The Glade 4.0

They got charged with something (I forget exactly what) and the two women got a $5 million settlement.

I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

...and yet George Zimmerman was judged by the color of his skin and NOT the content of his character.

Zimmerman was most definitely not judged by the color of his skin, he was judged by the color of his name.

Obama has stuck his nose in once again (Remember Dr. Louis Gates) and made this into a racial issue. The amount of hypocrisy in this issue is staggering. Those calling this a racial issue are truly the racists themselves and seem to want to thrive on the divide it is causing.

It can be "a racial issue" even if Zimmerman wasn't motivated by outright racial animosity. Obama's point is that black males are frequently treated with an elevated level of suspicion and fear, and that has both tangible impacts on the overall justice system as well as intangible impacts on the attitudes, tensions and reactions of individuals. If Zimmerman had seen an elderly, white woman walking slowly in the rain and looking around at the houses, he probably would have suspected she was lost and offered to help. Instead, he saw a young, black man walking in the rain and checking out the houses, so he suspected he was a criminal. Anyone who claims that "young" and "man" were important elements of the profile that led him to be suspicious but that "black" was utterly irrelevant is being willfully blind at best.

It can be "a racial issue" even if Zimmerman wasn't motivated by outright racial animosity. Obama's point is that black males are frequently treated with an elevated level of suspicion and fear, and that has both tangible impacts on the overall justice system as well as intangible impacts on the attitudes, tensions and reactions of individuals. If Zimmerman had seen an elderly, white woman walking slowly in the rain and looking around at the houses, he probably would have suspected she was lost and offered to help. Instead, he saw a young, black man walking in the rain and checking out the houses, so he suspected he was a criminal. Anyone who claims that "young" and "man" were important elements of the profile that led him to be suspicious but that "black" was utterly irrelevant is being willfully blind at best.

Facism is not a school of thought, it is a racial slur.

Not sure about that. I'd actually be MORE suspicious of a white teenager in a hoodie than a black teenager. For a black teenager, it's normal clothing. For a white teenager, it speaks of an attitude/culture...

It can be "a racial issue" even if Zimmerman wasn't motivated by outright racial animosity. Obama's point is that black males are frequently treated with an elevated level of suspicion and fear, and that has both tangible impacts on the overall justice system as well as intangible impacts on the attitudes, tensions and reactions of individuals. If Zimmerman had seen an elderly, white woman walking slowly in the rain and looking around at the houses, he probably would have suspected she was lost and offered to help. Instead, he saw a young, black man walking in the rain and checking out the houses, so he suspected he was a criminal. Anyone who claims that "young" and "man" were important elements of the profile that led him to be suspicious but that "black" was utterly irrelevant is being willfully blind at best.

Too bad the FBI point blank told our government that there's no Civil Rights case, because they had too much demonstrable evidence of Zimmerman's non-racism.

You're willfully ignoring evidence that indicates Zimmerman is not racist and actually goes out of his way to be inclusive and supportive of everyone in his community; you and everyone else who still thinks Zimmerman got off too easy.

It can be "a racial issue" even if Zimmerman wasn't motivated by outright racial animosity. Obama's point is that black males are frequently treated with an elevated level of suspicion and fear, and that has both tangible impacts on the overall justice system as well as intangible impacts on the attitudes, tensions and reactions of individuals. If Zimmerman had seen an elderly, white woman walking slowly in the rain and looking around at the houses, he probably would have suspected she was lost and offered to help. Instead, he saw a young, black man walking in the rain and checking out the houses, so he suspected he was a criminal. Anyone who claims that "young" and "man" were important elements of the profile that led him to be suspicious but that "black" was utterly irrelevant is being willfully blind at best.

Again, just because Zimmerman doesn't evince racial animosity (though I note that there are conflicting reports on that), doesn't mean he's immune to the kind of subtle "elevated suspicion" kind of prejudice I'm talking about. More importantly, Obama's point was a broader one - namely that such elevated suspicion and fear is common and frequently encountered by black people, particularly black men, and that constitutes an unjust burden that inevitably informs their reaction to cases like the Zimmerman/Martin one.

Facism is not a school of thought, it is a racial slur.

Again, just because Zimmerman doesn't evince racial animosity (though I note that there are conflicting reports on that), doesn't mean he's immune to the kind of subtle "elevated suspicion" kind of prejudice I'm talking about. More importantly, Obama's point was a broader one - namely that such elevated suspicion and fear is common and frequently encountered by black people, particularly black men, and that constitutes an unjust burden that inevitably informs their reaction to cases like the Zimmerman/Martin one.

Instead, he saw a young, black man walking in the rain and checking out the houses, so he suspected he was a criminal. Anyone who claims that "young" and "man" were important elements of the profile that led him to be suspicious but that "black" was utterly irrelevant is being willfully blind at best.

We don't question this logic when insurance companies charge higher rates due to risk for young people (or very old people) driving.

Except Zim didn't see a black person. He wasn't even sure when the dispatcher asked him. So going by that, it's easy to tell that Zim's frame of mind didn't even register race. He saw a guy acting strange. Color played no part in it. Two people brought race into it. Martin and the dispatcher.

Zimmerman: He looks black.

A transcript of the complete 911 call shows that Zimmerman said, "This guy looks like he's up to no good. Or he's on drugs or something. It's raining and he's just walking around, looking about."
The 911 officer responded saying, "OK, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic?"
"He looks black," Zimmerman said.

Yes we do. It's illegal to give someone insurance deductions based on age, it now has to be based on amount of years driving.

That aside, I completely agree with you.

Yes we do. It's illegal to give someone insurance deductions based on age, it now has to be based on amount of years driving.

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

Not here. Under 25 years old? You pay a HUGE premium on your auto insurance.

For example, insurance companies often charge drivers between the ages of 16 and 23 with high rates based on statistics that show:

Male drivers in this age group have a driver fatality rate that's four times higher than the average national rate.
16-year-old drivers have the highest driver fatality rate in the country.
Fatal crashes are twice as likely for a 16 year old driving with passengers.
NOTE: Rates for this group might come down if the driver is married. Evidence proves that married drivers are less likely to take chances.

Right behind this age group on the accident scale, are drivers 75 and older.

Really?

http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/ ... erman.html

I don't see any evidence of profiling there, but even if there was, I don't know what the issue is with "profiling." Statistical likelihood is everything. It's all that matters. If black people are, per capita, more likely to commit more crime in your area, then it is not only fine, but it is wise to be more suspicious of them.

[W]e should take a moment to appreciate the import of Cohen's words. They hold that neither I, nor my twelve year old son, nor any of my nephews, nor any of my male family members deserve to be judged as individuals by the state. Instead we must be seen as members of a class more inclined to criminality. It does not matter that the vast, vast majority of black men commit no violent crime at all. Cohen argues that that majority should unduly bear the burden of police invasion, because of a minority who happens to live among us.

Richard Cohen concedes that this is a violation, but it is one he believes black people, for the good of their country, must learn to live with. Effectively he is arguing for a kind of racist public safety tax. The tax may, or may not, end with a frisking. More contact with the police, and people who want to be police, necessarily means more deadly tragedy. Thus Cohen is not simply calling for my son and I to bear the brunt of "violation," he is calling for us to run a higher risk of death and serious injury at the hands of the state. Effectively he is calling for Sean Bell's fianceé, Trayvon Martin's parents, Amadou Diallo's mother, Prince Jones' daughter, the relatives of Kathryn Johnston to accept the deaths of their love ones as the price of doing business in America.

Let us be direct -- in any other context we would automatically recognize this "talk" as stupid advice. If I were to tell you that I only employ Asian-Americans to do my taxes because "Asian-Americans do better on the Math SAT," you would not simply question my sensitivity, but my mental faculties. That is because you would understand that in making an individual decision, employing an ancestral class of millions is not very intelligent. Moreover, were I to tell you I wanted my son to marry a Jewish woman because "Jews are really successful," you would understand that statement for the stupidity which it is.

It would not be acceptable for me to make such suggestions (to say nothing of policy) in an enlightened society -- not simply because they are "impolite" but because they betray a rote, incurious and addled intellect. There is no difference between my argument above and the notion that black boys should be avoided because they are overrepresented in the violent crime stats. But one of the effects of racism is its tendency to justify stupidity.

Those of us who have spent much of our lives living in relatively high crime neighborhoods grasp this particular stupidity immediately. We have a great many strategies which we employ to try to protect ourselves and our children. We tell them to watch who they are walking with, to not go to neighborhoods where they don't know anyone, that when a crowd runs toward a fight they should go the other way, to avoid blocks with busted street-lights, to keep their heads up while walking, to not daydream and to be aware of their surroundings.

When you start getting down to particular neighborhoods the advice gets even more specific -- don't cut through the woods to get to school, stay away from Jermaine Wilks, don't got to Mondawmin on the first hot day of the year, etc. There is a great scene in the film The Interruptors when one of the anti-violence workers notes that when she sees a bunch of people in a place, and then they all suddenly clear out, she knows something is coming down. My point is that parents who regularly have to cope with violent crime understand the advantages of good, solid intelligence. They know that saying '"stay away from black kids" is the equivalent of looking at 9/11, shrugging one's shoulders and saying, "It was them Muslims."

That’s the gist of Victor Davis Hanson’s new piece in National Review. All young black men are guilty until proven innocent – a sentiment with which New York’s chief cop apparently agrees (especially if he can gussy up his racial profiling with minor pot possession, thus making the future of any young black male that little bit harder). I don’t think anyone in this debate, including the president, has denied the disproportionate amount of crime committed by young black men (primarily against other young black men). The question is how we should personally deal with that fact while living in a multiracial society. Treating random strangers as inherently dangerous because of their age, gender and skin color is a choice to champion fear over reason, a decision to embrace easy racism over any attempt to overcome it.

It’s also spectacularly stupid.

...Ta-Nehisi’s core point is that making such blanket warnings about an entire group of human beings is just dumb if you actually care about the safety of your kids. It puts the race/gender/age category before all other obvious contexts: neighborhood, street, school, college, inner city, distant suburb, daytime, night, crowded places, dark streets, and the actual observed behavior of the young black man.