Friday Sober Thread: The George Zimmerman Trial

There's been a lot of talk about racial profiling in this case, people believe that Zimmerman went after Martin because he was black, no other reason.

Here is a picture of Zimmerman's great grandfather

Here is an article about Zimmerman's prior activity standing up for a beaten homeless black man.


Funny thing how the NAACP turned on him when they felt like they could garner the spotlight at his expense. The media was also all too happy to try and create a white/black racial dynamic where one didn't exist.

 

Were they black? If so you shoulda shot them. That'll teach 'em not to talk stupid like that. STAND YOUR GROUND!




... what, too soon?

 

To play Devil's advocate, his great grandfather isn't black. Just because he is darker complected and isn't white doesn't mean he couldn't have a predisposition against African Americans.

As for the other case, one doesn't have to be a virulent racist to have aforementioned predetermined opinions about African Americans, especially teenagers. Its like the openly racist people who are like "Its cool, I have a black friend." You can have black friends and colleagues, but you're still clutching your purse or grabbing your wallet when you aren't in the most pleasant of areas. That assumption of malice and aggressive intent, solely based on race, where there may not necessarily be any, is the key racial component. Not necessarily that Zimmerman is a out and out racist who was just looking for a black man to shoot.

 

Ask yourself a simple question: had the kid been white, with all Treyvon's characteristics (big kid, from a rough neighborhood, talked a lot on Facebook about learning to fight and getting a gun, all the stuff that made Treyvon a 'thug,'), do you think Zimmerman would have followed him and gotten out of his car?

I would argue no. Zimmerman would've been like "oh, a kid is out for a walk." I would bet anything Zimmerman would've let him go, or at the very least he wouldn't have gotten out of his car to confront him against the directions of the police dispatcher.

That is the funniest part of this, to me. There are a lot of white teenagers who act EXACTLY like Treyvon. I've seen them. Go to any suburban or rural school. They brag about their guns, and how hardcore they are as fighters. They get suspended for fighting because 'he disrespected me!" The key difference? One is a white kid in a rural area, so he is a 'redneck,' and we laugh at him. The other is a black kid in a city, so he is a "thug" and we are scared to death and profile them.

There are a lot of kids at the school I work at (there are a whopping total of 3 black kids in the entire school) who listen to rap, wear saggy pants, and talk about 'whopping asses and fucking bitches.' We laugh at them as being a joke or completely write them off. We're not following them, are we?

The school I work at has a LOT of rednecks. A lot of them brag about their guns, and love to posture on facebook about how big of a badass they are. They literally do everything that Treyvon did, but no one calls them 'thugs.' They laugh and call them stupid teenagers, because they're white. Or they say they're rednecks. They join groups of 'motorcycle enthusiasts." They go to bars called "Kim's Kool Korner." (and, for the record, there is a bar like that with a slightly different name only about 15 miles from the school I work at). The point is, they can still walk into a convenience store without having the owner follow them around. They go out at night and walk around, there isn't someone slowly following them in a car, and the biggest difference is that one is white and the other is black. Almost all other things about their personalities are equal.

 

I didn't say meth heads, did I? We're not talkin about heavy drug users. We're talking about "thugs." Kids who brag about their guns, kids who brag about fighting, getting into fights, and maybe smoking weed and drinking. I've met black and white kids who do that. We profile black kids who do it as thugs. We think the white kids who do it are a joke.

 

I think the distinction being made is that people judge white people who ACT like nut balls where as people judge black people who LOOK like nut balls.

 

Give me gang members all day, nothing is more dangerous than white trash tweakers.

 

A few things about that:

(a) What does that mean, that he was "looking at houses"? Presumably he wasn't running up to the windows and staring at the families, otherwise Zimmerman would have specified this.
(b) Appeared to be on drugs how? What sort of behavior was he exhibiting?
(c) Your statement that it was "accurate" is at best unsubstantiated, and more likely just wrong. The level of THC found to be present in Trayvon Martin's blood, 1.5 nanograms, is actually inconsistent with what most people would describe as being "on drugs." Typically, post-inhalation, the blood levels rise to between 100 and 200 nanongrams. So Martin's bloodstream levels were about 1% of what would be expected immediately post-inhalation. These levels are most consistent with having smoked marijuana 8 or more hours ago. For a chronic user, you can actually exhibit these sorts of levels days after your last time smoking. This is like calling someone drunk for having a BAC of 0.01. In fact, it is less that one-third of the level which is considered applicable for a DUI in Colorado (where the bill was very controversial due to belief that 5 nanograms was too low to be considered intoxicated).

This language seems reminds me of one of the commonly cited reasons for stop-and-frisk justification, "furtive movements." Uselessly vague in such a way that it could cover everything from actually suspicious behavior to "he just looked funny." "Looking at houses" while "wandering around" in the rain sounds suspiciously like walking while black.

 

Which is the whole nature of ____ while black. It's never something you can actually substantiate, which is why it persists in 2013. No one ever says "I'm following this man around our store because he's black" or "I am pulling this car over because he's black."

For example, although the plural of anecdote is not data, my friend's brother was stopped by police outside his own house while sitting in his parked car because the police believed he was "looking at the house" and they wanted to know what he was doing in this neighborhood. What they don't do is add "because clearly black people don't live here."

 

I have had cops stop their car and ask what I was doing as little as a year ago. The dog had the shits at three in the morning and I let him out. He's black and the cop couldn't see him. So, all he saw was an out of place white man standing in a mixed apartment complex lawn. He Asked what I was doing. I told him, the dog verified it, and he was on his way. The officer was black. I generally do not trust law enforcement, but I'm glad he was doing his job, and maintained enough situational awareness to notice that I was out of place.

Situational awareness is profiling. It's making observations on the people, places and things around you. As mentioned above, I live in a mixed/predominantly black apartment complex in a mixed/predominantly white suburb of Memphis. Most of my neighbors are black. Summers suck. Stuff like bicycles get stolen, cars are broken into more frequently, the pools are unusable from hostility, things get vandalized. It happens. One of my neighbors said she'd say it for me. There are too many young black men walking around with nothing to do. She's right, but it has little to do with race and a lot to do with young men who have too much time on their hands and little (or squandered) opportunity.

In any case, I don't look for trouble. I walk the dog, clean up after him, say hello to my neighbors, keep my car empty of anything of value, change my course when groups of people I don't know or recognize are standing around, make it a point to not look in people's windows, and carry a loaded gun every day. Legally. My longer term neighbors know that I work in the gun business and a few know that I carry. The neighbor mentioned above said that she felt better knowing that I was around.

I think Zimmerman regrets getting out of that car. I know with absolute certainty that I would not have dreamed of it. One, if I followed every suspicious black man in my neighborhood, I'd be a nuisance and two, I would be lying to myself if I thought sixteen and seventeen year olds weren't capable of murder. And I put not getting murdered pretty high on my priority list. Right above not killing someone myself.

 

It's interesting to me that so many are discussing this without the relevant context.

I think the facts really speak for themselves. This didn't happen in a vacuum. The guy was out there because he was pissed off about all the shit going on in his complex. How come no one mentions that? I know why, because the fucking media has everyone focused on their own bullshit agenda. They wanted it to be about race so they could sell more papers and get more viewers. Why else would they describe Zimmerman from the beginning as a "self-described" Hispanic, or a "self-proclaimed" Hispanic, or even "white-Hispanic". I actually read articles where they've completely dropped the pretense and started calling him simply white. Why all the qualifications? Try calling president Obama a "self-described African American and see what happens. Isn't he technically half white? It had nothing to do with race. It's a red herring. If I was Zimmerman in the same situation, I'd have followed Martin too and been extremely suspicious, and so would, I venture, most of you.

 

Here is a pretty well thought out essay on the topic.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...imes_prosecution_and_other_overreactions.html

 

Read the bolded part and read it again until it clicks. Situational awareness is profiling. That said, trained people (like cops) usually profile based on clothing and body language instead of race.

People tend to "dress for the occasion" and match their clothing to their activities. Baggy clothes, hoodies, oversized shirts, and most of the clothes you associate as "black" tend to lend themselves well to criminal activity. If you are Joe Thug looking to mug people you're probably going to pick an ensamble that allows you to conceal a weapon without a holster and pick footwear that allows you to escape quickly. One of the cornerstones of criminal assault is unequal initiative; take every advantage you can get before proceeding. You're not going to roll up with a Brooks Brothers button down shirt tucked into khaki pants to rob people. That shit doesn't hide guns and let you jump fences. You know all these things subconsciously and your brain will generally dismiss most people dressed like that as a threat (unless their body language says otherwise).

Couple body language into this and you have a pretty good predictor for who looks like a threat and who doesn't. Your brain does it automatically, whether you think it's racist or not. And yes, coupled with profiling clothing, "furtive movement" is a totally legit reason for a stop and frisk. If a guy wearing jeans and an oversized t-shirt is constantly pulling up his sagging pants with his strong side hand (that's called a "pick"): he is likely appendix carrying a weapon without a holster and his High Point 9mm is falling down his pants every 10 steps. It's a really easy tell but it's hard to articulate in a report without sounding like total bullshit so cops get shit for it.

Back on focus, my personal opinion on this whole thing can be summed up pretty easily: if you play stupid games, expect to win stupid prizes.

Martin was a wannabe thug who most certainly wasn't out picking daisies that night. Zimmerman was a douchebag wannabe cop who should have stayed in his car. That said, Martin initiated an attack on a smaller, weaker opponent. Martin started winning (as expected). Zimmerman went for his weapon and smoke-checked Martin.

Gunfights between 0-3 feet are usually known as "entangled gunfights" and are scary fucking business. Watch this one, it's from a class for undercover LEO and military types who operate in non-permissive environments. Notice how important dominating the entire three dimensional space is. There's no John Woo bullshit. It's fast, violent, and over quickly. This is probably close to what Martin and Zimmerman got into. TM was on top of GZ and was able to completely dominate the fight from that position. At that point, TM met all the requirements for legally using deadly force. The events leading up to that point were COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT. All that mattered was that the requirements for deadly force were met in the moment the shot was taken. GZ had a justified shoot even though he contributed to the circumstances leading up to it.

 

I'm just curious how Z got his gun out of a back holster if M was in mount.

And why was there not an exchange of dna?

I think these are fairly relevent questions.

 

That's easy. Put a TV remote in your belt at about the 4 o'clock position. Lay down. Hard to get out, but not impossible, right? Now try it again but pull your knees towards you like you are going to do a sit up. Rock your hips up (you can do it with someone on top of you) so it elevates your pelvis off the floor. Now you can access your whole Bat-belt for a second or two. That's how he accessed the weapon.

The whole exercise is a good argument for carrying at the 3 o'clock or appendix carry. Carrying at the 4 or 5 sucks.