#MOW50: Have some perspective

Spitting on History is What Gives These People Their Oxygen

Five decades ago Martin Luther King, Jr. stood at the National Mall in D.C. and delivered one of the most iconic speeches of all time.  It was incredibly relevant at the time considering it marked the beginning of the end of the years of abuse, murder, and torture directed at the country’s minorities by ignorant, hateful people Democrats.

But everyone knows how that speech went down, right?  It’s been written in school textbooks, quoted in speeches, and played countless time on the radio and on television.  Anyone ignorant to the original speech clearly must have been living life as a recluse, and no one could possibly be so uneducated and uninformed to not understand its message, right?

Well, no.  Thousands of those very people gathered this weekend in the nation’s capital to commemorate MLK Jr.’s speech, to include his son, Martin Luther King III.  And here is what this moron said:

“The task is not done, the journey is not complete.  The vision preached by my father a half-century ago was that his four little children would no longer live in a nation where they would be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

An invocation of his father’s words for those of you that might have spent your lives living on Mars.  This, of course, does not make him a moron.  What makes him a moron is that he followed it up with this:

“However, sadly, the tears of Trayvon Martin’s mother and father remind us that, far too frequently, the color of one’s skin remains a license to profile, to arrest and to even murder with no regard for the content of one’s character.”

And herein lies the problem.  For over a year now, both before and after Zimmerman was found not guilty of the charges of murder against him, people have been judging that man by the color of his skin and little else.  If he were black, not only would this story have not made it past the nightly news in Florida, but no one would have even known who Trayvon Martin or George Zimmerman were.  Trayvon’s parents sure as hell wouldn’t have been invited this weekend’s march, and his mother surely wouldn’t have addressed the crowd.  Why?  Because the country’s civil rights “leaders”– bigots like Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson– don’t actually give a flying fuck about the plight of minorities so long as it manages to keep the spotlight on them.  A dead boy in a bad neighborhood is no skin off their backs if it cannot help their cause.

That is what gives this false-fronted movement its oxygen.  Think about it– without “racism”, or without droning on non-stop about “white privilege” and how that makes every person of color a victim, what exactly do these people have?  Does Chris Matthews get to ramble on nearly as much as he does?  Does Rev. Al get to speak to millions as the spearhead of such a movement, or run for any kind of political office ever again?  Does Toure even have a job at MSNBC?  Of course not.

The big charade here is that those leading their own racist charges on Washington, drumming up support with stupid, over-the-top references to people who do not deserve praise of any kind whatsoever (yes, I’m talking about Trayvon Martin here), are flat-out lying if they claim that their overall goal is to erase racism, its practices, and to see the extinction of its societal effects.  They need racism, and by God do they want it.  Without racism, they lose everything they have ever had and more importantly– they lose the people that follow them like baby chickens; people that lose the ability to shift the blame for their problems on other people that have nothing to do with them in the absence of their racial crusade.

Everything goes away.

But let’s get back to Trayvon here, as I have referenced him once or twice, and seeing King III’s reference to him at the March is what drove me to comment on it with this post.

At what point exactly have Trayvon’s sympathizers, the #JusticeForTrayvon crew, judged Trayvon by the content of his character and not the color of his skin?  I ask this question mostly because over the months we learned about the man, and during the weeks of evidence brought to trial by both the prosecution and the defense, just about the only thing that was clear about Trayvon was the very absence of character within him that could be deemed to be of high “content”.  Every picture painted of Trayvon from start to finish with evidence, facts, and even via the testimony of his own friend makes it pretty obvious that the kid was really just another, typical punk kid that was quite a far shot from rejecting the “hood culture” that has led to loss of life for so many.  Why was every single thing mentioned about just how terrible a kid Trayvon was either ignored, or excused?  I literally had a conversation on Twitter one day with a woman that claimed that I was living in some kind of sheltered world because my friends and I weren’t fighting in schools and getting suspended on the regular.  Is this real life?

If you expect equality and respect, how the hell is that supposed to be delivered when living a gangster-rap lifestyle is not only acceptable, but considered to be normal?  People complain about being “profiled” for what they wear, but leading a life and literally looking like the thugs you see in movies, television, or in music videos leads to you being confused about why people get reserved around you, or why they lock their car doors as you pass?  Pitifully ignorant and irresponsible on your part, if you consider yourself perturbed by such assumptions by the general public.

Every single person that stands on the Trayvon Martin side of the track, is judging the guy by the color of his skin and not by his character.  That is literally it.  His parents might have claimed he was a good child, and that might have even been true when they were in each other’s company, but that does not mean he wasn’t exactly as shady, and classless as he was proven to be in just about every other circumstance.  One would expect a young man’s parents, regardless of how bad he is, to stand by him and support him through thick and thin, and in that regard, Trayvon’s folks are just about the only people who kind of get a “pass” for their position.  And that’s a stretch, because his mother’s presence at rallies, and her speeches, do little else than breed more ignorance and mis-directed hate.  So in that regard, she’s also quite a hindrance.

But no one else gets a pass.  Get over it.

No one that supports a person unequivocally for no other reason than what shade of skin they wear deserves a pass, praise, or empathetic consideration.   Trayvon’s parents might get a pass because any parent that has to live through their child’s death deserves some sympathy, but the fact that Trayvon died does not qualify him as a good, honest, law-abiding member of society, nor does it make them good parents.  Why have people been so afraid to point out that Trayvon just might have been raised exactly how he turned out to be?  Through the setting of poor example, to being completely absent, how often does parental decision-making or a huge lack of it result in the men or women their children become?

Trayvon Martin may have been unarmed the night he was killed, but that does not mean he was exempt from being the aggressor, and it surely doesn’t mean that Zimmerman wasn’t justified in using his firearm when it became exposed during their tussle on the ground.  Nothing proven during that trial made it clear that Trayvon was bullied into the situation that ended him, and absolutely nothing corroborated any claims– from his parents or the media alike–that the world lost a sweet, promising, and innocent young man that night.

Nothing.

Nothing, except for the color of his skin.

That signifies ignorance, racism (uh huh!), and a complete disregard for the search for truth in any situation, good or bad.  Talk about spitting on the immortal words of Martin Luther King, Jr.– the words he uttered half a century ago and was eventually assassinated for.

I expect people to smear his honor, and to dishonor King’s legacy and message– people do that every day, and this much is no surprise when the racecard is what drives the lives of so many people.  Ignorance can truly never be eliminated.

I just didn’t expect that ignorance to come from King’s son.

Ignorance: All the rage these days

Toure.  Melissa Harris-Perry.  Chris Matthews.  Rachel Maddow.  Even Oprah.

But a small sampling of the nation’s most prevalent race baiters.

After perusing Melissa Harris-Perry’s Twitter feed for a few moments tonight, I decided it was time to say something and come out of my short hiatus as I settle down in my new apartment.  Since the verdict was delivered in the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman case, the nation’s finger pointers have really come out in full force, with guns blazing.  Some do it overtly, while others are more subtle about it– all of them are racists, however.

This was expected, to an extent, but if people following MHP claim to be a part of “nerdland” in watching her (because being a nerd is “cool” now), and if Toure’s loyal fans retweet his thought-provoking and insightful “Oh.” or “???” responses to dissenting opinions because they just knoooow how smart they are, I feel it’s probably about time they gave credit where it is due when it comes to George Zimmerman.

I say the following only because in one quick browse, I saw Twitter’s merry band of racists that don’t even realize they’re racists post articles alluding to Trayvon being like Emmit Till, how Trayvon could have been President in 35 years, and how the death of Trayvon Martin can teach us about voting rights.  It’s like one, sick chain reaction after the other– you take a verdict, that everyone immediately dismisses as invalid or irrelevant for little to no reason other than “Trayvon was black”, and you use it to shoddily fuel a million other arguments tied to race.  More often than not these arguments fall so miserably short of being logical and coherent that it is almost embarrassing that people are getting paid to make them, but with a joker up one’s sleeve– a race card– you alleviate yourself from the tension of being held to a standard of decency or validity.  You negate any valid argument that can be made against you.  And why?  Because if someone argues back, they’re wrong and racist.  Or, they are fueling white privilege.  Or, they want blacks to count as 3/5 of a vote.  Or, their lifelong dream is to own slaves on a plantation and wear white hoods.

And onnnnn, and onnnnnnnnnn, and on and on.

A little over a week ago, I got into a long and heated argument with a woman on our Twitter page about TM.  Regardless of the points I made in my tweets, which were for the most part drawn from the evidence presented at trial (how crazy of me, I know), it simply didn’t matter.  To this woman, Trayvon was an innocent child– regardless of evidence that showed he was the aggressor.  When I tried to help her understand that Zimmerman confronting Trayvon wasn’t “aggression”, she was having none of it.  To her, and she literally said this, the aggression was perpetuated by Zimmerman simply getting out of his car.  I repeat, leaving your vehicle is an act of aggression now.  No wonder there is so much murder in the hood– I hear a lot of people get out of cars there!  This woman, a white girl I might add, continually noted that Trayvon “could have been her son” (like everyone does), and I pointed out that if it really could have been her son, than that probably made her a terrible parent– a point I made in one of our previous articles.  And that sent her through the roof, on a tirade about how “all kids” fight in schools, smoke weed, make hooch with codeine, skittles, and watermelon Arizona, and get suspended.  I can continue with more examples of this woman’s ignorance, but you get the point.  It doesn’t matter who people are, or what they do– the only thing that matters is their race.

And that’s racism.

But of course my points didn’t matter.  Because this woman is defending Trayvon Martin– and Trayvon, is black.  He has to be the definition of “victim” in its entirety.  There is no room, and it simply cannot be possible, that through his actions Martin brought the situation to a level that it never should have been at.  If there was evidence that Zimmerman did in fact act as the “aggressor”, the prosecution completely failed to show it.  Why is this completely ignored as if everyone that “Stands With Trayvon” somehow knows something that none of us do?  That they know something that the prosecution didn’t find necessary to point out?

Here’s why.  It’s because these people are a bunch of classless, abhorrent, race-baiting punks.  Without claims of racism, they have nothing to talk about or validate their claims.  Being black and young doesn’t render one innocent– this assumption has been made all too often in our country’s short history since the 50s and 60s (which Tawana Brawley is apparently having some trouble paying up for, I might add) and the destruction and violence (and deaths) that have occurred as a result of it are entirely ignored.  It is a pitiful and oft-used tactic to further an agenda that defies the original agendas of real leaders of the minority community– leaders that would absolutely spit upon the likes of Toure, MHP, and their white colleagues that pretend like they haven’t lived every ounce of a privileged life that they claim to be so vehemently against.

To call all of this “hypocrisy” would be an understatement.  People like Toure, MHP, and others are accessory to any and all of the violence that has occurred against white people “for Trayvon”.  Leaders of the present-day “black movement” are equally guilty, and have a rap sheet the size of Florida to boot thanks to the times they have repeated their racist, and ill-focused claims of racism in the past.

If this truly were a country of justice, of respect for the law and of a desire to form a “more perfect union”, people would be up in arms over the asinine reactions to the death of a person that in essence, was just like any other gangster’s paradise punk that found the wrong end of a pistol.  It’s not about black vs. white as much as it is about rational vs. stupid, and when someone can show me some evidence that shows how Trayvon Martin’s actions on that night were “rational”– evidence that proves George Zimmerman defending himself was irrational— I will give up on this for good.

Before you take me up on that offer though, you should note that Trayvon being unarmed is not evidence that his actions were rational.  Considering that argument on your end makes you just as stupid as Toure or Melissa Harris-Perry.