The Travesty and Tragedy of George Zimmerman

The tragedy of George Zimmerman is that he probably really did feel threatened by a seventeen year old black man wearing a hoodie, walking through his neighborhood.

At its most banal retelling, George Zimmerman was a passably inept member of his neighborhood watch, who thought it was suspicious that a dark-skinned teenager would be in the area, walking calmly through the rain. He stalked this man, was confronted by this man, and this resulted in George's gun going off at close range, killing Trayvon Martin.

Media and the public at large are furious that Zimmerman was acquitted of murder charges, but trying Zimmerman for murder now in a federal court with hate-crime statutes attached is not really going to make anyone but Trayvon's family feel better. It does not guarantee that actual racists will think twice before casually murdering anyone and then relying on "good ol' boy" regional politics to claim self-defense.


George Zimmerman is actually proof that our society is evolving to hold its members to an ethical standard higher than the bare minimum of the law.

By all accounts, George handled his situation … badly. Let's just say that. He unnecessarily engaged in pursuit of a "suspect," entered what he believed to be a dangerous situation against police advice, and then failed to identify himself while accusing the victim in a generic and contextually racist [in hindsight] manner. George Zimmerman was something of an idiot. I think that's a fair judgement to apply.

But George Zimmerman did not commit a hate-crime, he did not seek to murder a young black man, at least as far as anyone involved in the case can really discern. He was, for all the condescension the phrase lends, playing cops and robbers like a fucking child.

I mean to be profane, I am sorry, for the case calls for such. It is profane that a grown man who claims to suffer from Adult ADHD and require medication to remember things such as the street he lives on can acquire a firearm, or that he be allowed to join even an amateur, volunteer organization dedicated to safety. It is profane that he has come to perceive through media and social stigma a black man in a hooded sweatshirt as "suspicious" for his neighborhood.

I will now stoop to prove a point:

George Zimmerman is half Peruvian, that half being one-quarter African-Peruvian. His father is German Catholic. He is a registered Democrat. A twenty-eight year old Afro-Hispanic Democrat thought that a sweatshirt makes a black man suspicious enough to warrant investigation for recent burglaries. This is a simplification, but the disgusting fact is not by much.

George Zimmerman might have watched a lot of Law & Order, or The Wire, or Saved By the Bell for all we know. For whatever reason, this man thought another man was behaving suspiciously at the very best because he was out looking to find people behaving suspiciously, at the worst because Trayvon's being black was suspicious enough.


The sad truth is George probably really did feel threatened by a seventeen year old black man wearing a hoodie, walking through his neighborhood. He put himself in a stupid situation, handled it poorly, reducing the number of possible outcomes to the one wear he ended up on trial for murder, because what seems to have happened was staggeringly less likely than the idea that he was simply a violent racist.

George Zimmerman did behave like a racist when he profiled Trayvon Martin as "up to no good." He internalized every image of gangbangers or hoodlums or early '90s gangster rappers and he broadened that imagery to include a young black man when he assigned himself the role of a police officer.

That we as a public want George tried in a federal court after a jury found his actions to fall short of either second-degree murder (intentional) or manslaughter (even involuntary), shows that we are "uncomfortable" with this outcome, to say the least. Many wish him tried because they feel his racial profile led to the encounter which escalated into (in)voluntary manslaughter. Others will demand a retrial on grounds that the prosecution handled its case badly, or that local law enforcement was less than equal in the pursuit of justice.

Yet I'm pretty sure a great deal of this unrest lies in the nagging feeling that we have perpetuated even now a culture of casual racism and its acceptance that could allow an event such as the ending of Trayvon Martin's life.

The idea that "urban" means "Angry Black Man in Flashy Clothes."

The idea that "gangbanger" has any real meaning outside the most destitute, war-torn ghettos of American metropolises.

The idea that–let's just say it–black people are criminals. Violent criminals. That white men are gentlemen thieves stacking banking regulations against themselves, but anyone of relatively-recent African descent is automatically predisposed to acts of base ignorance, cruelty, inconsideration, and physical damage.

Trayvon Martin's death was not a murder, though that would leave us all more settled, having a wrong, racist, vile murdered to condemn as out-of-step with the rest of us. If his death was not a crime, by the letter of the law, then that means we have, as a progressive and just society, have allowed social perceptions to skew so terribly and so covertly that a hate crime can be committed in our eyes by accident.

The tragedy of Trayvon Martin was his horrible death. The tragedy of George Zimmerman is that he really was doing what he thought was right, and it was all legal.



Dave Zucker
www.soundadoggymakes.com
Dave@soundadoggymakes.com

On Overreacting

This is the package of bubbles we are not allowed to sell where I work, because it uses the word "colored."

Honestly, if this were an issue, I'd be more upset as an African American that white people overreacted and then denied me the purchase of something purple.

More Racist Finds from My Grandmother's House

After the personal stein monogrammed "Slave," I'm starting to become a bit concerned with some of this brickabrack.

This is a painted porcelain figurine made in…




…yup, Occupied Japan.

My mom and aunt swore it was Aunt Jemima and that one just like it was featured on Antiques Roadshow, but according to the Internet this little baby's trade name is "Mammy."

So yeah, I'm not introducing grandma to my black friends from now on.

The Princess and the Frog | Disney "Had a Dream"

This image is a pretty solid metaphor for Disney finally exploiting
every race there is. It had to be done, though. Now everyone's separate,
but at least we're all equal, right?

This isn't exactly timely, but a friendly discussion the other night brought us a new perspective on life:

The Princess and the Frog finally gave young black girls a Disney Princess Halloween costume to wear that wouldn't be preceded by the qualifier "Black."

Black Ariel, Black Sleeping Beauty, Black Belles. We've all seen them. "What are you dressed as?"

"Oh, I'm Sleeping Beauty." No, you're not. You're Black Sleeping Beauty.

And don't try any of that baloney where you're like half black and try to swing a Jasmine or a Pocahontas. Somehow, I feel like that's just usurping a whole other race's hard one exploitation. You've got your own exploited princess now, and she's sassy to boot.


Of course, this was admittedly the same friend who narrowly failed to convince his half-black girlfriend to dress as the Sally Hemings to his Thomas Jefferson. We're still pretty mad at her for backing out on that.

Patty Mayonnaise: Race Warrior?

Girl, you knocked me to the ground. Bitches always be trippin'.

I've discovered one wonderful thing about becoming a responsible adult:

If you stay up late enough at night, there are plenty of old cartoons on television.

Admittedly, it's also kind of a curse, insofar as Transformers Generation 1 is pretty weak, as is G.I. Joe, Doug, Rugrats, Hey, Arnold! and every other show I can catch at 1 a.m. Up-shot: these shows were really straightforward about being preachy or, more often, a little racist.

Except when it came to race, surprisingly. I guess you could be a little culturally racist back then, just not racially racist. Point in fact: I just watched a few episodes of Archer. They openly say, "You're black…ish?" Granted, that's for adults, but adults who are my age and therefore remember characters like Suzie from Rugrats. Suzie was black. No one ever said anything, because it didn't matter to her character, but she definitely spoke and acted with a particularly … urban '90s flare.

Or, let's continue being forthcoming, Patty Mayonnaise was almost certainly at least a quarter black.

Listen, Doug was Caucasian. His dad was a little Jewish or Mediterranean, and his mom was so pink it's patently obvious she was Irish. Skeeter was clearly supposed to be African-American as far as style was concerned, but is dad was an angry, stout, German type. Beebe Bluff was a WASP, but purple, Roger was classic, middle-America green-trash hick, and the Dinks were also rather violet, and rich, so let's accept that they're similarly in vein with Beebe's heritage.

But Patty was orange. So was her dad. She definitely wasn't Hispanic, but she was by far the darkest character on Doug next to Skeeter, even though she and her father both had blond hair. Taking Skeeter into account, and her resemblance to her father, the most reasonable explanation is that Patty was the offspring of her half-black father and her either also half-black or otherwise light skinned, now-deceased mother.

Is this a big deal? Not in the slightest! But it's weird, in retrospect, to realize it was never addressed. The protagonist's love interest was a minority in their school, who at times faced discrimination, but only ever for being a girl, or talented, or too popular for her own sanity. Never because of her heritage or her paraplegic father. Did all the other Bluffington kids work through those foibles prior to the fourth grade?

Honestly, I'm pretty glad that race was never made an issue in Doug. It was entirely superfluous to the characters, which says a lot about race relations among the children in Bluffington. Maybe that's not how they did things in Bloatsberg.

Still, they made a big deal out of everything else, even the Beat(le)s. Just surprising they never tapped that well.

You know, like Doug obviously did after prom.

Realistic Expectations of a More Racially Diverse Justice League

Aaron Diaz of Dresden Codak is an internet comic artist who has been getting quite a bit of attention lately for some rather inspired updates to Batman and the Justice League following DC Comics' own maligned "New 52" reboot.

It occurred to me that most Superheroes are by nature either near-human aliens or empowered humans, generally white and American, given the birthplace of the pulp genre. However, if we're going to take into account actual global ethnicity numbers, an "accurately" diverse Justice League would be about a quarter Chinese and Indian, have a couple ambiguously white guys, a Latina/o, Buzz Aldrin, and like one black dude.

Then again, if we're taking the ethnicity of superheroes, we really ought to be finding out the demographics of those most likely to be in close proximity to

A) Industrial accidents, and
B) Space aliens.

Space aliens are easy. If we went somewhere to meat them, the professional space-persons are most likely American, Russian, European, and now possibly Asian. NASA, the ESA, the RFK, China's CNSA, and Japan's JAXA are the only organizations capable of launching an asshole into Earth orbit. (Also Richard Branson.) If they get superpowers after a close encounter, these are the men and women who will fight crime.

NASA: Our phone number is (713) 483-3111.

Then again, if aliens land on Earth, there's a 73% chance they splashdown in water, and that means a whole bunch of Aquamen/super-sturgeons.

Industrial accidents are the other chief method of gaining tights and ripped calves. So to figure out the diversity angle there, we should really be taking into account both the total number of scientists in various countries and the total number of nuclear/radiation/chemical accidents in these same countries per annum.

I expected this to mean most of out terrestrial supers would be from former Soviet bloc countries and possibly North Korea, and now approximately one fifth of the island of Honshu in Japan. Interestingly, the United States has more confirmed nuclear accidents than any other country by far. The same goes for astronaut fatalities both in the ether and during training.

So, basically, the Justice League should be a couple aliens who take on the form of or suitably advance Earth marine life, then a bunch of genius Americans with crappy/incredible luck, and a few irradiated Japanese business men. Or maybe some of those abandoned dogs. Yeah, a Hulk chow chow? How cute would that be? (Oops, that's be The Avengers, I guess.)

"Everyone gets a little younger, but the sidekicks stay the same. Also, fuck J'onn."

On Meta Cognition

I just got finished watching the South Park episode "With Apologies to Jesse Jackson." You might remember it better if I describe it in its more deplorable monicker, the "Nigger-Guy" episode.

I generally have issue with ad hominem attacks, attacking the person making a claim rather than the claim, mostly because I'm a middle-upper-middle class, white, heterosexual male. Basically, I can do whatever the fuck I want in life, so long as I don't espouse tolerance for anything, really.

Oh, are you gay?

No, I just don't give a shit who someone else is attracted to.

Did you grow up poor and in a shitty neighborhood?

No, but I think social welfare organizations do a lot of good for the injured and public works programs create jobs while improving living conditions in the places they're needed most.

Of course this leads to an entirely new problem: now, when I walk past a minority citizen on the street, I suddenly become very self aware and start acting real shady because I don't care about race or socioeconomic status.

Worse, I only care about who a person is on the inside, so I start evaluating personally unique fashion and grooming choices, carriage, facial expression and attitude. Basically, I look them up-and-down from a distance and verify I would get along with them. Then of course I ignore them because we both have places to get to and I know they're good people.

So I look you up and down, then try really hard to not look at you….

Suddenly I'm obsessed with countering the way these thought patterns externalize themselves, and now I'm staring at a minority on the street. Oh god. Oh god oh god oh god. They're gonna kill me. They're gonna kill me for being an insecure, racist white boy. Crap, that's actually racist to assume, isn't it? What the hell? Where's the happy medium between being scared of seeming racist and being scared of appearing scared of being racist?

Probably somewhere in between the Colbert Report and reruns of Tosh.0.

On Blatancy

The other night my mom complained about how she wanted to repot a plant and couldn't find a trowel in store after store. Just a small trowel, a simple gardening trowel. She finally found one in Home Depot for all of 99¢, but that was already the fourth place she'd gone to looking for a trowel. A trowel should not be so hard to find.

My thinking is because she kept calling it a "trowel." I just used the word "trowel" five times in the above paragraph. That's what my mom did in relating the story and do you know what I found? The word "trowel" had lost almost all of it's meaning for me. Trowel. Trowel. Trowel trowel trowel trowel. I'm almost at towel. Come on.

Of course no one's going to carry a trowel. Why are you calling it that? It's got other, much more common names. If you asked for a little shovel, even the guy who doesn't speak English will have a shot at understand you. "¿Un shovel [digging pantomime] pequño?" Sure. But a trowel? Come on, he won't know that one. Help a guy out; pick an other name.

Until I heard it on network television,
I thought "calling a spade a spade" derogatory of black people.

Please, people, let's call a spade a spade.


*cricket chirp*

On Race Relations

Society screwed up when it tried to make "nigga" a socially acceptable term of endearment.

What we should have done is started also calling poor, uneducated, shiftless white criminals "niggers."

On Black Comedy

This will be another of those rants where my point will seem entirely invalid simply because I was unfortunate to enjoy a white-middle-class upbringing. Well screw that. As Binghamton alum Dustin Glick so concisely explained, this is an ad hominem attack of crappy logic.


My point is this:

I hate black comedy that relies on the audience being black to be funny.

To a lesser extent I also hate George Lopez and the few Hispanic comedians who awkwardly try to force diversity into their acts. And anyone from the Blue Collar tours.

But sadly for the black man, who as already suffered so much, he is forced to endure the likes of Martin Lawrence, Tracey Morgan and the train wreck that is the Wayans brothers, forever stigmatizing the differences between the ways white people and black people walk, drive and eventually have unsatisfying sex.

The problem is this: if you take anything that's moderately amusing and change a character's race, it doesn't make it funnier. Dumb people seem to think this is the case, though. Buddy Cop films were great when Danny Glover was just starting to get to old for that shit, because suddenly the black guy was the rational one and the white guy was insane. That was fine. For a couple movies. Like eight later? Not so much. There certainly wasn't a need for three Rush Hour movies. Even one 90-minute session of Chris Tucker is a bit much.

I should differentiate this kind of travesty from worthwhile race-based comedy. Certainly there's something to be said for the hilarity in awkward social interactions. Certainly there are funny aspects unique to African-American culture, and these should be explored. The problem is relying on shared ethnicity for the entirety of a bit's comedic content is dangerous, both as a stereotyping precedent and in gambling your whole stake on only one, low-brow form of joke.

Here's my argument in proof:

Death at a Funeral (2007) was a terrific "black comedy" in the original respect: it is funny but also serious, morbid and thought-provoking. However it was British, so most Americans never saw it and only about 80% of the ones that did understood the sounds coming out of the actors' mouths.

Now, Death at a Funeral (2010) is the exact same movie, except now it was made in America and everyone is black. And when I say it's "the exact same movie" I mean it's the same premise, same dialogue at points, and they even use the exact same dwarf actor in the exact same role. The only difference is that now every character is black and there's a whole bunch of lame nods to them being black. It is not incidental to the plot, it seriously changes much of the story as the cast is comprised of Zooey Saldana (the black "It Girl" since Avatar came out), Martin Lawrence (the skeevy, unscrupulous brother), Tracey Morgan (the possibly retarded black stereotype), Danny Glover (the ornery, old black uncle), and apparently Luke Wilson and James Marsden as the unobtrusive, pasty white characters.

The only saving grace I can see is Chris Rock, a staple of serious but also humorous racial discourse, portraying the protagonist, a more normal character appalled by the hideous behavior of everyone he's related to. Hopefully, this attitude will be reflected and anyone who sees this film will understand this is supposed to carry over into a critique of their behavior in general. (Hint: it will not.)

I can only hope that the zeitgeist forgets this Death at a Funeral as fast as it did the last one, then everyone can go back to listen to Chris Rock talking about the difference between black people and [a word I can't cay but they watch a lot of UPN which incidentally airs reruns of Chris Rock's show which is basically The Black Wonder Years but we won't blame him for that].

On Hot Pockets

Hot Pockets, Jim Gaffigan's favorite food-like product of lyrical self-reference, have a new product for which they are jamming the airwaves: hamburger Hot Pockets.

Yes, they've gone the extra mile to break apart the mystery meat in their oddity-filled pasty crusts. Ostensibly this is so we don't have to chew as much.

What bothers me is that they're not really marketing this as a product to be desired. Instead they're taking the more modern approach, that is selling us on an emotion that makes us feel better than everyone else. They're selling us not-racism.


There's not even a veil over it. Hot Pockets is comparing it's the method by which you eat their product, hands-only, with other qualities that have experienced unwarranted social injustice, i.e. race, gender and sexuality.

They can't even include a black guy in the commercial, because then we'd be wondering if all the "foodist" fuddy-duddies were just bigots. Of course they obviously couldn't include any gays, as no self respecting homosexual is going to set foot anywhere near a Hot Pocket unless it's greaseless, vegetarian and stuffed with a spinach and artichoke cream sauce. Or hummus.

Now, I'll admit one of my favorite internet images of all time is the picture of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with a delicious frozen orange treat simply captions, "I HAVE A DREAMSICLE."


But this is just a step too far. I'm supposed to like Hot Pockets filled with granulated, pre-processed beef(?) sauteed in its own grease and non-dairy cheese substitute because other white people fucking feel bad?

No, I'm sorry. Yeah, that whole slavery thing sucked. Yeah, Christians fucked a lot of people over. Constantly. Still do. But you know what? That wasn't me. In fact I'm Jewish. We did the whole slavery thing ourselves so that second trip around can't even be considered our fault. The rest of my family's non-practicing Protestants.

And frankly even they were poor as fuck. Not like they could have afforded a slave.

Although I've always wondered why our Southern Italian family caries an African-only genetic blood disorder. Great Uncle Othello always keeps mum about it.

On Diversity

No, this isn't awkward at all. Why do you ask?



I realized today that I don't really have any black friends.

I used to have a black friend but I haven't talked to her in a while.

Which kind of sucks because she was also my lesbian friend. It was very convenient.

Before my close circle of friends included a woman, a gay and a minority. Now we're just a bunch of overweight white guys who like drinking and using the word "nigga" ironically.

Which come to think of it is probably fairly awful now that we don't have black person sitting with us anymore.

Lando Calrissian: Space Pimp