Some PJ readers have correctly pointed out that, in the case of the Trayvon Martin killing, the left-wing cultural establishment now all of a sudden considers Hispanics to be honorary whites. This is, of course, a temporary designation. Under normal circumstances (i.e., discussions of immigration laws, welfare, etc.) Hispanics are lumped in with other “persons of color.” When it serves The Narrative, however, Hispanics are wrenched out of this larger category and said to be “white.” Since The Narrative must be preserved at all costs, logic be damned, this leads to odd thought contortions.
Here’s a little experiment: Find any left-wing proponent of The Narrative, visit his or her commentary on the Martin shooting, and check out the comments section. You’ll likely find commenters saying things such as the following, which I found last week in the comments thread of Charles M. Blow’s column at the New York Times:
“The police are there to protect the rich and powerful (think white). I’m sure they believe they are doing their job by protecting Zimmerman.
I say this as a privileged white male. I little doubt that if I was black and had tried to lead the same life I’ve lead I would have landed up in a lot of ‘trouble’ with the police.”
Here was another typical Blow reader:
“This is part of this country’s legacy of terrorism toward Blacks and Latinos.”
The racist white police protecting a Hispanic shooter? We’re not supposed to notice how ridiculous this is. One notices the near-universal attempt to turn this into a Manichean “whites v. people of color” story. The problems begin immediately once you lump Trayvon Martin in with all other “people of color,” since it was precisely a “person of color” who shot him. What’s a progressive to do? Condemn the minority? Broach the uncomfortable discussion of minority-on-minority violence in this country, which is epidemic in urban areas? No: better to continue as though the shooter were white anyway. Keep The Narrative going.
If I have a hammer, this must be a nail, those little spiral thingies down the shaft be damned.
If Zimmerman was the victim and the guy who shot him was a non-Hispanic white you know they’d be playing up the Hispanic part of Zimmerman’s background, not ignoring it.
Even if he didn’t have a last name of Zimmerman, or was Hispanic as you can get, it’d still be due to white supremacy according to the left’s bizarre racial theory of “kiriarchy.”
More on that here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyriarchy
Charles Blow is aptly named.
Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old boy on a 5-day suspension from school attacked an armed man who was trying to protect his neighborhood from burglars. It is sad. 17-year old boys do crazy things, as do 20-somethings who are on a mission to defend their neighborhood. It is not cold blooded, racist inspired murder. But you know what the real tragedy is? Trayvon Martin had to go to his father’s girlfriend’s house to spend some time with his Dad. That is the part that is important to us, as the larger society within which this tragedy occurred. The New Black Panther Party, and all the other black activists, could do a lot better than putting up wanted posters for the shooter. But that would mean they would have to stop treating the mothers of their children like ‘hos’ and their own children like afterthoughts. That would require growing up.
And the President of the United States has once again opened his mouth and allowed a toad to come out. Instead of inflaming racial tensions by personalizing the issue in favor of his color, he could have said, “We could avoid so many killings of our young people if only our men, all of us, would follow my example and marry the woman who is to be the mother of our children, live with her and with our children together, and protect them from the crazy impulses of their youth.” But the President once again acted stupidly.
Bigfoot – Trayvon Martin was 6’2″ and 17 but all the pictures of him have him looking like he’s 12. You can see the deception already going on. Now they paint Mr. Zimmerman as being white (and the neo-Nazis think he’s Jewish, just for chuckles). Yet more deception.
Moreover, the more information that comes out about the case, the weaker and weaker is the argument that this was not self-defense. Apparently, Zimmerman was being beaten to a pulp by Martin. This has nothing to do with Stand Your Groung. But do you see the LSM saying anything about that, and anything not deceptive about this case? No, the LSM has its meme: Blacks do no wrong, whites can do no right, and guns are bad, bad, bad; and oh yes, somehow it’s all the Republicans’ fault.
As for the Black Panthers, why don’t they head to Chicago and put a bounty on the shooters who killed 10 black kids last week? Well, that doesn’t quite fit their meme, and that’s because the shooters were black.
If we can convince black activists that those Chicago shooters were in fact Arabs, (refer to below) Sharpton and Jackson will hold rally. Hell, if you’re a liberal, you can say they were white. Yeah, let’s just say all crime is committed by “whites” for affirmative action/reality purposes. Reality is unfair and should be sued.
I own a 60,000 ton battleship I just ate. Actually it’s a sandwich but who’s counting?
“Now they paint Mr. Zimmerman as being white”
It’s the “one drop rule” all over again. Wonderful thing, that is…
You, sir, have said something important.
It’s a pity it’s drowned out by the skirling and shrieking of people with only some small proportion of the facts at their disposal.
I have been thinking baout this too. It is hilarious, really. It is violence between people of color.
Democrats in the South are posting a bounty to encourage a race-based lynching, and even defending the right to wear a hood.
I don’t think they see the irony.
Sounds like a political cartoon!
What does it do to the narrative to point out that Zimmerman is as white as the president?
Precisely! If The MSM looks at the mixed-race Zimmerman and sees a “white Hispanic”, then consistency demands that all future references be to “white African-American” Barack Obama and to our country’s “first white African-American president”.
Let’s see. Obama does not speak out against:
-Black-on-black violence
-Black-on-white violence
-White-on-white violence
-White-on-Hispanic violence
-Hispanic-on-white or black violence
-And so on
The only violence serious enough to warrant his commentary is the perception of white-on-black violence or injustice.
The metamessage is clear.
Actually, for purposes of the CENSUS, “Hispanics” are considered “white” – more specifically, they may self-identify as whatever “race” they choose, but unless they think of themselves as “Black/African-American” or “Asian”, thye’re stuck with “White”. “Hispanic” is listed spearately, as an ethnicity, with several varieties to choose from.
For Voting Rights Act purposes, Hispanics are again not considered a race, but are designated as a “language minority” – because veryone knows that if you have a “Spanish surname” (like, say, Zimmerman?) you probably don’t speak English.
To show how ridiculous all this racial classification has become, I like to point out that Charlize Theron is “African-American” whereas Eric Holder’s “people” are Barbadian.
Actually TexasTea, Zimmerman may be German and sometimes, Jewish.
Who are you trying to kid? Zimmerman is not a common colonial American surname. It’s not a comwmon white Southern Protestant or even a German Catholic kind of name. It’s a very common Jewish surname.
Our senile President Carter coined Hispanic for the 1980 Census. Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid are the only races.
Black folks are really good at this sort of thing though it is confusing to me. In Mauritania slightly less black folks enslave darker blacks and then for the purposes of that narrative those black folks doing the enslaving become Arabs.
The same is true in the Sudan. Though their is not such thing as an Arab ruling leadership or army, black American’s are up in arms because the U.S. gov’t is not helping with Darfur and the ruckus now. It’s true the N. Sudanese often call themselves Arabs but this is like Kipling’s nabob with a monocle being an Englishman. In the Sudan, it is really slightly lighter black folks killing darker ones.
Just about any Sudanese walking around the West would be considered black and when you throw in black American’s one-drop rule it gets nuttier. So, Obama, the first black President and not a muslim, is in fact less black than a person from the Sudan unless he’s not because he’s more black if those blacks in the Sudan are to be seen as Arabs. If you know what the hell I just said let me know.
Plus I am a racist for not wanting illegal immigration except when hispanics are white, and then I’m a self-hating white nut. But maybe sometimes I’M not white myself – I’m not sure. I’d have to look it up somewhere. Maybe a mental institution.
East Asians are now “white” because they’re such hard workers and are so smart.
Something tells me that the whole racial guilt thing is about to collapse. What would make it collapse sooner would be if a large black youth mugged Jesse Jackson in the next week or two. That would surely change the election dynamics.
Is there a chance that common sense will become fashionable? As an American, I can always hope for the future.
I can also move 20 miles east to a better state (Indiana). Or learn to hunt and go north to Michigan. My future will always be bright.
Why don’t we just call a spade a spade. What we are talking about here is a not-so-new ‘genre’ of individual. Blacktavists engaging in Blacktavism.
A Blacktavist uses any incident against any ‘african-american’, perpetrated by a white person, as evidence of a racially motivated action. The proper response is to engage in Blacktavism. That is to protest, exercising righteous indignation against the existence of the racially motivated action. And never allow the incident to be framed in anything other than a racial light. Facts are something that need not enter into the discussion. And never, but, never look into the victim’s background.
Oh, it is the Blacktavists that get to define who is white. And strangest of all, a Blacktivist need not be themselves of ‘african-american’ heritage.
This new application of the “one drop rule” to make Zimmerman white shows the absurdity of the entire enterprise. The media, to their credit, have been placing his picture at the top of many articles on this matter, where one cannot escape his obvious Latino appearance. The “white hispanic” label cannot possibly be made to fit here.
It is my hope that Al Sharpton, Jesse “don’t be a fool, vulcanize your tool” Jackson and the rest of the race pimp industry are further revealed as the self serving frauds they always have been and that normal people of all colors call them onto the carpet!
How do we even know Zimmerman is “Hispanic”? Maybe he is just plain Jewish.