Stalked by Stupidity
As regular readers of Roger’s Rules know, I do not often read our former paper of record. The only time I tend to encounter the New York Times in propria persona is when I visit friends in Northwest Connecticut. Being an early riser, I motor down to a local emporium to collar the papers and the needful for breakfast. Since this happens only every few months, my view of the paper’s devolution is dramatized by a sort of time-lapse effect. If you were subjected to the paper day in and day out, I reckon you wouldn’t notice the degradation quite so vividly.
Consider “Young, Black, Male, and Stalked by Bias,” an op-ed by Brent Staples. Here’s how the piece opens:
The door to the subway train slides open, revealing three tall, young black men, crowding the entrance, with hooded sweatshirts pulled up over downward-turned faces; boxer shorts billowing out of over-large, low-slung jeans; and sneakers with the laces untied.
Your response to the look — and to this trio on the subway — depends in part on the context, like the time of day, but especially on how you feel about young, male blackness.
If it unsettles you — as it does many people — you never get beyond the first impression. But those of us who are not reflexively uncomfortable with blackness . . .
Got that? If you are unsettled by thuggish looking teenagers who happen to be black, you are racist. “Young black men,” says Staples, “know that in far too many settings they will be seen not as individuals, but as the ‘other,’ . . .” Here’s a piece of advice for Brent Staples: if you want to be treated with respect, dress and act in a way that invites it. It doesn’t matter if you are black, white, yellow, or polka-dotted: if you dress in a minatory way, people—if they are sane—will regard you with suspicion.
“Society’s message to black boys,” continues Staples, is “ ‘we fear you and view you as dangerous.’ ” No: society’s message to black, white, and yellow boys is “if you act in a way that seems threatening, we will view you as threatening.”
Quoth Staples: “the toxic connotations that the culture has associated with blackness have been embedded in thought, language and social convention for hundreds of years.” Wrong again, Brent. The “toxic connotations” have to do with the toxic behavior of certain segments of the population. When Jesse Jackson hears footsteps behind him, looks around, and feels relieved when he sees the person behind him is white, it is not because he is racist but because the instinct for self-preservation has not been entirely bred out of him.
Brent Staples’s aria about evil racial stereotypes—so evil that many well-meaning people are unconscious of how their attitudes and behavior are influenced by them—is all a prelude to some spectacularly irresponsible animadversions about George Zimmerman. “By the time he went on neighborhood watch patrol with his 9-millimeter pistol and spied Trayvon Martin,” says Staples,
Mr. Zimmerman saw not a teenager with candy [“candy” is a nice touch], but a collection of preconceptions: the black as burglar, the black as drug addict, the black “up to no good.” And he was determined not to let this one get away.
Question: how does Brent Staples know what George Zimmerman saw or thought? He doesn’t. He is just making it up. And the more we know about the shooting of Trayvon Martin, the murkier the episode seems. The man whom the Times branded a “white Hispanic” turns out to have been a conscientious good citizen who donated much time to public good works, including tutoring young black kids for free. In his hysterical campaign against the sin of un- or semi-conscious racism, Brent Staples liberally deploys insidious racialism to make a scapegoat of a man he knows nothing about. “Young, Black, Male, and Stalked by Bias” is all of a piece with the Times’s other reporting on race: whites are guilty until proven innocent, at which point they are still guilty of being white, but blacks get every benefit of every doubt, up to and including being employed by the paper’s editorial page not for merit but for skin color. It’s a case of the not-so-soft bigotry of racialist expectations. Brent Staples is indeed “stalked by bias,” but it turns out that it’s his own bias, underwritten partly by reflexive racialism, partly by stupidity.
if you dress in a minatory way, people — such as I, who have to look up the word “minatory” — will regard you with suspicion.
I am grateful for the opportunity to expand my vocabulary.
Just an observation on that note. I have noticed that when I go to left of center outlets, huffpo, salon, politico, ect. I do not find the need to look up any words. It is only when I read articles from these “low sloping forehead” right of center outlets, PJTV, Brietbart that I get to enjoy that unique pleasure of finding a word I did not know. Nothing makes my day like having to highlight, right click and search a word. And between Kimball, and Driscoll I get to do it with a fair amount of regularity. Keep up the good work guys.
And I learned how to quickly find the definition of a new word. Thank you both.
love people that have nothing better to do than to comment on spelling mistake, as if that is a right or left issue, but rather the comment is just a liberal ruse, using deflection, deception, projection or a dash of Alinsky villification.
Branding a group of people as illiterate, is villification and the projection would be that you get to think you are better.
But the whole concept of your post was deception and deflection from the real issues being raised.
So nice of you.
Huh? The post had nothing to do with spelling, it noted the usage of new and perhaps obscure (thus requiring some effort to discover the meaning of) words.
This is totally incoherent.
It looks like you’re “Stalked by Stupidity”
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/minatory
min·a·to·ry (m n -tôr , -t r ) also min·a·to·ri·al (m n -tôr – l, -t r -). adj. Of a menacing or threatening nature; minacious. [French minatoire, from Late Latin min t rius,
Or, it could be that when visiting the “left of center” sites, use of the English language is reduced to the baser element of street language and expressions that at one time were considered to be objectionable to the average person. You know, words or expressions like “fu#k you”, “cu*t”, and a few others that I won’t bother to mention.
I find it refreshing to actually find it necessary to refer to the dictionary on occasion to either look up the meaning of a word or refresh my memory if it one I haven’t used in a long time.
Education can be a bitch, can’t it?
Having made my living as a wordsmith for more than three decades, I have a truly impressive vocabulary…but every issue of _National Review_ still sends me scurrying to a dictionary (either electronic or hard-copy) at least three times per issue. What fun! I could highly recommend _NR_ on that basis alone, without even mentioning its very high level of reasoning/analysis and its steadfast refusal to cover trivial [non-]“issues.”
Quite right. But WHY if they know they’ll be seen by many neutral and or persons as threatening, or whatever, do they dress like that? It’s the same as young females dressing as if they’re in a brothel and get exercised if any poor dumb male happens to accidentally or deliberately take a peek at their exposed breasts or buttocks.
Social life, even impersonal in cities among perfect strangers is transactional. NOT private, individual actions. Even for the social engineers in psychology, punditry and politics apologists for understood aggressive and provocative behaviours. This is a modern form of bear-baiting, cock or dog-fighting.
There ARE rules even in modern city life., Understood by socialised persons So if these “young black males” who happen to be a group and not individuals, dress in ways they know make complete strangers uneasy it is just as appropriate to decide their dress is deliberately provocative and baiting. Doesn’t matter that they say they’re “innocent”. Nobody past the age of one year is that innocent.
Seems the ” best and brightest” with the keys to the asylum/kingdom who have established this “treatment” for the inmates look increasingly like lunatics themselves.The world divided between those who belong in the asylum with or without the keys, and those there by default.
Jojo asks, “But WHY if they know they’ll be seen by many neutral and or persons as threatening, or whatever, do they dress like that?”
I think a great many of them _WANT_ to be seen as threatening. That was the reason behind the black militancy movement in the 1970s — to instill fear in white people. That’s the reason so many rapper brag about how bad they are — to instill fear.
If someone tries to instill fear in me and I don’t take it seriously, wouldn’t I be showing contempt?
If a black man does not want whites to view his presence with alarm, shouldn’t his anger be directed towards those black men who _do_ present black men as threatening?
Why is it any wronger for me to feel fear of black men I don’t know, then for black men to feel fear of cops they don’t know? After all, the _majority_ of cops are not brutal racists looking to oppress black people. Yeah, it only takes one of them to ruin your day (or your life). That’s true on both sides.
The test is, what do most people of all races feel when the encounter youths dressed as described? Probably fear, or a level of anxiety. Same youths in basketball uniforms coming home from practice, with school backpacks . . . probably no notice at all.
“Same youths in basketball uniforms coming home from practice, with school backpacks . . . probably no notice at all”
Young kids, dressed like that on a subway, would probably get JUMPED by the guys who dress “minatorily”….and they know that, so THEY TO dress the same way….The message being “go find some soft (white) person to hassle, I’m not worth the trouble”.
So much of their culture is a viscious cycle of self-inflicted, self fulfilling tragedy, but no one wants to admit it.
They want to scream “Racist” when even THEY’RE afraid of their own kind.
the bizarre shadow world, the parallel universe of make believe racism has elements from the very best of the creepy stuff from kafka, orwell and ray bradbury to name just 3.
in any case, according to the new black zeitgeist, not only is it all the fault of the chews it is also all the fault of the nypd and, of course, all white people. one can only suppose this is because we refuse to stop frisking them, or following them, or retrieving their weaponry and drugs. we interfere with their criminal activites and generally speaking, inconvenience them by being a nation of laws, and insist they submit to the horrors of mandatory education.
and by doing so, annoy the pig.
Do you remember the Boy Scouts advert from the 1980′s where the older gentleman is scared to see two people walking behind him, and then relieved to see that they’re Scouts in uniform? Clothes make the difference.
They dress that way because (I think) they think it enhances their macho-mojo-intimidation quotient among their peer group, which I see as akin to their randomly seeded pregnancies resulting in 70% (I’ve read here at PJM) of Black births being illegitimate. (…a word fading from use).
I keep saying that this is a cultural and attitudinal situation among the Blacks which cannot be wished away by expensively funded aid and assistance. We’ve tried that. It doesn’t work.
Somewhere there’s this old adage “…You cannot legislate social change”. The needed societal changes can’t be pushed upon them by us Whites…these simply must originate from desperately needed Black Leaders…..the Counter-Sharptons-Counter-Lees-and-Counter-Jacksons.
The Great Society was wheel-spinning.
That’s a brand new one fer me too
Minatory [syn: forbidding, sinister (meaning left), threatening]
Not only does the degenerative process at the NYT get accentuated by the time lapse, but by your own expanded enlightment.
I’d balk at using the NY Times to line a bird cage. Oh, and by the way, when did they start accepting articles from college freshmen.
Minatory is an obvious reference to the bull-headed David Cameron a minor Tory who dresses like the toff he is.
I used to teach Ibos from Nigeria who were young,male black Africans in three piece suits with watch chains, ironed shirts and color coded ties. No one ever found them minatory because they were poised and charming.They were never stopped and searched by the police.
By contrast there are legions of white CHAVs in England who deliberately dress threateningly.( CHAV = Council House and violent; Council = Municipal)
Why did the CHAV cross the road?
To attack a compete stranger for no discernible reason.
It is not about race. It is about social class. The class Karl Marx denounced as the lumpen but who are now heroes to the left.
I agree it’s not about race, but is it about social class? There are plenty of people of limited means and education, and living in unfortunate places, who are not violent predators or among the poseurs who imitate them. I think instead that it is about moral class. Within any social class, there is a subclass of moral degenerates who prey on others. Some use violence, some use legal or bureaucratic weapons, and some use treachery or malicious tongues. The sad fact of modern life is that the majority of people have been disarmed against this predation by highly exaggerated notions of tolerance and legal rights.
I would agree it is about neither race nor class but rather moral character. Class merely determines the means and methods in most cases.
It’s not about social class, but about depraved value systems allowed to fester and grow. You can run around Abu Simbel, Egypt, almost all black, with an iPhone and money falling out of your pockets at 3 am. You won’t have a problem. They would lynch flash mobs there is the reason. You get what you put up with. We are being propagandized by Obama and his minions, that the people who are not the problem, are, and the people who are the problem, aren’t. This is all done in the name of mindless political correctness and to soothe the feelings of last place teams that insist racist umpires are calling too many strikes.
I’m a Canadian teacher. I’ve taught polite, respectful black students and also black thugs. The respectful black students of good character fit in and do what they need to be successful. The others? They live to intimidate, including teachers who don’t cave to their bullying.
E.g., In the hall, I’ve been rushed by a few—only black I have to say, and not my own students—who shout as they hurtle towards me, “Don’t touch me!”—in order to set me up and report me for assault. (A mere touch is now considered assault.) Fortunately, I’m not easily intimidated and have my own, loud voice: out goes my arm, palm out, as I very loudly say, for witnesses, “I’m standing still. If anyone touches anyone, you’ll be the one touching me.” That stops them in their nefarious tracks.
IF there were contact and the race-card-playing student had actually touched me and reported, as in “tattle taled”, to the craven and race-obsessed administration, guess who’d be hauled in for an explanation—not innocent until proven guilty? Then, explanation duly and honestly made, and despite the (utterly fraudulent) school’s emphasis on anti-bullying, would the student be on the hot seat for lying about and bullying and harassing the teacher? NO way. (Maybe this NYT idiot should be writing about THOSE KINDS of bully stories.)
Interesting, isn’t it: Obama looks respectful—though his English language skills are altogether substandard—but he’s actually a black thug. The fact that, pre 2009, he looked and acted respectfully—check out the comments by Joe Biden and Harry Reid—is how he stole the presidency. Sort of ironic, n’est-ce pas? Kyrie eleison.
Exactly!
I’m so glad to see someone mention love among the lumpen. It is so regressive and no favor to the minorities among us. I wrote about it here. As for the academic Left, they are enamored of the lumpen because the lumpen make trouble and trouble is the impetus to chaos and revolution. See http://clarespark.com/2011/05/12/the-great-common-goes-to-the-white-house/.
It’s about race. There are clear and consistent differences between the races. Fancy cloths and gold watch chains mean nothing. And if you don’t like lower class white folks, well, I bet they don’t like you either.
I open the front door to a knock. Five black men are standing on my front porch decked out like pimps, fedoras, canes, the whole nine yards. They pretend to ask for directions to which I blithely and helpfully start to reply. I am sucker punched and fall backwards. Only quick thinking on my part, yelling back into the house, “Get the gun,” stops them from trying to drag me out onto the porch and perhaps avoid a home invasion with unforeseen consequences. There was no gun in the house – the next day there is. That is a true story. Yes it’s anecdotal – too damn anecdotal.
Last summer, black kids come up to bicyclers on a bright, sunny day in Chicago. One of the bicyclers, not being racist, says ‘hi’ instead of running or pulling out a gun he might have had. His reward for his non-profiling, non-racism, is having a baseball thrown at his head and being beaten. If he did have a gun, pulled it out and started shooting, he’d be sitting in jail while Al Sharpton and the NBA wring their filthy hands about how white bicyclers are members of impromptu and ‘privileged’ white hunter-killer teams, suckering in blacks to attack them.
Frank Herbert says, “Be prepared to appreciate what you meet.” There’s nothing in there about frisking old ladies, nuns, and children at airports, or treating gangsters like eskimos until they first knock your brains out.
Let this moron Staples ride the No.5 Minneapolis bus day and night with an open Apple laptop and we’ll see how long his lack of being “reflexively uncomfortable” around black people allows him to retain his possessions. Then let him do the same on the No.28 without a problem for a year. He will then learn Herbert’s axiom that good stuff, and bad, is where you find it, and not where you want to find it, or where you think it could, would or should be.
Jackie Mason had a funny take on this. He describes a fellow walking home late at night, who spots three Hasidic Jews standing under a streetlight. So naturally he crosses to the other side of the street. Right?? It’s easy distinguish between a rattlesnake and a garder snake. It’s a bit more difficult knowing whether that thing in the water is harmless or is a water mocassin. Rational people behave prudently. The others end up as statistics.
As for the NYTs; the Gray Lady should have been committed to an Alzheimers facility years ago. I think the turning point came when they started to dumb down the crosswords puzzles. Since then it has been ‘all the news that fits’. I used to believe that the only thing the Times was good for was wrapping dead fish. Today, I would not subject a dead fish to that ignominy. Save the pages of the Times for dog poop.
It’s “All the Slant That Fits” now.
The Times is the new daily bible for secularists. It gives them their “memes” (predigested narratives) so they can go on ignoring reality and believing in magic. It’s incredible how effective it still is at doing this, having trashed its own credibility so many times. The Trayvon story is really only a repeat of the Duke lacrosse story, after all.
Does anyone read the NY Times anymore, except progressive who live in NY?
Progressives who live in Oro Valley, AZ still read the NYT, and BRAG about how fast they can do the puzzle. Ugh!
“Mr. Zimmerman saw not a teenager with candy [“candy” is a nice touch], but a collection of preconceptions: the black as burglar, the black as drug addict, the black “up to no good.” And he was determined not to let this one get away.” Unfortunately, the NEW YORK TIMES “journalist” is not making it up. This passes liberal brain cells as known fact. And at the NYTs this is “JOURNALISM” at it’s finest! The preconceptions however are in the twisted minds of the liberals. Clearly a mental illness.
A former student who lived in Bedford-Stuyvesant and worked at the Methaodone Maintenance Clinic in Harlem Hospital once told me he had never had to deal with a confrontation. His conclusion: “I must look like a real mean n****r.”
I didn’t think to ask him if he spent a couple of hours each morning practicing menacing looks in front of the bath-room mirror, but I definitely have the impression that some blacks do exactly that. It’s a pity that white racists react to menacing looks as if they felt menaced.
To react to a threat percieved or otherwise is not rascist. It is bred into all humans and most higher forms of life as a survival mechanism. That reaction may be to go to a higher level of awareness and prepare for a possible assault. If people, black or otherwise do not want to be looked at as threatening then dont appear to be so. Otherwise your getting the response you can only be hoping for.
One of the problems with urban black culture is if you are not a thug then you are a victim. Meaning, if you don’t look menacing enough you will be perceived as a soft target and open to assault.
Brent Staples fits one of Dictionary.com’s definition of racist, so look who’s calling the kettle black (no pun intended).
#4 Christie Davies,
No, it is about race. At least in America, that is, where our politics are increasingly all about race (and gender).
The American Left and the institutions under its aegis — academia, the Democratic party, the prestige media, etc. — exploit race out of necessity, as the Left increasingly exits as a marriage between affluent, urban whites and minority groups. Despite occasional protestations to the contrary, the Democratic party of 2012 is no longer the party of the “working man;” it’s a hi-lo tandem of privileged, ruling class white liberals who wage war on middle class and aspirational class whites on behalf of — or at least ostensibly on behalf of — “underprivileged” non-white minorities, or People of Color (under the guise of combating “white privilege,” no less!).
Left-of-center politics in America functions, in essence, as a repudiation of the “American Dream” of class mobility, and as an attempt at instituting a de facto American aristocracy of the new, urban, liberal white ruling class. But there are an awful lot of regular, non-elite American traditionalists who threaten to stand in the way. So it’s essential that the wealthy, privileged white liberals keep their “underprivileged” non-white allies “energized” (i.e., “riled up”) and motivated to go out and vote for “change” (i.e., to end racism and “white privilege”). Thus, Democrats frame every event under the sun — from hurricanes and snowstorms to fluctuations in gas prices — in terms of heroes, victims and villains. No matter what the story, minorities are the victims, “rich” white Republicans and their corporate cronies are the villains, and Democrats are the heroes who valiantly fight the Republican villains on behalf of the oppressed victims.
Democrats and the Left say that demographics are destiny. And to the extent that their marriage of wealthy, privileged, new ruling class whites and “underprivileged” minorities is intended to defeat middle class white “privilege” (otherwise known as class mobility) by flooding the zone with “underprivileged” non-white voters, they’re probably right. That’s why, for Democrats, it’s so essential that America keep bringing in swaths of people from the third world — and telling them that white Republican lynch mobs and their cronies in Big Business are out to get them.
And that’s why the New York Times and the rest of America’s prestige media is increasingly becoming like the local media that yours truly grew up with in Chicago during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Back then, Jesse Jackson and Operation Push reigned supreme in Chicago. Reporters sought Rev. Jackson’s opinion on everything that happened in the city. And, of course, Rev. Jackson was happy to oblige. Adding to the tension, Chicago’s first black mayor (who took office saying “it’s our turn at the trough now!”) had died in office, and a scion of the notorious Daley dynasty had swooped in and reclaimed the office for the Irish Democratic Machine — thereby denying the black community control of the city’s dense system of spoils. The then-largely white Democratic Machine was pitted in a knock-down, drag-out power struggle with South Side and West Side black political factions and with the wealthy, white “Lakefront Liberals” who aligned with the black factions. Hispanics were the wild cards.
And in that environment, every news story the Chicago media ran had a racial angle. Every story!
When there were power outages following thunderstorms, the media would ask “what are the racial implications of the power outages?” When the Chicago Board of Trade, Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Merchandise Mart flooded in 1992, the media explored “the racial implications” of the flood by doing “man on the street” interviews in the black community with people who would say things like “the only reason the city got all those resources together to stop the flood so fast is ’cause rich fat cats got flooded downtown,” and “everybody knows if the flood happened in the hood, it wouldn’ta been stopped so fast.”
Everything in the Chicago media was about race back then. It was ridiculous. But there was a high-stakes political battle being waged, and race was the key factor in that battle. So the media played up the race angle whenever it could. And that’s what’s happening at the New York Times and with the rest of the American prestige media now.
Incidentally, in high school I told a good, but perhaps too sensitive, friend of mine to stop watching the Chicago local news because the news manufactured racial strife (which, at the time, I assumed was for ratings’ sake). My friend was upper middle class black, in search of an “authentic” black identity to help him better fit into the black culture at our high school, and prone to taking the Chicago media’s ever-present “race angle” way too seriously. He was skeptical of my claims at first, as he tended to see most things through the prism of race. But eventually he told me that he’d come to realize that I’d been right after all, and that the media was, indeed, cynically creating racial strife, rather than speaking truth to power to institutional racism.
Later on, that friend went on to become part of the brain trust of an Illinois state senator who ran for the U.S. Senate and, ultimately, for the presidency. That Senator-turned-President promised to usher in a “post-racial,” “post-partisan” America. Now that President and his brain trust rely heavily on the national media’s manipulation of race for partisan purposes.
11. T.S.
“No, it is about race. At least in America, that is, where our politics are increasingly all about race (and gender).”
Not just in America anymore. I think the leftists of the world saw how divided and how much mileage leftists got out of the race non-relations in America and decided to import it as a local issue in all western countries. Where the societies were all homogeneous and the only conflict was class, they all decided to collectively import color so they could bludgeon their population with the racism meme.
People who complained about the non-assimilation of the new immigrants were totally unprepared for the assault of the racism label and unable to defend themselves. Beaten into silence by the accusation that they quickly saw could destroy someone’s life, these societies have come much closer to collapse with only a generation or two of these new victims than their American counterparts.
Thank you. Applause. Applause.
“The door to the subway train slides open, revealing three tall, young black men, crowding the entrance, with hooded sweatshirts pulled up over downward-turned faces; boxer shorts billowing out of over-large, low-slung jeans; and sneakers with the laces untied.”
I’ve been on a lot of New York City subways in my lifetime and if I saw these three guys dressed like that and crowding around me, especially at night, my thought would be to 1) Look for a cop; 2) See when I could get off the train; and 3) Pray that these kids were not armed. Any regular subway rider in New York City knows that three guys, any guys, dressed like this and acting in a tough manner isn’t a recipe for success.
However, let me propose another image. What if three black men, dressed in business suits and ties, walked onto that same train, laughing and smiling, and actually said “excuse me” if they bumped into someone? Would you still feel threatened by them? Of course not. Image is everything. So if you look and act like a solid citizen, people would only NOT be afraid of you, they would respect the way you look, too.
So don’t give me any of this race B.S. When you ride the subways in New York City, you tend to identify threats very, very, quickly, especially at night. So if three tough-looking guys dressed like muggers and acting like muggers come onto the train, I think it’s not illogical that you would be afraid for your life, no matter what their race or color. But if three well-dressed businessmen came on to the train, would you really be afraid of them? Of course not.
Yes! Image is everything! Oprah Winfrey tried this experiment back in the 80s to prove racism – and proved image instead. That the clothes indeed make the man.
The one scenario is just as you described: 1) One group of black males dressed as thugs vs black males in business suites. The reaction by both blacks and whites is just as image. Fear for the 1st group and ease with 2nd.
Then she did the same thing with white males: 1) One group of white males dressed as biker thugs vs white males dressed in business suites. Same reaction by by both blacks and whites. Of course, she was rather shocked by the results.
Of course she was shocked — she was attending Wright’s “church” with Obama and was being fed a weekly diet of hate-whitey.
The liberal Left finds reality so shocking they don’t believe it.
When non-blacks move into a black-controlled area (like downtown Washington, DC) liberals bring up two things over and over: 1) crime, and 2) schools. Go to City-Data, Washington, DC.
When blacks move into white areas they don’t worry about crime and school quality.
Suppose the NYT writer looked at something else in the same context.
Consider “Young, White, Male, and Stalked by Reality,” an op-ed by Bent Sap. Here’s how the piece opens:
The door to the subway train slides open, revealing three tall, young white men, crowding the entrance, with military style brown shirts pulled tight, sporting swastika arms bands, black belts decorating the well tailored brown buttoned down uniform; and black boots with the laces tied at the top.
Your response to the look — and to this trio on the subway — depends in part on the context, like the time of day, but especially on how you feel about young, male Nazism.
If it unsettles you — as it does many people — you never get beyond the first impression. But those of us who are not reflexively uncomfortable with Naziness . . .
No, he’s not biased. Just aware.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s the Scowl. I avoid it, on black faces OR white. There are other indications, but that’s the primary one.
Put the shoe on the other foot. Three young white men (with candy) sporting shaved heads, wife beaters and swastika tats step onto the same subway car. Would the intrepid journalist assume they were neo-nazis or just some college students on spring break? Gee that’s a tough one.
It may be just wishful-thinking on my part, but I get the sense that the Trayvon Martin case is losing it’s “legs.” With Zimmerman making his initial appearance and now locked away in pre-trial custody, much of the “conspiratorial” element has been taken from he story. Even the wildest fantasist can’t claim that the police refuse to make an arrest (because of racial reasons) and that the state prosecutor isn’t taking this seriously. The defense has plenty of pre-trial motions to file (among them one for a change-of-venue and another to begin Discovery process) and the hearings on these will be both dull and time-consuming. Our national attention-span is anything but lengthy and “Zimmerman Remains in Jail” is hardly the sort of headline to galvanize the “activist” community.
I may be wrong (I often am) and the media (led by the NYT and the other usual suspects )may still be able to generate enough steam to keep this going on a reduced level. However I suspect that the case has already served it’s purpose and leftist strategy will now concentrate on “re-energizing” the Occupy movmement in time for the Republican convention.
*sigh*
The LA riots were sparked by the acquittals.
If Zimmerman is justly found to have acted in self-defense, then there will be riots.
“However I suspect that the case has already served it’s purpose and leftist strategy will now concentrate on “re-energizing” the Occupy movmement in time for the Republican convention.”
They’ve tried to squeeze the juice out of it, but it isn’t what they were looking for. Does anyone really feel they’ve been successfully mau-maued by the liberals and black race-baiters on this? I feel less intimidated, less worried, and more angry at “Black America” than ever. Their professional race-baiters have seemingly picked up on this unexpected (by them) outcome as well.
“When Jesse Jackson hears footsteps behind him, looks around, and feels relieved when he sees the person behind him is white”
I beleive the correct person for this shoudl be attributed to William Rasberry – columnist.
Not saying atht it never happened to Jackson – I just do not beleive it was ever in a column – if it were how coudl he continue to make a living since he gets all his money by race bating and shaking down companies through government lawsuit extortion
Jesse made the comment to a Washington Post reporter as the two were walking down the street. After it was published he denied he said it.
jesse jackson, famously said those very words. at the time, he was allowing as how it might be a good idea to face the reality of predatory black crime and drugs and predatory characters in the black communities.
that was before there was way more money in race baiting.
Society’s message to black boys is “if you comport yourselves like miscreant gangsta mofos you are going to be viewed with suspicion and will not be given any benefit of doubt.” Coincidentally, that is the same message given to white and hispanic boys as well. That sounds pretty equal-opportunity to me.
“if you want to be treated with respect, dress and act in a way that invites it.”
UNFORTUNATLY, among many black youths there is a Term they like to use when they see another Black Youth exercising such common sense.
The term is, “Acting White.”
And it is a Deragatory Term exercised to employ peer pressure upon those youths to ‘knock it off.’
I recall, with some ironic sadness, a local news story several years ago about the plight of “average” Asian-Americans teens who were struggling with anxiety and depression brought on by the unfair stereotype that ALL of them were brilliant in mathematics.
Imagine such a burden
I wonder how Brent Staples polishes his halo?
Over the past three years my somewhat middle of the road attitude towards minorities has taken a sharp turn. The behavior of many blacks in America has descended to the point where, once again, the average white looks upon them as not just menacing but blameworthy in the ailments of general society. I no longer give blacks the benefit of the doubt as I used to and I think Zimmerman, while probably wrong in following, was accurate in his concerns (certainly later information points to Martin being more than a ‘candy bearing child!’) I think the ‘wrong message’ from 1600 Pennsylvania and the Department of Justice has provided impetus to once again allow blacks to castigate society for perceived injustices that they themselves initiate and then blame racism on the part of white society. A joke. As is the article that Staples penned.
Okay, being careful is racist. Got it.
Personally, I get unsettled by anyone walking around in a subway system with sneakers with loose laces; there are so many ways that those laces could get caught in a closing subway door, or cause a trip, or anything.
I have to agree with the posters above who say the subway scenario is completely ridiculous. I was just in Chicago this week, visiting the ol’ homestead, and my mother, brother and I took the subway downtown to visit the museum. It was rush hour, so it was crowded as hell, everyone elbow-to-elbow. Black, white, Asian, Indian, and probably Martian if you looked hard enough. In my corner of the car, I was pretty much surrounded by black people, mostly in suits and ties or uniforms. The only time I flinched was when a strangely twitching man sat down next to me, mumbling and shaking his head at his own hands as if he was on a pretty bad trip.
It has nothing to do with color and everything to do with behavior. If a man, white or black, is dressed like a thug and scowling at everybody, I’m going to be nervous. If a man, white or black, is clearly either very mentally ill or on something powerful, I’ll be nervous. Honestly, you have to wonder about the mindset of the people who look at clothing and behavior and only get skin color out of it.
That’s exactly it: they look at clothes, countenance and demeanor and see only skin color. Talk about focusing on the wrong thing!! Everyone talks about business suits, but what about a crowd of kids wearing ordinary clothes and laughing and joking–typical high spirits kinda thing? Nobody would be menaced. It’s the intentionally minatory look that does it.
I think it boils down to:
“Be careful what you pretend to be, because that is how you will be seen by strangers.”
David,
That message applies when you are a “good guy” carrying a Firearm as well.
The way I see it, as a 30+ year Firearms instructor, when you are attired as Zimmerman was, in dressed down street clothes, that is to say, no blue blazer with a “community watch association” crest, and you decide to “do something” about a stranger who’s not an immediate threat to you or someone else, getting out of the car is a very bad idea….
Because A:
The perception you will make upon an “innocent” person could be quite alarming. They may react in fear, and a confrontation could arise…one YOU could have avoided, if you had a reasonable “perception” of how YOU WOULD BE PERCIEVED, by an innocent person.
And because B:
Without “officious” looking attire, a GUILTY THUG will be even more likely to confront you as a “busy-body-nobody” daring to “diss” him, again leading to a confrontation.
Any “officious” attire of course being no guarantee he wont do the same, but it would, at a minimum, add to the credibility of YOUR story that he (clearly unmistaken as to who you were and what your intentions were) did indeed criminally attack YOU, and that you, by any reasonable persons perception of your attire, could not have reasonably “caused” any such misunderstanding that lead to this deadly force encounter.
A reasonably intelligent Armed Man MUST know that any Thugs defender will, as a matter of course, always attempt to play “option A” as the narrative for what occured…especially when he was not an immediate threat to anyone that would warrant getting out of your car.
Remember kids, when you are ARMED, the “perception” you will have on others, and unfortunately, the one you will need to “sell” later on in a trial for your life (or property in a civil suit), is no small matter.
Don’t make it harder on yourself than you have to.
And next time, just stay in the car, mkay?
Apparently, the only thing that Zimmerman was going to do was to follow the guy and lead the cops to him. I have seen nothing to indicated that he was intentionally going to confront Martin. He was actually heading back home, after losing Martin, when he got jumped.
Paul.
“…nothing to indicate(d) that he was intentionally going to confront Martin”
“Intentions” dont matter. Not even a little bit.
The road to hell is paved with all the good ones you can imagine.
Decisions are what matter.
Getting OUT OF THE CAR was an enourmously bad one, with no possible “good” outcome to arise from it.
It was a textbook case of ‘what NOT to do when you are armed”.
Any responsible Gun Owner would have seen that from outer space.
The Armed Guy, in common street clothes, in the safety of his locked vehicle,
is about to get OUT of his car, and proceed on foot to “look for” some “suspicious” dude.
He is rolling dice.
This dice has only 3 sides:
1- You scare the crap out of an innocent person…you might even cause CAUSE a potentially deadly confrontation. You can expect at a MINIMUM to have to “‘splain” yourself to the POLICE when they show up, and this irate innocent person complains of being “stalked” and “frightened to death” by you…and you now and risk that CCW permit when the cops question your “judgement” in “chasing down” someone who’s doing nothing wrong.
You lose.
2- You piss off a Truly Guilty Thug, who now seizes the opportunity to lump-up this “busy-body” who’s been following him around in a car. You’ll get beat up, risk having your gun stolen, or maybe turned against you, and you’ll just HAVE to shoot the guy now.
You lose.
3- Nothing at all happens, and you go home.
You dont lose, but you win….nothing.
Three sided dice:
Lose, Lose, and zero.
No possible way at all to “win”
So dont roll it if no ones life is immediately stake.
So whatever Zimmermans “intentions” were, they just dont matter. He left the safety of his vehicle, WITH A GUN,
to “investigate” something that was not an legitimate, real time threat to him, or anyone else.
And (surprise?!) a shooting that NEVER HAD TO HAPPEN, happened.
I feel sorry for Zimmerman, stuck in a politically motivated shit-sandwich he never wanted to create.
But him exiting the vehicle under those circumstances is like watching a kid run out to the street between parked cars.
The answer is “NO”, all the time, no exceptions.
The answer is NEVER
“Well, a tragedy might NOT happen, right?”
The POTENTIAL for a mere ABSENCE OF CATASTROPHY does not justify a really, really BAD decision.
Its just that simple.
As I understand it, the Martin kid was headed towards a “back door” of some building. Evidently not the one he resided in.
Zimmerman left his truck to get a better look at where Martin was going.
The police hadn’t yet arrived.
So, was he still wrong to leave the truck?
Putting the shoe on the other foot, this black man did not leave his car and shot the “assailant” anyway, despite the white man not being armed.
http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/dpp/news/crime/taco-bell-shooting-victim-was-holding-leash-not-weapon-4-4-2012
I’m still waiting for the LSM to pick up this story.
Why do we assume the worst based on how someone is dressed….?
For example I cannot understand why people always call me “Tex” just because I like to wear boots and spurs and a big ten gallon cowboy hat.
I once heard comedian Dave Chapelle doing a bit on why women who dress sexy are labeled as Ho’s.
He said “You may not actually be a Ho’ but you are certainly wearing the uniform.”
Hobbes made much of tradition views, prejudice as a guide to life: now all we remember it ‘nasty brutish and short’.
I am afraid that pseudo-religious dramas hold no more: let my people go. Race riots are out of fashion for white America. Rather, than being attacked, people who are not helpful or not trusted just get ignored.
Islamic terrorism is bad for business a lot of places, both in Islam and without. Once your activities cost others, you have shortened the odds on your demise.
Once the cries of victimhood lose their power, there is no telling what the end will be.
too much self esteem being given to people that have not earned it, don’t deserve it and abuse it.
All this allowed because we live in a society where lawyers seem ready to take any stupid case, and most people think that any slight to them is a reason for a payout.
We are getting what we sowed.
Give the school a dress code, get rid of the trouble makers and start to make a difference.
Alas, what is being given to people is not, in fact, self-esteem, it is a faux version of it, only the words, not the reality. The sense of self-esteem they get from this fake substitute lasts only as long as it takes them to see something which forces them to compare what they do and how they do it with what other people do and how they do it. Then, naturally, they feel worse than they would have without the shot of fake self-esteem and search for someone to blame for their lack of good feeling. Black Liberation Theology and the White Devil Theory of history provide young blacks who feel that absence an immediate target to blame: white people and their racism. More fakery, but harder to defeat than the fake self-esteem racket.
I don’t understand why people dress to look threatening. I saw a man at an airport whose face was tattooed to look like a bulldog. I gave him wide berth (he needed it, by the way) Why would a person do that to himself?
Talk about a Red Herring. I invite you all to contemplate and comment if you think I may be onto something. This entire narrative (concerning the case) has focused on the deceased race and “apparel”, I believe however that the 911 call which only a responsible person would make, makes reference to Behavior.
The medias misdirection has been about Race and a Hood. No questions as to what specific behavior. Like for example walking up to doors or peering at windows.
Comments?
Travons behavior was indeed suspicious…not threatening, just suspicious.
Calling the cops was a good idea…
Getting out of the car was a very, very, BAD idea.
Because, when you are armed, and not “dressed like security” you HAVE TO realize only ONE of these three things are likely to occur:
1) An innocent person will have the crap scared out of them because now they think your stalking them.
This misunderstanding could precipitate a tragedy.
CCW lesson 101
2) A guilty thug will likely physically attack you for being “nosey” about his activity.
Not the situation to bring a Firearm, if you can avoid it altogether.
CCW lesson 101.1
3) Nothing….nothing at all happens.
An armed man, in remarkably pedestrian attire, deciding to involve himself on foot with a “suspicious but not threatening” person, needs to IMMEDIATELY see he is rolling a three sided dice.
He can lose. He can lose. Or he can “win” and gain nothing.
Their is no possible “good” that exists in Mr. Zimmermans decision to exit the vehicle. Particularly since the Police have already been notified.
Its unfortunate that (IMHO) the shooting was a straight-up case of self defense ONCE TRAVON ATTACKED HIM, but the charges are unjust and politically motivated.
He is going to pay, with twisted justice, for the crime of being “stoopid”, by walking into a scenario a REASONABLY INTELLIGENT/RESPONSIBLE ARMED MAN would have known to avoid, as there was nothing at all to gain, and everything to lose.
Right. Well spoken.
You’re right. According to the released 911 tapes, Zimmerman only commented that Martin was black after the dispatcher specifically asked.
This essay doesn’t say anything new. What Kimball writes is true and well known. The NYT has become a gutter paper. It also isn’t news that Kimball is one of America’s finest writers. “Minatory” cracks me up; the use of the word that is.
I wonder if Staples would walk into that subway. Jesse Jackson would not.
Has anyone but me noticed that George Zimmerman has about the same skin color as ex New Orleans mayors Ray Nagin and the two Morials, Marc and Dutch, and somewhat darker than President Obama’s former pastor Reverend Wright? The idea that white supremacists are patrolling Sanford, and Al Sharpton is protesting, is too droll for words.
If I see three white guys with ragged hair, bushy beards, tatoos, and a biker gang jacket, I would make a quick assessment as well. It’s like we YUPPIES used to say ” Dress for the job you want!”
Twice in the last week I was ridiculed by young Black men for my fashion choices. Casual and conservative, I wear my pants pulled up, my shirt tucked in and it all held in place with a belt. My shoes have laces so they stay on my feet – and my hat faces foward so it can actually shade my eyes. Radical, I know.
I knew they had a problem with it but I chose not to engage their tiny little minds. They simply do not have the mental capacity for rational conversation. I say that because they have a problem with a 50 year old man NOT dressing the same way they are. I apologize for not being “hip” but I left 17 behind a long time ago!
We have all said, and the article mentions too, that how we dress is a social signal. We tell others who we are and what our potential is by what we walk out the door wearing. If I were a high school mendicant then maybe I would wear those clothes.
But I am a 50 + retired military with quite an education. Why would a man of my social standing want to dress like a 17 yo hoodlum? I see enough older men around here doing that but I think they are doing society and our young men a disservice by complying with their poor choices rather than leading them into wiser ones.
I thoroughly enjoyed the article and the comments.
I would offer the observation that the farther we are removed from our agrarian roots, the less common sense we seem to have, and the more politically correct behavior we seem to condone.
The bottom line is that we get the behavior we are willing to tolerate.
Take a farmer that works the land, and puts up the harvest. The farmer notices he has a rat problem. The rats are eating the harvest, the rewards of the farmer’s labor.
The farmer can (a) assume the rats are disadvantaged, and deserve some portion of his harvest; or (b) set out to eradicate the rat population.
If you think option (a) is the correct response, you qualify as a liberal progressive.
You would be outraged if anyone criticized your proposed solution of setting aside a portion of the harvest for the disadvantaged rats. You would be flabbergasted after years of your solution being put into action that the rat population has increased dramatically. You would demand more of the harvest in the name of fairness for the rats, ignoring the unfairness to the farmer that produced the harvest.
The old farmer would simply look at you and shake his head that you could not anticipate the obvious results of your delusions, and ignore the immorality of forcing him to feed the rats from his labor.
Common sense should tell you that the eradication of the rats is the only solution.
Now, eradication of the underclass is a very similar proposition.
You eradicate it by allowing charities to function as a filter that provide a hand up, not a hand out, by continuing charitable support to only those striving to improve their skills, find a job, and support themselves. You simply cannot continue (except to the statistically few invalids, mentally ill, etc.) to shower benefits on those who will not take responsibility for their lives, or the rat population, instead of being eradicated, grows exponentially.
You would then have the farmers that feel good about doing their Christian duty to give to the poor, grateful recipients of a hand up out of poverty, churches/charities that administer and filter the aid recipients, and some manageable underclass criminal element that will always be with us. You do not have a huge government bureaucracy (that takes more of the harvest to sustain themselves), and is subject to fraud/abuse because they do not know or care about the aid recipients.
Let me hasten to add, rats and the underclass come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. This is basic human nature that has been the same for thousands of years.
Refusing to acknowledge or speak intelligently about the problem prevents a solution, and of course denies the politician the ability to lock up a large voting bloc.
The old farmer would tell you that you can’t let the rats vote on how much of the harvest they can claim, or soon you would have no harvest, as the rats consume the seed for next year’s planting.
Voting is a privilege, and was not a right enshrined in the constitution as originally written. We need to acknowledge the common sense in that, as well as when that privilege is bestowed.
Until we as free citizens, demand that only the net taxpayers have the vote, we are simply re-arranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic, and can expect exponential expansion in the numbers of subway riders as described in Mr. Kimball’s excellent article. And those type riders will increasingly be in all shapes, sizes, and colors, because we are breeding an entitlement mindset, and have been doing so for several generations.
Mmmm well lets see. Blacks make up 13% of the population of the USA Black males about 6% and Black ‘Youths’ , under 25 y.o. , about 2 – 3%. But this miniscule minority commits 50% of the murders and 60% of the violent crime in the USA. So the real question is ‘Why would you NOT be disturbed if you come in to contact with them’. I know its an ‘inconvenient truth’ for PC,MC left wing moonbats but the Facts and Statistics tells you they ARE more dangerous than others. Profiling, if it is being done, is NOT effective enough it needs to enforced much more strictly.
Notes to Racists:
1 – Do not call the police and have a conversation of nearly 5 minutes, then tell them where to find you, before going out and shooting someone.
2 – You are a very inept racist if you get into a rolling-on-the-ground brawl with the person you are about to shoot.
What a wonderful article, Mr. Kimball! Allow me to enumerate only a few of the highlights:
1) How refreshing to find an author whose mind and writing – and what writing: “minatory,” “aria,” even “animadversion”! – is unclouded by all this silly contemporary rhetoric about “liberty,” “freedom to choose,” and so forth, and properly insists that people DO deserve ostracism based on the clothes they wear! Mazel tov, Roger!
2) The coup de grace delivered on page 2, where you cleverly suggest that Mr. Zimmerman, who took Trayvon Martin’s life with a gun, has clearly fallen under unjust suspicion, due to his “tutoring young black kids for free”! To be sure, your enthusiasm for “public good works” reeks unpleasantly of collectivism, but the central syllogism is so perfectly crafted that all is forgiven.
3) Finally, all praise to your laser-like focus on the inscrutability of George Zimmerman’s mind – an inscrutability surpassed only by Trayvon Martin’s, which no longer exists.
If three guys dressed like the “sharks” or tony soprano for that matter started walking behind me I’d look for a cop or a business for me to go into. But its it just boys, if its three thuggish looking girls I get that same feeling. It’s the same feeling I get when I’m traveling on the turnpike keeping up with the flow of traffic and a squad car is behind me, I get a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach, hope my hubby paid the parking ticket and pray a speeder flys by so this guy gets off my tail.
Dressed the part or not dressed the part, armed or unarmed, attacked first or attacked after confrontation in the homeowners neighborhood are at issue but why is everyone in the media not berating their own? Three instances of evidevidence tampering and a judge whose husband works on the case for CNN, one of the alleged (or admitted) tamperers. How can this homeowner receive a fair trail when the jury pool has been tainted? Oh, and the judge selected never talks to her husband with a proven track record.
The Lame Stream EneMedia and the Black Race Hustlers are STILL using the OLD photo of a 13 y.o. Trayvon instead of showing the 6ft 2in Gold Toothed Football playing ‘gangsta’ reprobate wannabe that he was. That tells you all you need to know about the agenda of the Lame stream EneMedia and the Black Racist Race Hustlers.
My level of racism has never been as high as it is under this president, the whole country has been divided, made to bear witness to socially correct racial thinking void of reason. There is no support for the notion that I should be tolerant. As in my youth where I was told to have respect for my elders or clergy or teachers that I encountered with whom I not only disagreed but also held different and often supportable counter arguments. I feel no respect to the people or the blind level of trust that I am asked to extend to a brotherhood of skin color, corruption, dependency, entitlement and limited scope of intellect. Now, perhaps as southern racist whites in the 50s, I find myself looking toward most people of color without good expectations of any kind. Increasingly, I see any black or Hispanic outcry as predictable blather from an underclass of stupidity, a culture of entitlement.
Being a Yankee expat living in a European country, I don’t have to deal with race issues day-in and day-out because this is one of the places white people rule the roost simply by virtue of originating here, and we have don’t have to feel ashamed for it. You can’t imagine how nice that is. Of course, as a Yankee I’m the odd man out, but I kind of like that because no one really knows what to think of me until I give them something to think about.
So now I’m going to give you, my fellow Americans toiling under the burden of cunning race tricks, something to think about. America’s racial grievance industry, owned and operated by the left, relies on a simple but cunning race trick to generate business: They collectivize culpability and causation for racism to justify collective liability and remedies for racism. They do this because Uncle Sugar has the deepest pockets in the world.
Every grievance posits the following theory: Culpability + causation + injury = liability for remediation of the injury. Notice how Staples attributes the culpability and cause of the racism he describes to a collective entity – American culture. This is the cunning race trick that he believes absolves him of the burden of proving the mental state of any individual white person. Having thus assumed half of his case, Staples proceeds to assume both the injury and liability justifying his verdict that all whites are racist, even white hispanics.
Kimball did a nice job deconstructing the cunning race trick by de-collectivizing culpability and causation and providing an individualized alibi: Individuals who do not dress like thugs tend to react cautiously to people who do dress like thugs. You can do the same if you understand the cunning race trick and can propose common sense reasons for the relevant behavior under the circumstances then prevailing.