I have a confession to make. You see that dude giving the two thumbs up right above this text, that’s me. An Irish/Scottish/Polish/Ukrainian American… to be any whiter I would have to have thrown some Scandinavian in there. Yep, I’m white, it happens. White lady meets white man, they fall in love, white babies pop out. I’m one of those white babies. I’ve lived the majority of my life in the Southeastern United States. Needless to say, race has come up once or twice. In fact sometimes Black people scare me. When they are dressed like Bloods, going on and on about how they are, in fact, Bloods, rolling up on me fifteen deep and demanding I empty my pockets, yes that is scary. Sometimes Latino people scare me, when there are six of them cornering me in the stairwell to my apartment switch-blades drawn, screaming in broken English about how “RS-13 owns this” — which is funny because I wrote a lot of rent checks to that place and none of them were made out to RS-13. Sometimes Asian people scare me, when I’m in the back of an Acura trying to buy an ounce of dro and two of them are arguing in Vietnamese with an Uzi sitting in the console, yes that is scary. Guess what? SOMETIMES WHITE PEOPLE SCARE ME, like when a Ford Ranger full of them decided to chase me and my friends out of the town of Loris, SC at the end of a double-barrel shotgun because one of the 15-year-olds in our group cut in line at the gas station (we were boy scouts returning from a boy scout event) that shit was scary…

What am I getting at? PEOPLE are scary from time to time. That will never change. We are a sadistic and hateful species and we are hell bent on destroying ourselves for no reason other that the need to prove that one set of physical features is “better” than another set of physical features. At least the worst of us are. That being said I can no longer remain silent about the false equivalence and muddying of the waters that I have seen surrounding the Trayvon Martin case. As much as I think that the Constitution is about as obsolete a document as the King James Bible, I still believe that George Zimmerman deserves his day in court. Nonetheless, I’ve seen too much complaining from “conservative” White America, Juan Williams, Herman Cain and other hand-picked Uncle Toms (yeah I said it) about the lack of outrage over black-on-black crime. To that I can do nothing but call bullshit. My own experiences tell me otherwise. I’ve lived– and this is no badge of honor, just a statement of fact– in predominately black neighborhoods before. In fact, one such place, Plantation Creek in Sandy Springs, Georgia had the esteemed honor of having more 911 calls made to the Fulton County Police Department concerning violent crime in 2006 than any other neighborhood in the county. In my time as a resident of Plantation Creek, I had a flier on my door at least twice a week from concerned citizens outraged about the violence (mostly black on black and brown on brown) that was plaguing the community. In addition to that, at least once a month someone knocked on my door and personally invited me to attend a town-hall type meeting concerning how citizens could address that same violence. Add that to the hundreds of neighborhoods just like mine in the metro Atlanta area and then add that the the thousands of communities facing the exact same issues nation-wide and I fail to see where Mr. Williams and Mr. Cain and their fascist Faux News “massas” (yes I said it) find a lack of outrage. Even worse are the fearful crackers (I said it again) out their digging up examples of black on white crime and feebly asking “where is the outrage?” This is the most disturbing part. I expect the spin-doctoring from the corporate elite but average citizens struggling through the same human condition? My head hangs heavy for the state of humanity…
TRUE, white people are sometimes victimized by black people. It’s happened to me, more than once, and probably for the simple fact that I was a white guy in a black neighborhood. The difference? Never are such crimes carried out under the auspices of upholding law and order. Sure, a gang of black men invaded the home of a white Tennessee couple, committed unspeakable sadistic acts against them and murdered them in cold blood. Sure, two black men, one 17 one in his early twenties murdered and robbed a white female UNC student. The latter of these incidents has even been labeled “racial profiling.” I’ll even give you that. Yes, I’m sure a petite blonde twenty-something white woman walking by herself is the target of a certain type of”racial profiling.” The question is by whom? Racial profiling by criminals is a far cry from racial profiling by the authorities (or even worse those who fancy themselves the authorities.) In the previously mentioned cases, all alleged assailants were arrested and are either currently awaiting trial or have been convicted by a jury of their peers. George Zimmerman remains free. So yes, Al Sharpton is a rabble-rouser. I’m sure he relishes in his camera time, but he’s also an outspoken black man in America and has seen first hand the effects of institutionalized racism. Yes, the national media has covered the Trayvon Martin case more extensively than other black-on-black and black-on-white murder cases. The reason being, THERE IS NO NEED TO COVER SUCH CASES!!! I challenge all of you to watch your local news every day for one week and take note of how many of the alleged perpetrators reported on are black or brown. If they aren’t black or brown, I’m willing to bet that they fit the stereotype of “white trash.” That’s because when affluent white people commit crimes an expensive defense attorney–often with personal ties to the judge who presides– carefully navigates the legal system to ensure minimal damage. When a black, brown or poor white person commits a crime they become a mascot for fear-mongering and ratings boosting. All you folks out there who demand more media coverage of black-on-black, brown-on-brown and black/brown-on-white crime, just turn on your TV, you don’t even need cable, it’s there in digital HD at 12pm, 5pm, 7pm and 11pm…

One final point, to those of you who want to elude to the “stand your ground” laws currently in place in Florida, allow me to bring up a case that occurred in Georgia, a state that has a very similar law on the books. It goes like this: A man is leaving a bar in the popular neighborhood of East Atlanta around 2am, he is accosted by an armed assailant who attempts to rob him. The man draws his legally licensed and registered fire arm and shoots the assailant whom later dies. The man is taken into custody and held until trial where he made his case for self-defense and was acquitted. Let’s compare and contrast this case to the Trayvon Martin case. Both involve fatal shootings, both evoked the “stand your ground” self-defense plea. However, in Florida the man who was fatally shot was unarmed where in Georgia the man who was fatally shot brandished a weapon and attempted to rob the shooter. Furthermore in Georgia the shooter was taken into custody, held, stood trial and was acquitted whereas in Florida the shooter was given his gun back and let free. The laws in both states are almost identical in their language– the NRA saw to that– but there is one blaring difference between the cases. The Georgia shooter was black and shot another black man, the Florida shooter was not Black and shot a Black man. The Georgia shooter is a friend of mine and I don’t blame him for his actions, I also believe he SHOULD have been taken into custody and required to make his case in front of a judge. That is all I am asking for George Zimmerman, I can’t speak for others but from what I gather that is all they are asking for as well…