They Attack and Smear Trayvon Martin, But Where Are the Questions About George Zimmerman's More Than Questionable Character and Past Behavior?

My thoughts about George Zimmerman are well known. Writing here, over at Alternet, as well as Salon, I have argued that George Zimmerman is a murderer, one motivated by racism, an over identification with Whiteness and White Authority, as well as a fetish for playing cop to kill a person who was guilty of walking in the "wrong" neighborhood.

At present, George Zimmerman's attorneys are trying to smear and discredit Trayvon Martin by releasing text messages and photos of him acting in a "criminal" manner in order to discredit the slain teenager.

I love learning from all of you. There are attorneys and others trained in legal matters who frequent We Are Respectable Negroes. As such, please teach me a thing or two about Zimmerman's attorneys' strategy, and their logic given the former's questionable motivations on the night that he killed Martin, and their client's past behavior.

Consider the following.

George Zimmerman was arrested for domestic violence. He was apparently on mood altering drugs while pursuing an unarmed person against police instructions, and then killing said innocent. George Zimmerman was also accused of committing sexual assault and molesting a family member. George Zimmerman also assaulted police officers.

Some questions for you all:

How do these facts enter into the prosecution's case? Why is the public not hearing more about Zimmerman's character defects? By attacking Martin's character--and on issues that have little if anything to do with Zimmerman's motivations for chasing down and murdering an innocent person--are Zimmerman's attorneys now open to an attack on their client's questionable background?

Black youth are made into adults for purposes of incarceration, harassment, and murder by the State, as well as those overly identified with Whiteness and White Authority. Black adults are infantilized by those who want to argue that we are not worthy of citizenship, are stuck on a "plantation," and seek to disenfranchise us at the polls. This paradox typifies black life during Jim and Jane Crow and through to the post civil rights era.

A one sided attack on Trayvon Martin when George Zimmerman's character and motivations have not been equally scrutinized is a function of that same dynamic.

How Trayvon Martin is guilty as opposed to being assumed innocent, and the burden of proof is on his family and attorneys to prove Martin's right to live when confronted by the murderous machinations of a vigilante killer, are more proof that black life remains cheap in the Age of Obama--and how African-American's lives are (quite literally) in some ways less valuable than they were centuries ago.

Black kids walking home are all black beast rapist giant Negroes in the eyes of people like George Zimmerman and those who support him. Niggerization is real. Never forget that fact; do not let your kids, who may happen to be black and brown, forget that fact either.

Assassination Tango's Lessons of Love, Life, and Sex for All of Us

What a perfect scene. Welcome to Argentina my friends.

I am a huge Robert Duvall fan. Assassination Tango ought to be required viewing for all cinema aficionados. Combining the two results is a masterful film that speaks to the soul.

We who are ghetto nerds often blossom late.

As such, we often do not realize our potential--and missed opportunities--until years after. This is especially true regarding matters of love and sex.

I know I am not alone in reflecting upon opportunities of many years ago, where later on, I realized that I was "in" and just dropped the proverbial ball.

I just messed it up because of a lack of self-confidence. I have learned with the years to just go for it. Why not? The worst thing that you will hear is "no." Even then, there is comfort from knowing.

Doubt rarely satisfies.

All teenagers and young people should be required to watch Assassination Tango until they absorb that life lesson.

Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and the Age of Obama

In discussing how hyper-conservatism/neo liberalism has corrupted men like Tom Coburn and James Inhofe from Oklahoma, I referenced the great poet and philosopher John Donne.

As I reflect upon the conspiracy mongering of the Tea Party GOP and the Right-wing media in Obama's second term, I return to a visual of conspiranoids, lurking, carving their knives, and drunk on their machinations of how to destroy the country's first black president.

Sadly, he has foes on both the Left and Right. He also has enemies across the colorline. What is the man to do?

Shakespeare's Julius Caesar is one of my favorite plays. Why? Consider the following classic passage, so very perfect a description of politics and life now and for all time:

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus; and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings. (1.2.135)

When I think of the Republican's almost paraphilia-like fixation on manufactured conspiracies (and the language of "States Rights" and "nullification") I return to this section from Julius Caesar:

Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream:
The genius and the mortal instruments
Are then in council; and the state of man,
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
The nature of an insurrection. (2.1.63)

What prose calls out to you as an apt description of the Age of Obama?

Introducing E.W. Jackson, The Republican Party's Newest "Black Folks are on a Plantation" Political Race Minstrel

The Republican Party has an obsession with black voters, slavery analogies, and plantations. As I have discussed many times, the Right's obsession with suggesting that black voters who choose to support the Democratic Party are slaves, and that Black Conservatives are "liberators" like Harriet Tubman is an abuse of a historical tragedy for cynical political ends.

Moreover, no other group would have their political agency and legacy so stigmatized and mocked.

To point. I have yet to hear the loyalty of Jewish-Americans to the Democratic Party caricaturized as something akin to people who would choose to stay in the death camps of Auschwitz or Treblinka.

Not surprisingly, the Republican Party uses black garbage pail kids black conservatives as the water carriers for this offensive message.

Virginia Lt. Governor candidate E.W. Jackson is the newest black Republican race minstrel to "double cork" as he shucks and jives in support of the symbolic racism which is the name brand of the Republican Party in the post civil rights era.

Charles Blow writing over at The NY Times calls out Jackson and the Republican Party's mess here:

Why do Republicans keep endorsing the most extreme and hyperbolic African-American voices — those intent on comparing blacks who support the Democratic candidates to slaves? That idea, which only a black person could invoke without being castigated for the flagrant racial overtones, is a trope to which an increasingly homogeneous Republican Party seems to subscribe. 

The most recent example of this is E.W. Jackson, who last weekend became the Virginia Republicans’ candidate for lieutenant governor in the state... 

The Democrat Plantation theology goes something like this: Democrats use the government to addict and incapacitate blacks by giving them free things — welfare, food stamps and the like. This renders blacks dependent on and beholden to that government and the Democratic Party.
This is not completely dissimilar from Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” comments, although he never mentioned race...

The Republican Party has apparently not made the great discovery that they will be unable to include more black and brown folks in their electoral coalition if their standing strategy is to insult voters by calling them drones, slaves, or political zombies with not a bit of sense to act rationally and in their own self-interest.

Blow concludes:

While these politicians accuse the vast majority of African-Americans of being mindless drones of the Democrats, they are skating dangerously close to — if not beyond — the point where they become conservative caricatures. 

The implication that most African-Americans can’t be discerning, that they can’t weigh the pros and cons of political parties and make informed decisions, that they are rendered servile in exchange for social services, is the highest level of insult. And black politicians are the ones Republicans are cheering on as they deliver it. 

Now who, exactly, is being used here?

In defense of the Republican Party, their base of white "working class" voters who continue to support a political movement whose policies harm them are not exactly fully rational political actors. Perhaps the Tea Party GOP's leadership has been lulled into complacency, their political thinking dulled given the lockstep support they enjoy from Red State white voters?

If black folks are stuck on a "plantation" then what is the equivalent analogy for white working class Republican voters?

Game Recognizes Game in a World Where Politics is Professional Wrestling: Howard Stern Interviews Alex Jones

Howard Stern is one of the greatest interviewers and media personalities in American history. Alex Jones is also an amazing media personality who commands a large audience. Both are managers of, and ring leaders in, a human zoo.

I admire both men for their hustle. As is my catch phrase and quotable, and based on some of the comments here on We Are Respectable Negroes from time to time, I do wonder how many in the conspiracy theory paranoid style in American politics community realize that Alex Jones is doing a "worked shoot" in the theater of "politics as professional wrestling?"

Yes, there are conspiracies of Power. However, the reality is that books such as Behold a Pale Horse may be compelling to the organic intellectual subaltern barbershop prison radical crowd, but the real machinations of power are hiding in plain sight. The riddle as revealed and deciphered by men like Alex Jones--for those who are "in" on the secret--is just part of the con job for people who find Willie Lynch and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion compelling works of history.

Don't get me wrong. I find Alex Jones entertaining in much the same way that I admire Howard Stern and love watching professional wrestling. A great performance is always compelling to me.

A question remains: is Alex Jones an agent provocateur, on the take and doing the bidding of the various forces he claims are his enemies, and from which, he is supposedly at risk? And does Alex Jones realize how badly Howard Stern exposed his flimsy hustle?

Progress or Peril? The CIA Writes Black Slaves and Free People Back into the History of the National Security State

Union officers got so many valuable pieces of intelligence from slaves that the reports were put in a special category: “Black Dispatches.” Runaway slaves, many of them conscripted to work on Confederate fortifications, gave the Union Army a continually flowing stream of intelligence. So did slaves who volunteered to be stay-in-place agents. 

Tens of thousands of ex-slaves fought and died for the Union in military units. Less known is the work of other African-Americans who risked their lives in secret, gathering intelligence or while entering enemy territory as scouts. Brigadier General Grenville M. Dodge mentioned how he used black scouts during a search for Confederate troops in Tennessee: “Two negroes led our cavalry to them, guiding them around their pickets. No white man had the pluck to do it.”

Every society must reproduce by teaching its members a set of values and rules that are core to what it means to belong as a citizen.

The United States is a national security state. After 9-11, the United States has also established a fourth branch of government, what is a quasi-secret set of interlocking agencies that can best be described as "Top Secret America."

Consequently, citizens need to be habituated into having their privacy violated. And in an ideal situation, citizens will come to welcome these intrusions as a means of keeping them safe from "terrorism" or some other exaggerated threat.

Power is not always punitive; As Michele Foucault observed, to be most effective, Power should also reward the complicity and surrender of its subjects.

Post civil rights era America is a corporate democracy whose elite class is multiracial. This helps to give the State legitimacy among the mass public. Given America's racist history, black and brown folks have to be (re)read back into the American narrative for a narrative of multicultural pluralism to persist and have currency.

Because it is a necessary intervention against a conservative white washing of American history, progressive and left leaning truth-tellers have dutifully participated in this project.

Here is an irony. What happens when black and brown folks--and other members of either the subaltern or counter-public--are made positive and central actors in the history of the national security state?

From the end of the Cold War to the present, the Central Intelligence Agency has quite smartly broadened its recruitment efforts to include more non-whites. This makes perfect sense: the majority of the world's people are of color and "white" people are a minority.

As such, Top Secret America needs to grow its ranks. How better to do that than by finding ways to include people of color in the long and "heroic" history of American spycraft?

The Central Intelligence Agency's profiling of African American spies during the Civil War is a much needed corrective to a history that for too long had made ignored black resistance to the Southern Slaveocracy. The institution of chattel slavery was one of personal tyranny and intimate violence. African-Americans resisted in critical ways both small and large.

One of the boldest—and least known—Northern spies of the war was a free African American who went under cover as a slave in what appears to have been a plan to place her in the official residence of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. 

The residence, called the Richmond White House, served as the Davis home and the President’s executive office. While he conducted Confederacy business there, he would not have seen his slaves as a threat to security. Official papers did not have to be given special protection when slaves were around because, by law, slaves had to be illiterate. 

Elizabeth Van Lew well knew this law, and, while running her spy ring in Richmond, realized the espionage value of a slave who was secretly able to read and write. Van Lew had a perfect candidate for such an agent-inplace role: Mary Elizabeth Bowser. 

The wealthy Van Lew family, which had 21 slaves in 1850, had only two by 1860—both of them elderly women. Yet, Virginia and Richmond archives show that the Van Lews had not gone through the legal procedures for the freeing of slaves. Freedom meant exile. Under Virginia law, freed slaves had to leave Virginia within a year after winning their freedom. Only by ignoring that law could Van Lew carry out the audacious placement of an agent in the Richmond White House.

In many ways, the opposition of black Americans to racial tyranny was a counter-insurgency campaign where covert modes of communication, guerrilla warfare, targeted assassination, exfiltration/infiltration missions, and sabotage against a surveillance society were common.

But, black folks' resistance to the Racial State and the Slaveocracy must also be put into the context of Cointelpro (and other programs by the military and police intelligence apparatus of the United States government in the 20th century) which murdered, imprisoned, and undermined black and brown civil society organizations.

The inclusion of black and brown folks in the history of American spycraft is welcome and overdue. However, the exclusion from this narrative of how the National Security State has also targeted people of color and those others who resisted American injustice and militarism should not be removed from criticism and comment.

A Devastating Defeat Brings Out the Worst Moment of Poor Sportsmanship Ever

A quick post for the ghetto nerd set.

I was joking with my friend Gordon Gartrelle over Twitter about how he suggested that fans will describe whoever loses the Grizzlies vs. Spurs game as being "devastated."

Maybe. For my dollar, one of the most devastating losses in the history of sports was Randy Pederson's defeat by (a much older and should have been retired) Ernie Schlegel in the 1995 PBA Touring Players Championship. Schlegel's celebration was also one of the most unsportsmanlike moments in televised sports history.

His yelling, "For the old people!" is imminently quotable.

I can't resist screaming that phrase randomly when I have a small life success.

And when things right themselves for me in the imminent near future--fingers crossed--I am going to run around yelling said phrase like Ernie Schlegel did after his win over Randy Pederson. 

Modesty and humility do not always need to be rules that surrender to emotion and selfish celebratory humanity. It is okay to be tacky on occasion. Right?

Tom Coburn Should Read the Poem "No Man is an Island" Before Talking About Budget Cuts and the Tornado Disaster in Oklahoma

When I was in middle school, my home town was hit by a devastating tornado. We were fortunate. While my neighborhood was without power for almost 10 days, and many homes were destroyed, the loss of life--considering the power of the tornado--was relatively low.

The destroyed houses, fallen trees, and crushed cars are sights that I will never forget. But the impression that stayed with me the longest, and was formative for my belief that government can--despite Ronald Reagan's argument to the opposite--do good, were the droning sounds of Army helicopters, big green trucks full of marines and supplies, the hundreds of utility workers from all over New England and New York, and those big men from the Connecticut State Police who manned the perimeter around Hamden and New Haven that hot summer day and night.

Within an hour after the tornado hit our "first responders" were present and getting down to business; our tax dollars did some good that day. In 2013, I doubt the federal and state assistance would have come as quickly, in force, or efficiently.

My well-wishes and positive energy go out to the good people of Moore, Oklahoma. So much loss and destruction: they will need the support of all Americans in rebuilding their lives and community.

Oklahoma's Republican Senator Tom Coburn is a reminder that abstract public policy matters have real life implications for people's lives. Discussions about cutting the state and federal budget in the interest of trimming "waste" means that you fire people and put them out of their homes. Cutting down on money for disaster relief and infrastructure means that people die in an emergency and the country has poorly maintained roads, railways, and bridges which is both an impediment to economic growth, and creates difficulties in properly supporting communities when they are in crisis.

Tom Coburn is a member of the Austerity neo liberalism coven. While people suffer, he is more interested in expounding on the gospel of budget cuts in response to disaster relief for the people of Moore, Oklahoma than in adhering to a rubric wherein the social compact is precisely a promise that the State will provide proper support for its citizens in dealing with disasters and other matters outside of their immediate control.

Bodies remain unburied. Yet, Tom Coburn is treating a disaster as an exercise in accounting.

He is also a hypocrite. Coburn has supported aid for his state in times of trouble in the past while opposing similar programs for other communities.

Austerity and neo liberalism are morally unconscionable policies not just because of how the logic of profit maximization is used to destroy the legitimacy of the public commons and the social safety net by transferring the State's resources (i.e. the people's tax money) to the private coffers of elite policy makers and their agents. The immorality is of a different nature: the Tom Coburns of the world do not have to deal with the material consequences of their own policies. In all, this is a breach of trust between citizens and their elected officials.

When the Barons of Austerity and privatization have no need for public services such as police, fire departments, schools, hospitals, and in this case disaster relief, they are immune from how their policy prescriptions hurt and destroy the lives of real people.

Members of the elite ruling class like Tom Coburn have no need for federal aid in times of crisis because they are rich. Men such as Tom Coburn do not need to worry about the common or civic good because they live in their own parallel public of the beltway, the policy wonks, think tanks, insular apparatus of the political party system, plutocrats, interest groups, lobbyists, and gated communities.

Should Guns be Stored in Children's Rooms as a Last Ditch Defense Against Home Invasion? A Conversation With Rob Pincus, One of the World's Leading Firearm and Shooting Experts About America's Gun Culture

We have spoken at great length about America's gun culture and the need for a reasonable approach to guns as a public health issue several times here on We Are Respectable Negroes. With the hope of offering up some resources and expert opinions on the topic, I have been lucky to talk to both Richard Slotkin and Ann Little, two leading authorities on the cultural and historical context of guns and interpersonal violence in the United States.

I like talking to experts. I especially like talking to experts who will challenge my priors and bring to you a perspective that you may, under different circumstances, not be likely to hear engaged in fair, long, and substantive conversation by someone who may not necessarily agree with them.

In this most recent installment of our podcast series, I had the great opportunity to speak with Mr. Rob Pincus. He is one of the world's foremost experts on firearm use, and is an expert consultant and trainer who has worked with militaries, police departments, and other expert shooters around the world. Rob most recently came to the attention of the national media because of his suggestion that guns should be securely stored in the rooms of children as a last line of defense in the event of a home invasion.

We talked about a range of issues in this newest installment of We Are Respectable Negroes' podcast series. Rob joined us, quite generously taking time from his busy national touring schedule, to share his insights on the Newtown shooting, the politics of guns and gun culture, his expert insights on the Sean Bell and Amadou Diallo police shootings in New York City, how gun use is depicted in Hollywood films, and how and if school teachers and principles should be armed to prevent mass shootings.

This is a great conversation. I learned a great deal talking to Robert Pincus. I do think that you will as well.

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2:19 How did you end up as a professional expert on shooting and firearms?
4:49 How do random people react to you given your expertise on shooting, self-defense, and personal protection? What does your business card say?
8:03 What is keeping reasonable people from coming together to develop a reasonable set of solutions to America's gun violence problem?
15:15 How do you train new shooters? Is it better to have a "blank slate" regarding gun use if you join the military?
16:58 As someone who trains and works with United States Special Operations personnel, how do those "quiet warriors" feel about the attention they are receiving by Hollywood and the mass media?
18:43 By analogy, are you training Indy car drivers or day-to-day folks who just want to "drive" better? What are the skills you teach people based on their needs and expectations?
22:00 What is your take on the phrase "assault rifle" when gun violence is discussed by the mass public?
25:40 Please share your thoughts on the media's response to your suggestion that guns should be securely stored in children's rooms as a means of responding to a worst case scenario?
30:15 Is the controversy in response to your suggestion just because of emotion and sensationalism? Or is this based on reasonable concerns about domestic gun violence?
34:58 How do you balance personal safety concerns and guns with what is possible versus what is possible?
39:49 Post Newtown, given how hard it is for a trained person to properly engage an armed gunman? Should school personnel be armed?
47:34 What are your thoughts on the militarization of American police departments?
50:20 Sympathetic shooting, police training, and the Sean Bell and Amadou Diallo police shootings
55:35 Consulting for Hollywood films, TV, and depictions of firearm use
57:44 Where can we find you online, your various projects, books, and company?

Ta-Nehisi Coates and Tim Wise on Barack Obama "the Scold-in-Chief" of Black America

Two more quick thoughts on Obama's visit to Morehouse College.

[I tried to work in an only Nixon could go to China and Obama went to Morehouse quip but it didn't work out. Alas.]

More seriously, at the Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates puts in (as usual) some great work on deconstructing the offensiveness at the heart of both Obama's speech at Morehouse and the First Lady's address at Bowie State.

Coates was particularly on point here:

This clearly is a message that only a particular president can offer. Perhaps not the "president of black America," but certainly a president who sees holding African Americans to a standard of individual responsibility as part of his job. This is not a role Barack Obama undertakes with other communities. 

Taking the full measure of the Obama presidency thus far, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that this White House has one way of addressing the social ills that afflict black people -- and particularly black youth -- and another way of addressing everyone else. I would have a hard time imagining the president telling the women of Barnard that "there's no longer room for any excuses" -- as though they were in the business of making them. Barack Obama is, indeed, the president of "all America," but he also is singularly the scold of "black America..." 

But I also think that some day historians will pore over his many speeches to black audiences. They will see a president who sought to hold black people accountable for their communities, but was disdainful of those who looked at him and sought the same. They will match his rhetoric of individual responsibility, with the aggression the administration showed to bail out the banks, and the timidity they showed  in addressing a foreclosure crisis which devastated black America (again.) 

They will weigh the rhetoric against an administration whose efforts against housing segregation have been run of the mill. And they will match the talk of the importance of black fathers with the paradox of a president who smoked marijuana in his youth but continued a drug-war which daily wrecks the lives of black men and their families. In all of this, those historians will see a discomfiting pattern of convenient race-talk.

Taking on another angle, Tim Wise also offers up a great intervention regarding how black folks are worthy of public chastisement, but white folks, elites especially, are never held up to similar standards of personal responsibility:

Needless to say, Barack Obama will never tell white people at a traditionally white college or university to stop blaming affirmative action for every job we didn’t get, or every law school we didn’t get into, though we’ve been known to use both of these excuses on more than a few occasions. 

He won’t tell white graduates at a traditionally white college or university to stop blaming Latino/a immigrants, for “taking our jobs,” which excuse we’ve also been known to float from time to time. 

He would never tell graduates at a mostly white college to stop blaming immigrants, or so-called welfare for our supposedly high tax burdens, even though these remain popular, albeit incorrect, scapegoats for whatever taxes we pay. 

He won’t tell white grads at white colleges to reject the entreaties of their right-wing radio hosts and talking heads, who keep blaming the Community Reinvestment Act and other fair housing laws for the mortgage and larger economic meltdown, even though such things were not to blame. 

In short, to Barack Obama, it is only black people who need lectures about personal responsibility. Onlythey who make excuses when things don’t go their way. Only they who need to be reminded to do their best, because white graduates — like the majority of the grads at Ohio State to whom he also spoke recently — have got all that on lock. Their work ethics are unassailable. They would never make excuses for their failings. They would never blame a 35 percent tax rate, or capital gains taxes, for instance, for causing them to not invest their money, or create jobs. They would never blame gay marriage for threatening their own heterosexual marriage. 

Because white people never make excuses for anything.

And so we get to remain un-lectured, un-stigmatized, un-bothered, and un-burdened with a reminder of our own need to be responsible. We get to remain, in short, privileged and presumed competent, presumed hard-working, presumed responsible, until proven otherwise, while even some of the best and brightest black men in America will start their careers having been weighted down with the realization that even the president, at some level, doesn't really trust them to do the right thing, unless reminded to do so first, and by him.

There is much to unpack there.