There is no comparable epidemic of half-Hispanic neighborhood-watch volunteers like George Zimmerman shooting young black men. Nor is there an epidemic of cops doing the same. Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute notes that in New York City, there were nine civilian victims of police gunfire last year, whereas there were “several hundred black homicide victims in the city, almost all shot by other blacks or Hispanics, none of them given substantial press coverage.”
An allegedly racially motivated killing, though, gins up the outrage machine in a way the routine murder of young blacks doesn’t. Cable-TV outlets get to host fiery debates. Chin-stroking commentators get to urge more “dialogue.” Black leaders get to relive the glory of a civil-rights cause that won its major victories decades ago when it took real courage to be on the front lines. And everybody gets to evade the intraracial mayhem that blights the country’s inner cities.
An injustice may well have been done in the handling of the Martin shooting, but let’s not fool ourselves. Zimmerman could be arrested, convicted, and hanged tomorrow, and it will have no effect on the lives of young black people in communities beset by social disorder. Whatever happens to Zimmerman, the drip-drip of spilled blood will continue, all but ignored except in the police blotter. In America, the lives of young black people are cheap, unless they happen to fit the right agenda.
I'll let Cole take it from here.
That’s one reason why the Trayvon Martin case is different. We know precisely who killed him, yet he walks free and clear. That is why the outrage is so loud. Trayvon Martin was killed for the crime of walking while black, the cops did nothing to investigate his death and appear to be actively impeding any investigation, they basically gave his killer a pat on the back before sending him on his way, and then they slapped a John Doe tag on his corpse and threw him into the morgue’s lost and found pile.
Yes, each and everyone of the murders that halfwit Lowry mentioned is awful. Yes, black on black crime is awful. But in each case above, the victim’s family are receiving some semblance of justice.
And that is all anyone wants for Trayvon Martin. Justice.
Lowry just can’t be that stupid.
He's not being stupid. He's race-baiting on purpose. He's trying to deflect the anger of Martin's killer going free by saying the rest of liberal America, particularly black America, doesn't get outraged about black teens killing other black teens, so that there's no moral high road for them to complain now.
Of course that's completely false for the reasons John Cole lists above. When a black teenager kills someone, odds a pretty damn good he or she is going away for a very long time. The police investigate. The killer is arrested, tried, and if the evidence proves it, convicted. Sometimes the evidence is less than sound and the black teenager is convicted anyway. That happens to white killers too, I understand. Sometimes the killer goes free in the opposite effect where a jury acquits on technical grounds or they just decide otherwise.
But the one thing that nobody is doubting here is the fact that George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin. And as Cole says, he hasn't been arrested for that.
Hence the outrage. Hence also why Rich Lowry is full of shit. All the people trying to make it about Al Sharpton being involved or black/liberal/human outrage or Trayvon Martin's school suspensions or anything else is a distraction designed to excuse themselves from the very same behavior that Lowry is projecting onto everyone else.
Trayvon is dead. His killer has not been arrested, charged, or even indicted yet, even though he has admitted to shooting him. And yes, there's a racial component to Martin being denied justice and to the efforts to exonerate Zimmerman. And this effort did not start until President Obama weighed in last week and carefully made the point that this was a tragedy.
What has happened since is a hate-by-proxy battle, where people are projecting their anger at President Obama onto a dead black teenager. And there's a racial component of that as well. Melissa Harris-Perry explains along with her panel today:
The outrage, Richie, is at guys like you doing everything you can to obfuscate, confuse, and obliterate the fact that Zimmerman killed Martin.
Period. It's race-baiting. That makes you an asshole. Period.
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