Tuesday, November 19, 2013

WHITE SKIN PRIVILEGE: THIS TIME HE IS ARRESTED, BOOKED, AND HELD WITHOUT BAIL



It isn't even about George Zimmerman anymore.  

Yeah, the guy should have already been serving a life sentence for the murder of Trayvon Martin...or desperately trying to avoid execution.   Hopefully, he will now get some time for his latest assault on a woman.  This time on his current, well, maybe not so current anymore, girlfriend.  He is a total, worthless, racist, misogynist, looser.  He is a murderer.

What his latest bit of nastiness shows ever so clearly is just how white skin privilege works on virtually any level in this country.  The guy shoots an unarmed African American young man and the police send him home...then after the outrage he gets charged...then a jury says he is not guilty of shooting and killing the young man he shot and killed.  Now, things are different.  He points a gun at someone and is promptly arrested by police and charged with felony assault.  Same state, by the way.  What's up.

Duh.

Black youth.  White woman.

This is not in any way meant to diminish what he did yesterday.  Domestic assault and violence against women is epidemic.  Patriarchal  capitalism is not exactly well known historically for caring all that much about violence against women.  However, and still, one person was white and one was black and the results of the case are polar opposites...even though in one case the person was threatened and in one case the person was killed...and the opposite results go against the person who was killed.

What the hell?

There is no surprise here.  It's called white skin privilege.  It operates even for victims of crimes (and even for a light skinned hispanic man (who gets deemed an "honorary white") when the other guy is most definitely black. It is white supremacy.  It is white skin privilege. It is America.

As it is written at So Lets Talk About,


Immediately. Not six weeks later.

Immediately, for pointing a gun at someone. Not for murdering an unarmed person.

Immediately. He was arrested, taken to jail, forced to spend the night, and is waiting on a bail hearing this afternoon where he may be forced to wear an electronic monitoring device.  

Maybe if he had just pointed a gun at Trayvon Martin, he would’ve been convicted of an actual charge.


Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t police called to the scene when Zimmerman was moving out of his wife’s house in September?  I think I see what’s going on here; the pattern is so clear.

Zimmerman isn’t a violent man with control issues at all.  He just doesn’t like when women tell him to get out of their house.  If he would get an actual job, he might be able to pay his own rent, but that’s beside the point.  The lesson here is, if you want to preserve your safety and keep your name out of the news, don’t kick George Zimmerman’s freeloading ass off your couch, or he will probably break something and pull a gun on you.

Another thing: Zimmerman isn’t violent…he just has a lot of feelings and it’s hard for him to contain them all.  He doesn’t react to situations the way normal people do.

Tell him to get out of your house?  He pulls a gun on you.

Walk around carrying corner store snacks?  He shoots you.

Or we might take a look at  these words at  Young, Broke, and Beautiful:



George Zimmerman was arrested today for “felony aggravated assault with a weapon, misdemeanor battery-domestic violence and criminal mischief.” 

Why?

He pointed a gun at a white woman.

Let me be REALLY clear here: I am white, and I am a woman. I am not, in any way, shape, or form, saying that domestic violence isn’t a massive fucking problem. I am not saying that Samantha Scheibe wasn’t absolutely right to fear for her life, call the police, and press charges. I am 100% on Samantha Scheibe’s side—but the point I am making is not about her.

This is a man who, as I’m sure you can all *recite* by now, saw a black teenage boy named Trayvon Martin walking down the street, at which point Zimmerman the police, followed Martin in his car, stopped his car and got out, taking his loaded gun with him, to follow Martin, and shot him to death. Martin was walking home from the store with Skittles and an iced tea.

Shot him to death. Police couldn’t give a shit. They let him go. You all know the rest of the disgusting story, racist story.

The guy points a gun at a white woman? He’s arrested, booked, and held without bail.

It's so clear you don't even have to go to some radical or even particularly progressive oriented political or anti-racist website to find a good quote.

But you could go to a blog called New Possibilities which describes itself as "A Bold, New, Black Voice Speaking Truth to Power Without Fear"  if you want to feel some real anger:


After that menace, George Zimmerman, lynched our brother Trayvon Martin, white conservatives and their negro puppets like Crystal Wright rationalized and justified Zimmerman's actions. They painted Trayvon as the aggressor, as the violent one, as the thug, as the hooligan, as the troublemaker, as the nigger. 


They conveniently ignored George Zimmerman's relevant, violent and racist past. (Source: George Zimmerman's relevant past by Jonathan Capehart). They ignored his 2005 arrest for resisting an officer with violence. They ignored the 2005 restraining order entered against him for domestic violence. They ignored the fact he made 46 calls to police to report on "suspicious" black people. They ignored his cousin, Witness No. 9, when she said that Zimmerman "does not like black people". They ignored Witness No. 9 when she said that Zimmerman "is a very confrontational person".


Now that Zimmerman has threatened two precious, lilly white women with guns, maybe his defenders will finally realize that George Zimmerman is a menace to society.

Maybe the jurors will finally realize that they released murderer. Maybe they will realize that Trayvon Martin's blood is on their hands. 


How many more people must he threaten before he is finally imprisoned?  How many more people must he harm before he is finally imprisoned?  How many more people must he kill before he is finally imprisoned? 

No, as much as this IS about George Zimmerman, it also IS NOT.

Our old friend Chauncey Devega over at We Are Responsible Negroes  has something to add to the matter.


ARE YOU SURPRISED?  GEORGE ZIMMERMAN MAY HAVE BEEN ABLE TO KILL TRAYVON WITH IMPUNITY, BUT IF YOU POINT A SHOTGUN AT A PREGNANT WHITE WOMAN YOU GET ARRESTED

Trayvon Martin is still dead.

In the months and years before he shot and killed Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman was arrested for fighting with the police, was accused of molesting a family member, committing domestic battery, violated the rules of being a member of the neighborhood watch by carrying a weapon while on "duty", and was on mood altering drugs.

George Zimmerman was and is a ticking time bomb of violence. And I would not be surprised if Zimmerman is eventually diagnosed as being sociopathic.

George Zimmerman has been arrested again--not for murdering Trayvon Martin--but for threatening his pregnant girlfriend with a shotgun.

I wrote many essays about the Trayvon Martin murder case as I tried to work through what his death by a street vigilante revealed about the intersections of race, crime, and the law in the United States.

Yet, months after Zimmerman's acquittal, I am still vexed by how conservatives, colorblind racists, and the Gun Right (to the degree such a cohort can be disentangled) could flock to his defense. He is a serial loser. Why make Zimmerman the flag bearer and martyr figure for the cause of "gun rights?" Who could reasonably imagine George Zimmerman as a "victim?"

The answer lies in the power of the white racial frame to make insanity seem reasonable, and to normalize the monstrous. In all, racism, guns, and "reasonable doubt" trump the rights of black Americans, and other people of color, to be safe in their personhood from the violent prerogatives and prejudices of the White Gaze.

In private, many of Zimmerman's defenders likely knew that he was an irresponsible person and guilty of murdering Trayvon Martin. However, their public commitment to white supremacy and symbolic racism trumps reason, ethics, and a broad humanism which embraces black Americans as worth the same protections and citizenship rights as white people.

Black Americans, because of their historical memory and lived experiences, are highly attuned to threats of racially motivated violence by people like George Zimmerman. The Black Freedom Struggle would not have triumphed over the racial terrorism of slavery, as well as Jim and Jane Crow, without those survival skills.

George Zimmerman's arrest for domestic violence is only a "surprise" for the most in denial and willfully ignorant members of the American public--and for those whose commitment to the Gun Gods have otherwise damaged their ability to think in a critical and reflective manner.

During the murder trial, Trayvon Martin's friend Rachel Jaentel was mocked, derided, and publicly lambasted by George Zimmerman's defenders and the Right-wing media. Her retelling of Trayvon's fear-laced observation that he was being stalked by a "crazy ass cracker" was proven accurate (again) by Zimmerman's arrest for domestic violence and threatening his pregnant girlfriend with a shotgun on Monday of this week.

As others have smartly observed, several months ago George Zimmerman learned that he could stalk and kill a black teenager for the crime of walking down the street "without permission". George Zimmerman has now learned that you go to jail for threatening to shoot a pregnant white woman with a shotgun.

I wonder: how long until George Zimmerman is stripped of his honorary Whiteness by the White Right? Or does the Right's misogyny and love of guns trump their defense of white women against domestic violence?




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