ] and on his cell phone at the time of the shooting. When Cross asked why the officer shot him, he says the officer's response was, "I thought your phone was a gun." Cross has since been charged with a misdemeanor of aggravated assault.
Local news outlets initially reported that police failed to recover Cross' alleged weapon. However, Police would not confirm or deny this to Truthout and referred all further questions to the Chicago Independent Police Review Authority (IRPA), the outside body tasked with handling the investigation. The IPRA's Deputy Chief Administrator William Weeden declined to comment on any details as well, saying, "We cannot comment on an open and ongoing investigation."
Rekia Boyd's older brothers, Martinez Sutton and Darian Boyd, told Truthout that their family has received no explanation or even condolences from the Chicago Police Department. "We've made multiple attempts to contact them and even asked news stations to please contact them since they won't talk to us," said Darian Boyd, adding, "It just makes it that much harder to deal with the grief."
According to Sutton, the only encounter the family has had with police since the shooting was when they came to his home, where Rekia lived, to notify him that his sister was injured. "The police came to my house and told me 'Your sister has been involved in a crime. She's been shot in the head and she's in critical condition.' They gave me no information besides the name and number of the hospital and said 'we're sorry' and walked away."
Alderman Michael Chandler of the 24th Ward, where the incident took place, has added his voice to the growing concerns over police handling of the investigation, calling the police officer's account "thin and weak". According to Chicago's WBEZ [ http://www.wbez.org/story/alderman-slams-probe-shooting-detective-97674 ], Chandler says residents who witnessed the shooting have complained to him that authorities have not bothered to contact them for eyewitness testimony. "A young person's life [has been] taken away and there is not one person that has been out on these streets to canvass the area to talk to any of these witnesses," Chandler told WBEZ. Furthermore, Chandler has requested that police properly examine neighbors' claims that they heard the officer tell a crowd, "What do I have to do around here to get some peace, quiet and respect? Shoot someone?" the day before the shooting [ http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=8597902 ].
As a result, Sutton and Boyd have been independently canvassing the neighborhood where the shooting took place to hear what witnesses and neighbors have to say. According to Sutton, witnesses say the officer appeared intoxicated that night and was known by neighbors to have been drunk most of the time. Witnesses also say the off-duty officer approached the park in an unmarked car dressed in plain clothes while yelling belligerently at the crowd to "shut up." More importantly, they say he never identified himself as a police officer.
Sutton was most upset to hear from witnesses that his sister was left lying on the ground for a half an hour before she was taken to the hospital. "They even told her friends, 'get away from her or we'll lock you up' and they told Antonio Cross to 'shut up and sit down' and he was handcuffed to a pole while his hand was still bleeding from a gunshot wound," Sutton said.
Although police refuse to release the name of the officer, after speaking with neighbors, Sutton and Boyd have identified him as Dante Servin. According to Sutton, "He's Latino, but looks white." On Tuesday, March 27, around 200 people gathered to protest [ http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=8597902 ] in front of his house. Among them were Rekia Boyd's family and friends, who have teamed up to build a campaign that calls for justice for their slain daughter, sister, cousin, aunt and friend.
While Sutton empathizes strongly with Trayvon Martin's family, he feels that the Martins have a better chance of getting justice since the shooter was a private citizen, whereas his sister's killer, an officer of the law, is far more difficult to hold accountable. "They hide behind the badge," argued Sutton. "If I was in a crime where I was armed and shot someone in the head I'd be in jail right now. But if a cop does it, they get a slap on the hand."
Sutton feels as though the police are more interested in protecting their fellow officer than getting justice for his little sister. Nevertheless, he insists, "We are going to keep seeking the truth and justice."
"My only objective out of this entire thing is to see that the police officer responsible receives some type of charges for his negligence," says Darian Boyd, who described his sister as "a light hearted, free spirit."
"My sister would still been here if he [the officer] wasn't outside playing Rambo. I just want them to look deeper into this and in the meantime take this guy off the force," argued Sutton. "She'd light up a whole room with the way she was. She loved life and her family. I miss her. I'm still waiting for her to come home and walk through the door."
It is two pages for sure .. and there are embedded links ..;), I'm sorry I just didn't have the patience .. ;) .. NOW, there are some calls for him to be fired this morning .. by some 'other prominent racists..and racist sites and ..nro is 'distancing' itself from john... lol, a friend in need? ;)) .. forbes .. daily caller .. ... and ... here's a few that have been read since yesterday .....
Needless to say, no one at National Review shares Derb’s appalling view of what parents supposedly should tell their kids about blacks in this instantly notorious piece here.
No Innocence Left to Kill: Racism, Injustice and Explaining America to My Daughter
By Tim Wise Posted on July 14, 2013
You remember, forever and forever, that moment when you first discover the cruelties and injustices of the world, and having been ill-prepared for them, your heart breaks open.
I mean really discover them, and for yourself; not because someone else told you to see the elephant standing, gigantic and unrelenting in the middle of your room, but because you saw him, and now you know he’s there, and will never go away until you attack him, and with a vengeance.
Last night, and I am writing it down so that I will not forget — because I already know she will not — my oldest daughter, who attained the age of 12 only eleven days ago, became an American. Not in the legal sense. She was already that, born here, and — as a white child in a nation set up for people just like her — fully entitled to all the rights and privileges thereof, without much question or drama. But now she is American in the fullest and most horrible sense of that word, by which I mean she has been truly introduced to the workings of the system of which she is both a part, and, at the same time, merely an inheritor. A system that fails — with a near-unanimity almost incomprehensible to behold — to render justice to black peoples, the family of Trayvon Martin being only the latest battered by the machinations of American justice, but with all certainty not the last.
To watch her crumble, eyes swollen with tears too salty, too voluminous for her daddy to wipe away? Well now that is but the latest of my heartbreaks; to have to hold her, and tell her that everything will be OK, and to hear her respond, “No it won’t be!” Because see, even though she learned last night about injustice and even more than she knew before about the racial fault lines that divide her nation, she is still a bit too young to fully comprehend the notion of the marathon, as opposed to the sprint; to understand that this is a very long race, indeed that even 26.2 miles is but a crawl in the long distance struggle for justice. And that if she is as bothered by what she sees as it appears, well now she will have to put on some incredibly strong running shoes, because this, my dear, is the work.
This is why daddy does what he does. Now you know.
And yes, I am fully aware that there are still those who would admonish me for even suggesting this case was about race. Not just the defenders of George Zimmerman, with whom I shall deal in a moment, but even the state, whose prosecutors de-racialized this case to a point that frankly was as troubling as anything the defense tried to do. Maybe more. I mean, the defense’s job is to represent their client, and I cannot fault them for having done so successfully. But the prosecution’s job is to make it clear to the jury what the defendant did and preferably why he did it. By agreeing to a fundamentally colorblind, “this isn’t about race,” narrative, they gave away the best part of their arsenal before the war had really started.
Because anyone who still believes that this case had nothing to do with race — or worse, that it was simply a tragedy, the racial meaning of which was concocted by those whom they love to term “race hustlers” — are suffering from a delusion so profound as to call into question their capacities for rational thought. And yet still, let us try to reason with them for a second, as if they were capable of hearing it. Let’s do that for the sake of rational thought itself, as a thing we still believe in; and for our country, which some of us still believe — against all evidence — is capable of doing justice and living up to its promises. In short, let’s give this one more shot.
Those who deny the racial angle to the killing of Trayvon Martin can only do so by a willful ignorance, a carefully cultivated denial of every logical, obvious piece of evidence before them, and by erasing from their minds — if indeed they ever had anything in there to erase — the entire history of American criminal justice, the criminal suspicion regularly attached to black men, and the inevitable results whenever black men pay for these suspicions with their lives. They must choose to leave the dots unconnected between, for instance, Martin on the one hand, and then on the other, Amadou Diallo or Sean Bell or Patrick Dorismond, or any of a number of other black men whose names — were I to list them — would take up page after page, and whose names wouldn’t mean shit to most white people even if I did list them, and that is the problem.
Oh sure, I’ve heard it all before. George Zimmerman didn’t follow Trayvon Martin because Martin was black; he followed him because he thought he might be a criminal. Yes precious, I get that. But what you don’t get — and by not getting it while still managing to somehow hold down a job and feed yourself, scare the shit out of me — is far more important. Namely, if the presumption of criminality that Zimmerman attached to Martin was so attached because the latter was black — and would not have been similarly attached to him had he been white — then the charge of racial bias and profiling is entirely appropriate.
And surely we cannot deny that the presumption of criminality was dependent on this dead child’s race can we? Before you answer, please note that even the defense did not deny this. Indeed, Zimmerman’s attorneys acknowledged in court that their client’s concerns about Martin were connected directly to the fact that previous break-ins in the neighborhood had been committed by young black males.
This is why it matters that George Zimmerman justified his following of Martin because as he put it, “these fucking punks” always get away. In other words, Zimmerman saw Martin as just another “fucking punk” up to no good, similar to those who had committed previous break-ins in the community. But why? What behavior did Martin display that would have suggested he was criminally inclined? Zimmerman’s team could produce nothing to indicate anything particularly suspicious about Martin’s actions that night. According to Zimmerman, Martin was walking in the rain, “looking around,” or “looking around at the houses.” But not looking in windows, or jiggling doorknobs or porch screens, or anything that might have suggested a possible burglar. At no point was any evidence presented by the defense to justify their client’s suspicions. All we know is that Zimmerman saw Martin and concluded that he was just like those other criminals. And to the extent there was nothing in Martin’s actions — talking on the telephone and walking slowly home from the store — that would have indicated he was another of those “fucking punks,” the only possible explanation as to why George Zimmerman would have seen him that way is because Martin, as a young black male was presumed to be a likely criminal, and for no other reason, ultimately, but color.
Which is to say, Trayvon Martin is dead because he is black and because George Zimmerman can’t differentiate — and didn’t see the need to — between criminal and non-criminal black people. Which is to say, George Zimmerman is a racist. Because if you cannot differentiate between black criminals and just plain kids, and don’t even see the need to try, apparently, you are a racist. I don’t care what your Peruvian mother says, or her white husband who married the Peruvian mother, or your brother, or your black friends, or the black girl you took to prom, or the black kids you mentored. If you see a black child and assume “criminal,” despite no behavioral evidence at all to suggest such a conclusion, you are a racist. No exceptions. That goes for George Zimmerman and for anyone reading this.
And here’s the thing: even in the evidentiary light most favorable to George Zimmerman this would remain true. Because even if we believe, as the jury did, that Zimmerman acted in self-defense, there can be no question that were it not for George Zimmerman’s unfounded and racially-biased suspicions that evening, Trayvon Martin would be alive, and Zimmerman would be an entirely anonymous, pathetic wanna-be lawman, about whom no one would much care. It was he who initiated the drama that night. And even if you believe that Trayvon Martin attacked Zimmerman after being followed by him, that doesn’t change.
But apparently that moral and existential truth matters little to this jury or to the white reactionaries so quick to praise their decision. To them, the fact that Martin might well have had reason to fear Zimmerman that night, might have thought he was standing his ground, confronted by someone who himself was “up to no good” is irrelevant. They are saying that black people who fight back against someone they think is creepy and who is following them, and might intend to harm them, are more responsible for their deaths than those who ultimately kill them. What they have said, and make no mistake about it, is that any white person who wants to kill a black person can follow one, confront them, maybe even provoke them; and as soon as that black person perhaps takes a swing at them, or lunges at them, the white pursuer can pull their weapon, fire, and reasonably assume that they will get away with this act. I can start drama, and if you respond to the drama I created, you are to blame, not me.
But we know, if we are remotely awake, that this same logic would never be used to protect a black person accused of such an act. Let’s travel back to 1984 shall we, and hypothetically apply this logic to the Bernhard Goetz case in a little thought experiment so as to illustrate the point.
Goetz, as you’ll recall, was the white man who, afraid of young black men because he had been previously mugged, decided to shoot several such youth on a subway. They had not threatened him. They had asked him for money, and apparently teased him a bit. But at no point did they threaten him. Nonetheless, he drew his weapon and fired several rounds into them, even (according to his own initial account, later recanted), shooting a second time at one of the young men, after saying, “You don’t look so bad, here, have another.”
Goetz, predictably, was seen as a hero by the majority of the nation’s whites, if polls and anecdotal evidence are to be believed. He was a Dirty Harry-like vigilante, fighting back against crime, and more to the point, black crime. Ultimately he too would successfully plead self-defense and face conviction only on a minor weapons charge.
But let us pretend for a second that after Goetz pulled his weapon and began to fire at the young men on that subway, one of them had perhaps pulled his own firearm. Now as it turns out none of the boys had one, but let’s just pretend. And let’s say that one of them pulled a weapon precisely because, after all, he and his friends were being fired upon and so, fearing for his life, he opted to defend himself against this deranged gunman. And let’s pretend that the young man managed to hit Goetz, perhaps paralyzing him as Goetz did, in fact, to one of his victims. Does anyone seriously believe that that young black man would have been able to press a successful self-defense claim in court the way Goetz ultimately did? Or in the court of white public opinion the way Zimmerman has? If you would answer yes to this question you are either engaged in an act of self-delusion so profound as to defy imagination, or you are so deeply committed to fooling others as to make you truly dangerous.
But we are not fooled.
We don’t even have to travel back thirty years to the Goetz case to make the point, in fact. We can stay here, with this case. If everything about that night in Sanford had been the same, but Martin, fearing this stranger following him — the latter not identifying himself at any point as Neighborhood Watch — had pulled a weapon and shot George Zimmerman out of a genuine fear that he was going to be harmed (and even if Zimmerman had confronted him in a way so as to make that fear more than speculative), would the claim of self-defense have rung true for those who are so convinced by it in this case? Would this jury have likely concluded that Trayvon had had a right to defend himself against the perceived violent intentions of George Zimmerman?
Oh, and would it have taken so long for Martin to be arrested in the first place, had he been the shooter? Would he have been granted bail? Would he have been given the benefit of the doubt the way Zimmerman was by virtually every white conservative in America of note? And remember, those white folks were rushing to proclaim the shooting of Martin justified even before there had been any claim made by Zimmerman that Trayvon had attacked him. Before anyone had heard Zimmerman’s version of the story, much of white America, and virtually its entire right flank had already decided that Martin must have been up to no good because he wore a hoodie (in the rain, imagine), and was tall (actually according to the coroner he was 5’11? not 6’2? or 6’4? as some have claimed), and that because of those previous break-ins, Zimmerman had every right to confront him.
No, Martin-as-shooter would never have benefitted from these public pronouncements of innocence the way Zimmerman did.
Because apparently black people don’t have a right to defend themselves. Which is why Marissa Alexander [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/19/marissa-alexander-gets-20_n_1530035.html ], a woman who had suffered violence at the hands of her husband (by his own admission in fact), was recently sentenced to 20 years in prison after firing a warning shot into a wall when she felt he was about to yet again harm her.
And so it continues. Year after year and case after case it continues, with black life viewed as expendable in the service of white fear, with black males in particular (but many a black female as well and plenty of Latino folk too) marked as problems to be solved, rather than as children to be nurtured. And tonight, their parents will hold them and try to assure them that everything is going to be OK, even as they will have to worry again tomorrow that their black or brown child may represent the physical embodiment of white anxiety, and pay the ultimate price for that fact, either at the hands of a random loser with a law enforcement jones, or an actual cop doing the bidding of the state. In short, they will hold their children and lie to them, at least a little — and to themselves — because who doesn’t want their child to believe that everything will be alright?
But in calmer moments these parents of color will also tell their children the truth. That in fact everything is not going to be OK, unless we make it so. That justice is not an act of wish fulfillment but the product of resistance. Because black parents know these things like they know their names, and as a matter of survival they make sure their children know them too.
And if their children have to know them, then mine must know them as well.
And now they do.
If their children are to be allowed no innocence free from these concerns, then so too must mine sacrifice some of their naiveté upon the altar of truth.
And now they have.
So to the keepers of white supremacy, I should offer this final word. You can think of it as a word of caution. My oldest daughter knows who you are and saw what you did. You have made a new enemy. One day, you might wish you hadn’t.
Washington, DC -- Justice failed Trayvon Martin the night he was killed. We should be appalled and outraged, but perhaps not surprised, that it failed him again Saturday night with a verdict setting his killer free.
Our society considers young black men to be dangerous, interchangeable, expendable, guilty until proven innocent. This is the conversation about race that we desperately need to have -- but probably, as in the past, will try our best to avoid.
George Zimmerman's acquittal was set in motion on Feb. 26, 2012, before Martin's body was cold. When Sanford, Fla., police arrived on the scene, they encountered a grown man who acknowledged killing an unarmed 17-year-old boy. They did not arrest the man or test him for drug or alcohol use. They conducted a less-than-energetic search for forensic evidence. They hardly bothered to look for witnesses.
Only a national outcry forced authorities to investigate the killing seriously. Even after six weeks, evidence was found to justify arresting Zimmerman, charging him with second-degree murder and putting him on trial. But the chance of dispassionately and definitively establishing what happened that night was probably lost. The only complete narrative of what transpired was Zimmerman's.
Jurors knew that Zimmerman was an overeager would-be cop, a self-appointed guardian of the neighborhood who carried a loaded gun. They were told that he profiled Martin -- young, black, hooded sweatshirt -- as a criminal. They heard that he stalked Martin despite the advice of a 911 operator; that the stalking led to a confrontation; and that, in the confrontation, Zimmerman fatally shot Martin in the chest.
The jurors also knew that Martin was carrying only a bag of candy and a soft drink. They knew that Martin was walking from a 7-Eleven to the home of his father's girlfriend when he noticed a strange man in an SUV following him.
To me, and to many who watched the trial, the fact that Zimmerman recklessly initiated the tragic encounter was enough to establish, at a minimum, guilt of manslaughter. The six women on the jury disagreed.
Those jurors also knew that Martin, at the time of his death, was just three weeks past his 17th birthday. But black boys in this country are not allowed to be children. They are assumed to be men, and to be full of menace.
I don't know if the jury, which included no African-Americans, consciously or unconsciously bought into this racist way of thinking -- there's really no other word. But it hardly matters, because police and prosecutors initially did.
The assumption underlying their ho-hum approach to the case was that Zimmerman had the right to self-defense but Martin -- young, male, black -- did not. The assumption was that Zimmerman would fear for his life in a hand-to-hand struggle but Martin -- young, male, black -- would not.
If anyone wonders why African-Americans feel so passionately about this case, it's because we know that our 17-year-old sons are boys, not men. It's because we know their adolescent bravura is just that -- an imitation of manhood, not the real thing.
We know how frightened our sons would be, walking home alone on a rainy night and realizing they were being followed. We know how torn they would be between a child's fear and a child's immature idea of manly behavior. We know how they would struggle to decide the right course of action, flight or fight.
And we know that a skinny boy armed only with candy, no matter how big and bad he tries to seem, does not pose a mortal threat to a healthy adult man who outweighs him by 50 pounds and has had martial arts training (even if the lessons were mostly a waste of money). We know that the boy may well have threatened the man's pride, but likely not his life. How many murders-by-sidewalk have you heard of recently? Or ever?
The conversation we need to have is about how black men, even black boys, are denied the right to be young, to be vulnerable, to make mistakes. We need to talk about why, for example, black men are no more likely than white men to smoke marijuana but nearly four times as likely to be arrested for it -- and condemned to a dead-end cycle of incarceration and unemployment. I call this racism. What do you call it?
Trayvon Martin was fighting more than George Zimmerman that night. He was up against prejudices as old as American history, and he never had a chance.
Roberto Calderoli, Italian Politician, Compares First Black Minister Cecile Kyenge To Orangutan New Minister of Integration Cecile Kyenge attends the swearing in ceremony in Rome of the new government of Prime Minister Enrico Letta on April 28, 2013. 07/14/2013 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/14/roberto-calderoli-organutan-cecile-kyenge_n_3594320.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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