Saturday, June 29, 2013

Yes, George Zimmerman is in Fact a "Creepy Cracker"

[I have received some very kind emails in response to my series of pieces on the George Zimmerman trials and his killing of Trayvon Martin. I have been following this case since the beginning and will continue to offer my thoughts and observations on it through to the duration. 

Those essays here and on the Daily Kos have brought quite a few new readers to We Are Respectable Negroes. As I do during such moments, I inaugurate an informal fundraising drive.


I do not advertise or monetize my work here on WARN. I also choose not to run advertisements or sponsorship because I want to remain independent. Random monies thrown into the tip jar Paypal bucket are however always appreciated. My work here and elsewhere are labors of love. However, I never refuse encouragement.]


****

A trial should be a crucible for the truth. While the legal outcome remains much in doubt, George Zimmerman’s murder trial is a reminder of the semi-permanence of race and the reality of the color line in post civil rights America.

The Zimmerman trial has revealed several truths so far. Young, dark-skinned, black women testifying in court about life and death matters--and who happen to be “working class” or “poor”--are to be savaged and mocked. The myth of the welfare queen lives on; black, female, and “poor” is to be less than a human being. She is most certainly not due the most basic amount of human respect or dignity.

White America is fascinated by black vernacular speech and how people of color talk in private spaces and among ourselves, as opposed to in public spaces or other interactions where we are subjected to the White Gaze.  

The comments on Twitter, other social media, and the Internet at large, have revealed how one’s relationship to the truth is also very much a function of racial attitudes and political orientation.

Zimmerman’s supporters believe that he is a “victim” and black folks are existentially obligated to submit to white people (and those who identity with White Authority) at all times and in every situation. Most of Zimmerman’s supporters do not know about America’s long history of slave passes, white slave patrollers, or Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney’s infamous ruling in the Dred Scott case that black people have no rights that whites are obligated to respect. Yet, they echo such sentiments across time and space with ease.

Trayvon Martin’s advocates see in his killing one more example (among many thousands) where in the United States, black life is deemed to be cheap and expendable; African-Americans are presumed guilty until proven innocent—even while walking down the street and minding their own business.

While ostensibly a means of getting at the truth of what happened that rainy and dark evening, Zimmerman’s trial has also been a spectacle and a carnival sideshow in America’s centuries-long racial theater.

While talking on the phone to his friend Rachel Jaentel, Trayvon Martin apparently called George Zimmerman, the man who followed him in a vehicle, exited it with a gun, and pursued him against police instructions, a “creepy ass cracker.” In a twist of thinking, and an inversion of what studied, learned, and reasonable people understand about the realities of race and power in America, for colorblind conservative racists, George Zimmerman has been magically transformed into a victim of  “reverse racism.”

Such a troubled relationship to the truth would be the stuff of a great comedy sketch if these serious matters did not involve a young person shot dead by a wannabe cop who imagined himself as possessing a license to kill.
  
The truth can also be inconvenient: by virtue of his actions and character, George Zimmerman is in fact a "creepy cracker."


The origins of the word cracker are uncertain. What we do know is that Trayvon’s use of “cracker” drew on a long history of mass racial violence by whites against African-Americans that began with the transatlantic slave trade and the plantation system in the “New World.”

 “Cracker” is evocative of the sound of the whip, wielded by a white overseer or slave owner, as it lashes and tears black flesh. Cracker is a word that embodies white on black racial violence and tyranny.

Cracker is in no way equivalent to the word nigger.

Were millions of white people killed and enslaved by blacks holding the lash and calling them “crackers?” Were there signs that segregated whites from blacks that read “no crackers need apply” or “crackers sit in the back of the bus”? Were white people burned alive, their bodies defiled, postcards taken of their corpses, and public gatherings where blacks killed “crackers” by the thousands? Were there racial pogroms where blacks running amok, pillaging, raping, murdering and destroying property at will, yelled out for the blood of “crackers” in places like Tulsa, East St. Louis, Chicago, and Rosewood? Were there sundown towns that had signs on their outskirts which told "crackers" “not to let the sun set on them here” or they will be killed?

No. To suggest that the words "cracker" and "nigger" are at all similar is an act which is both intellectually dishonest and a lie.

History is rife with cruel coincidences and ironies. For decades, Sanford, Florida was a sundown town. Blacks were not welcome in its city limits. White racism was so potent in Sanford, Florida that Jackie Robinson, the trailblazing hero who broke the color line in baseball, was not allowed to train there.

When Trayvon Martin called George Zimmerman a cracker he was channeling a sense of existential dread and fear of white racial violence. Trayon’s worries were prescient. George Zimmerman would later shoot and kill Trayvon after racially profiling him.

George Zimmerman is also a creep.

George Zimmerman stalked and followed an innocent person on a rainy night.  Strangers with loaded guns following innocent people around in the dark are almost by definition “creepy.” George Zimmerman has been accused of sexually molesting a relative. He has been visited with a restraining order for domestic battery. Zimmerman has also been in fights with the police. On the evening he shot and killed Trayon Martin, he was taking a medication which can cause anxiety, violent impulses, aggression, and hallucinations.

As demonstrated by his many phone calls to the police, George Zimmerman is obsessed with harassing and confronting black people who he feels do not “belong” in his neighborhood. Zimmerman is such an extreme Negrophobe that he has even called the police on a black child who was walking down the street.

The throaty rasps of his call to the police and anger that “fucking punks. those assholes they always get away” was that of an obsessive, one whose exhalations were more suited for a phone sex line than a 911 call. George Zimmerman’s obsession with black people and vigilante-ways were that of a deviant, and yes, a creep.

The efforts by colorblind racists, the White Right, and Zimmerman’s defenders to invert reality so that he is a “victim” of “black racism” in the guise of the word “cracker” is part of a larger social dynamic in the Age of Obama. Recent public opinion research has revealed how white folks now believe that “anti-white” "racism" is a bigger problem than systematic discrimination against people of color in the United States.

Fantasies of white oppression are not just the product of disinformation circulated by the Right-wing media. They do serious political work by legitimating the gutting of the Voting Rights Act and affirmative action, as well as distracting the public from how white racism and white privilege continue to systematically disadvantage people of color to the detriment of the country’s economy.

A yearning for a belief in the lie of “white oppression” also fuels the rise of the militia movement and domestic terrorists who believe that Obama is not a legitimate and democratically elected President. The logic which tries to falsely equate “cracker” and “nigger” is also operative in the Herrenvolk dreams of the Tea Party and the Republican Party’s efforts to resuscitate the Confederacy and Civil War era controversies about secession, nullification, and “states rights”. Ultimately, the lie of “reverse racism” and “white oppression” is a means to rewrite history in order to legitimate White power and dominance.

The simplest definition of racism is that it consists of power plus prejudice. On the night when George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin, it was Zimmerman with both the power of the gun and who prejudged an innocent person walking down the street by virtue of their skin color as a threat.

Such behavior has been the modus operandi and habit of “creepy ass crackers” in the United States for centuries.

82 comments:

Jess said...

George Zimmerman is some Latino

Cathy Browning said...

SO ? What is your point ?

Cathy Browning said...

Outstanding article. Thank you

Chauncey DeVega

Vonmiwi Culvera said...

I care not of what racist Caucasians think because they will think whatever it is regardless of ones education or economic level.


What angered me most was the superiority complex and condescending attitudes from certain black folks who had the audacity to publicly demonize Miss Jeantel because she did not measure up to their false idea of the perfect black woman.


I've sat on many courts-martial's in my career and I've seen this same action played out before, so she conducted herself in the way that they thought was best even when he tried to "trip her up" and wanted her to become angry.


Some of us know the game all too well while the rest are still searching and begging for acceptance from them. It's a sad day in reality when the ancestors of Africans throughout the world don't see their common bond all because of our differences.

cyndi lagasse said...

Great article. I am a white person that feels that Zimmerman was wrong. There are hopefully many more white people that agree with me.
I loved the paragraph replacing N...r with Cracker!! Sadly though.....the racists among us still won't get it.

kstephens8 said...

REALLY??

kstephens8 said...

'White racism' is redundant Blacks have never had power and privelege in America. Race-ism has always been a system to bestow privilege to those with white skin.

kstephens8 said...

'White racism' is redundant. Blacks have never had power and privelege in America. Race-ism has always been a system to bestow privilege to those with white skin.

kstephens8 said...

+
Delete
Flag as inappropriate
see moreFacebook
Link

kstephens8 said...

'White racism' is redundant. Blacks have never had power and privilege in America. Race-ism has always been a system to bestow privilege to those with white skin.

Learning is Eternal said...

Any caucanderthal, melanin deficient, pale horse riding, albinoid asking how/why they can say "it" but we cannot... Ask they racist ass "Why you in such a rush to say 'it'?" Mr. De Vega, I would like your honest thoughts as to the outcome/verdict as well as the aftermath.

chauncey devega said...

We try. Thank you. I posted this early. We shall see how it circulates on Monday.

chauncey devega said...

Do share. What was the dynamic like on those court martial's you witnessed. I thought she did well under very difficult conditions.

chauncey devega said...

Only as good as the folks who read it. Do share. Thank you.

chauncey devega said...

White privilege is exemplified by complaints about not being able to say the word nigger.


Absurd but real.


I don't lose sleep over not using derogatory language to talk about gay and lesbian folks. Then again, I am do not have the hubris of white privilege and white supremacy in my psyche.


Predictions? Zimmerman walks. Look at the jury and the narrative around the case. Not hard to predict.

chauncey devega said...

Confused. Please explain.

John Kurman said...

My understanding is cracker goes back to cattle herders from Georgia invading Florida, who cracked the bullwhip, and has more to do with the Seminole Wars, forced expulsion of said indigenous peoples by that giant puckering asshole, Andrew Jackson, than chattel slavery. My online dictionary suggests that the term is used to identify people from Georgia or Florida, so a case can be made that Zimmerman was being described as a creepy ass Floridian.

Shan said...

You are absolutely correct that comparing "cracker" and "nigger" is intellectually dishonest and a lie. Anyone who can call Martin a racist for referring to Zimmerman as a "creepy ass cracker" is willfully ignoring centuries of history. Paula Deen comes to mind at the moment, and her "what's the big deal, my black friends use the n-word all the time" apologists. Now, if only John McCain's career would have taken as big a hit after his "I hate the gooks" comment and after it got out during the 2008 campaign that he called his wife Cindy a cunt. In front of 3 reporters...who didn't report it.

The Sanity Inspector said...

I hope all the facts come out, during this trial. Whether one views the case through the lens of contemporary black male dysfunction or the Four Hundred Years Of Oppression, all must hope that the facts come out. Unhyphenated justice requires as much.

chauncey devega said...

Context? History? Are you mad sir! Paula Deen, like Zimmerman, is a hero for white victimologists and conservatives. She will come out of this stronger not weaker.

chauncey devega said...

In a perfect world, that would happen. In this world? Zimmerman is going to walk.

Shan said...

Funny how the apologists CAN be aware of both history and context, but only selectively when it suits their agenda. They gave McCain a pass on the "gooks" comment because he was a POW just the same as some of them give Deen a pass because she's a "Southern lady." Her sniveling "poor me" non-apology on Today totally disgusted me, so I hope you're wrong about her coming out stronger, Mr. DeVega, especially after I read this today:

http://www.blacklegalissues.com/Article_Details.ASPX?ARTCLID=7dfdbe0461&cat=Legal

I also hope you're wrong about the outcome of Zimmerman's trial. I continue to have some hope there will be justice for Martin, perhaps because I WANT to have that hope for humanity. But that hope's not based on my life experience which, as a middle-aged white woman, is likely quite different from yours. Differences aside, I still reject the arguments of the "white victimologists" as you so aptly name them. They ring as false to me as the arguments of victim-blaming rape apologists.

beulahmo said...

I thought she did amazingly well too and I can't believe people who watched could have anything but sympathy for this child (yes, she is still just a CHILD!) who endured the questioning despite the racist hostility.

chauncey devega said...

The rape analogy is powerful. In the longer version of this I discussed it. Martin is being put on trial like a rape victim where she/he is forced to talk about her character and all manner of unrelated matters for the voyeuristic pleasures of those empowered and privileged. I will check out that link. Thanks for the tip!

beulahmo said...

Please God no. Really?

Lewis Orne said...

this is interesting.. origin of the "Florida cracker" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_cracker

physioproffe said...

That motherfucker is the fucken paradigm of the creepy asse cracker.

Elly said...

I wish that I could disagree with your prediction that Zimmerman will walk, but I can't. This - http://whitepeoplemadatfoodnetwork.tumblr.com/ - is just one small data point that illustrates how "normal" white cluelessness, willful ignorance and petty resentment really is.

Miles_Ellison said...

What angered me most was the superiority complex and condescending
attitudes from certain black folks who had the audacity to publicly
demonize Miss Jeantel because she did not measure up to their false idea
of the perfect black woman.


The irony is that many of those same black folks are enablers of exactly the image of black women that they criticized Miss Jeantel for representing.

Stephanie mayo said...

I can't get the article to share on Twitter for some reason. Does it not work well on mobile?

Grung_e_Gene said...

Aw, come on! All he did was kill someone!

Elly said...

OMG... http://globalgrind.com/news/george-zimmermans-attorney-don-west-selfie-daughters-instagram-photo

I need some brain bleach after seeing that photo. The casual cruelty sickens me.

While Molly West appears to be over 18, and is thus responsible for her words/actions, Don West's response indicates the apple didn't fall very far from the tree. Disgusting.

Shan said...

"White privilege is exemplified by complaints about not being able to say the word nigger."

I don't even understand why a white person would want to use the word. I grew up with that word representing as much hate and violence toward black people as the word "cunt" represents hate and violence toward women. At one point in my life, I tried to think of re-claiming the c-word and using it as casually as I've heard black people use the n-word to defuse the power of it, but I just couldn't do it in the end. I can't use either word. There's too much hate attached to both.

! said...

NAILED IT. The second I heard Ms. Jeantel utter the words "creepy cracker" I knew how accurate it was. I wish I could take her aside and say, "Never apologize for quoting your friend as he described the man who killed him." But is the jury ready to hear and understand about Zimmerman? Or will they get hung up on the "racial slur"* of "cracker"?




*FELLOW WHITES, GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK

Shan said...

Let's not get lost in the details. The etymology of the word "cunt" is pretty much lost in history, too, but I don't think anybody today pretends to be confused about what it means to call or be called one the way they play stupid about the n-word. Cracker doesn't carry even the remotely the same connotation.

Shan said...

Some of us understand. Hopefully, they're among the jury.

SabrinaBee said...

Normally, I want our kids to put on a better image. I wonder if that is just my own conditioning or age creeping up on me? In this case, it looks like Trayvon called them like he saw them. And that night what he saw was a "CAC"

SabrinaBee said...

Besides, I really don't believe it went to a racial thought with Trayvon because, he also said "that nigga is still following me." He didn't differentiate between the use of the terms.


As for Racheal, I have to admits the first day, the mother in me was not happy with the behavior. I wasn't. By the end of that day, when it became apparent that West wanted to make a parody out of her, I was rooting for her. I understand now that any teen having waited around all day to testify, only to have some "cac" ask her the same thing over and over, just in different ways, is going t be testy. Then, he pettily promises to bring her back for more of the same the next day, simply to set her off.



The child, being a child of immigrants is, most likely not used to the court system, or the proper protocols of addressing the court. She had probably been told repeatedly to "relax," "just be yourself," "go in and say what you heard and you'll be fine." I wonder, if anyone told her that the defense is going to do everything they can to rattle you, to get you to change your story, to mock you, to try to discredit you. That whatever you do, you must not let them get you upset, or allow them to shake you.


In the end though, she came off as genuine. She told the truth of what she heard that night, did not deviate majorly. And to me it was west who looked like the "cac;"

skilletblonde said...

In 1982 there was an African American man named William B. Jackson that was featured on 60 Minutes. He had been released from prison after being confined for 5 years for being wrongfully convicted on numerous rapes. The real rapist turned out to be a prominent African American doctor named Dr. Edward Jackson. At that time I had a position at a bank that required me to be in court everyday. The Monday after the 60 Minutes report, I was sitting in Common Pleas Court waiting for the the 9:00 A.M. docket to begin.

There was a prosecutor, 2 deputy sheriffs, and a defense attorney discussing the 60 minutes segment. You would think their conversation would have been about the injustice Mr. Jackson had suffered. After all, while enduring the torment of wrongful incarceration, he was also stabbed. Instead the men, all white, were trying to justify the wrongful imprisonment. They were declaring such things as "that woman who appeared with him was not his real wife, she was his common law wife, and, he had been in a robbery before." At no time did they express an inkling of sorrow or empathy for what Mr. Jackson had survived.

This is what black life is like in the American Judicial System.. Essentially, you are viewed as unworthy of justice, because you have no humanity. You are an aberration, a blemish on true humanity. Justice! Ha!
This is exactly what the Trayvon Martin and his parents are experiencing, right now... a discounting of their loved one's life. The law and the media had to be dragged kicking and screaming to acknowledge the crime. Now we will have to listen while a racist judicial system, and a sociopathic defense attorney, and a disgusting media, eviscerate the life of a 17 year-old. Then of course, after the decimation is over, it will be left to an all white jury, to determine if Trayvon was enough of a human being to hold his killer accountable. I'm not feeling optimistic.

chauncey devega said...

Don't know. Me the luddite will have to see what is going on.

chauncey devega said...

you racist! stop that!

chauncey devega said...

tomorrow at 12pm central got something on that too.

Maike Hudson said...

The only thing that "cracker" and the n-word have in common is that they reduce a person to a stereotype, which is why I don't like either.

John Kurman said...

Let me summarize the details as I see them. A creepy-ass cracker, an inept, chubby buffoon of a Barney-Fife-wannabe, gets his soft, watery buttocks handed to him by a child - after needlessly provoking the confrontation - and then, rather than take his lumps like a man, chooses to resolve the situation through use of a coward's weapon. Because of his description as a "creepy-ass cracker" other tiny waterbrains claim affront at what is - as Louis CK pointed out - only a mildly offensive disparagement, to most white people, if even that, and use this as some sort of ludicrous comparison of a Newtonian (equal-but-opposite) racism, and therefore provides some sort of justification for the murder of the child. In other words, they attempt to trivialize and marginalize a child's murder with this fucking ridiculous red herring. I, in turn, in an attempt at humor and granted I am no Louis CK, chose to heap scorn and ridicule upon this wet little bolus of a notion. Would those be the details I'm getting lost in?

Pita2 said...

I'm white. I'm over 65. Raised in the borderline South, but no less affected by the racism that I'd like to think my generation tried very hard to eliminate. I watched Ms. Jeantel testify the second day. Her voice soft, almost unable to hear her at times, she seemed almost embarrassed at first of her command of the language. I kept thinking that perhaps she was coached to be polite to a fault because she was. I don't know that I would have been able to contain my revulsion at the defense attorney's condescending attitude toward her as she did. His lack of any attempt to help or explain her multinational background until well into the questioning, and then, it seemed as if the explanation he gave was more to make her look more unable to understand or explain her own observations and motives. I cannot imagine being in her position at her age and maintaining the steely demeanor that she did. Not even now, at my advanced age. I live in South Florida where we have large communities from many different areas of the world, including Haiti, Cuba, South America, the Islands, Central America, Canada, Europe, Asia, Middle East, and others. Many of them are mixed. As a hillbilly from a small town, I have been blessed to meet and experience these cultures. English isn't her first language - It is her third language, and for anyone to put down someone who is tri-lingual and barely has an accent who can comprehend and testify under those circumstances is totally uncalled for. I wonder how many languages that attorney speaks? She did her best, and I applaud her for it. I long for the day that people can describe themselves and others can describe them without having to use your race - "We are respectable Negroes" being replaced with "We are respectable people". Respectable is the key word here! Not your race. I hope I live to see the day it is no longer a qualifier!

Zsusa Hortoninski said...

I agree with your essay and I hope that our nation will stop the hate NOW.

Pjs8200 said...

As a white man, I am embarrassed at the level of racism that still runs rampant in this country. Maybe I'm more sensitive to it since moving to Tennessee. I don't understand why we're digressing as a nation instead of progressing?

Wavenstein said...

haha, u sound like one of the good folks who frequent the diary of a negress blog

Mac McComas said...

I read this article http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/07/01/197644761/word-watch-on-crackers?utm_source=NPR&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=20130701 on NPR with some anthropologist claiming that the first people who were called "crackers" were political refugees from Ireland (Scotch-Irish.) As someone who has studied British immigration to America for 5 years of my academic life I quickly noticed this false statement and thought that it was ridiculous that someone was attempting to claim that this "slur" was perpetrated on political refugees, when in fact they decided to emigrate of their own free will. How we twist history for our own purposes.

chauncey devega said...

Don't be embarrassed that is the cousin of unproductive and narcissistic "white guilt." Instead speak truth to power, do right, and keep your eyes open for working silently when necessary to create change from your own position of relative privilege as someone white and male. Be a change agent.

chauncey devega said...

Thanks for sharing that, Will listen in.

Pjs8200 said...

Maybe I should have worded that differently. As a member of the LGBT community I am extremely verbal in regards equal rights for EVERYONE. I don't suffer from "white guilt", just the embarrassment of fellow human beings disrespecting, demonizing or denigrating another for nothing more than skin pigmentation or perceived sexual orientation. The majority of people I've worked with over the past 11 years have been black, I have a ton of black girlfriends that I love dearly as well as one special lady in her late 60's who's claimed me as one of her kids and I call her Mom. I am constantly appalled at the things they have to deal with in the year 2013. It literally makes me sick to my stomach to hear pure ignorance and bigotry uttered towards another human being.

Contingent Cassandra said...

Yes, I think I've read that he has Latino heritage. But/and (aside from the fact that "Latino" is a linguistic category, even if it tends to function as a racial one in the contemporary US), he has clearly embraced an identity based in the perspectives of white, middle-class privilege, apparently to a pathological (that's the "creepy" part, which seems to be getting lost in the discussion about "cracker") and, sadly, deadly degree.

Pam said...

Many people in Florida (white) refer to themselves as crackers, their definition is the cattle herders of central Florida used whips that made a distinct crack when herding cattle. A term that would be used to define these folks in other parts of the country is redneck or hillbilly.



However, as a white grandmother I can tell you that I warn my grandsons to be careful of men who would follow them. I imagine that Mr. Martin received the same warnings from his parents. I believe that Mr. Zimmerman was creepy and scary - a grown man - following a boy in the dark, rain, strange community. I would be scared if I was followed. Mr. Zimmerman should have stayed in his vehicle, and he should have known the name of the street he was on - there are only three in that gated community - where he lived for there years.

Shan said...

Apparently my "taking words literally" side is a lot stronger than my "interpreting humor" one, especially with strangers.

Shan said...

"Don't be embarrassed that is the cousin of unproductive and narcissistic "white guilt."

Excellent way to put that.

chauncey devega said...

I hear you and appreciate your comments. I just always try to reinforce the dangers of white guilt whenever I sense good folks going there. Sometimes I get it wrong too.


Glad you are commenting.

Pjs8200 said...

To illustrate your point, I have a vanity plate on my car that says simply CRKABOX. Obviously it's a play on words and I've had quite a few blacks tell that they appreciate the humor. The same could not be said for the opposite.

Steve Davis said...

She wasn't being mocked for being working class and black. She was being mocked because she was clearly dumb as a brick.

Dan Lee Uhl said...

Examine your own reasons for thinking so. If you're intellectually honest.

PopeJohn24 said...

Let's say Zimmerman walks. What then? Does the community react with a shrug and a "Meh?" Or does the community rise up in righteous anger at the government and court which allowed it to happen? Somebody elected the assholes who installed these people and the judicial system. I am hoping for and predicting a long, hot summer in Florida, as the well-deserved chickens come home to roost!

Plisko said...

Many white people have never thought twice about the meaning of "cracker." Most, without much effort, probably assume, like people I know have, that cracker means white like a cracker. . . kind of like "white bread" so it fits the framework they want to give it as a "reverse racist" term.


As soon as any honest minded person finds out the real origin, it changes the whole meaning behind the use of the word.


Indifference and/or uncritical acceptance of people's misuses of language creates just as many problems as lies and intellectual dishonesty.

Larry Fleisher said...

as a non racist caucasian. george is a creepy cracker and jeantel is a very bright young lady considering that english is her third language and she is an immigrant to our country

pat greeley said...

agreed larry, i thought Ms. Jeantel telling that asshole lawyer, "that's retarded" was spot on...

Bugboy said...

Yes, how ironic that this tragedy should occur in Sanford, Florida, of all places?


But I disagree that Zimmerman's supporters are unaware of America's long storied history of civil rights violence. They are willfully ignorant if anything. All the flying of confederate flags and the antebellum mentality exhibited (think Paula Deen) in this country speaks of wishful thinking and "good ole' days" fantasies. As we all know, there is no such thing as the "good ole' days".


It's revealing that he was on meds as well, which may be a large part of what ails America. I'm kind of surprised the defense isn't playing that angle up.


We are most certainly over medicated, as a biologist I've followed reports of how things like Prozac are actually passing through our sewage systems and effecting wildlife adversely.

Skeptonomist Habilis said...

"Cracker" originally meant a Georgia farmer, somewhat similar to "redneck", not really a racial term, though usually applied to whites. The Atlanta entry in the Negro Baseball League was known for a time as the Black Crackers. Later both terms took on more explicitly racial connotations.

Derek Voorhees said...

Lewis Carroll would be in awe of a plot device that turned such haters into victims. It's an all too common theme among right wingers these days that to be held to account for exclusionary and otherwise socially repugnant behaviors is a form of discrimination in itself. To me it says, "I know my behavior is not defensible socially, so I will whine like a little punk, and hope that it will win me some support among the like-minded.".

Jbuuty said...

This is an excellent article: good job!

Wolfenotes said...

Yes, as a middle aged cracker, I attempted to make similar arguments to a few 20 somethings I know - that racism requires the racist to possess power and ability to repress and control institutions and systems and must be historically defined by the US racist past - but was told that was old stuff and that racism has been redefined by young folks.


Could this have something to do with the post ideological and post racial Neoliberal in the "White"house?

jjpm said...

They're called BIGOTS! She did a great job, showing up for day 2 in a different mindset, made her all the more credible.

DonnaLee said...

You are kind of on to something with the rape analogy here, since I could not put my finger on exactly what it was which bothered me about her testimony.

Lilredhead said...

White privilege is something that a lot of Caucasian people refuse to believe exists. It does exists, and it has made life for other races in this country horrible. Attitudes must change, and people need to open their minds and their hearts to the beauty of the diversity of people in this Country. There is so much we can teach one another if we would just drop the taught attitudes of racism. Racism is taught, we are not born with it.

hepette said...

you are dumb as a brick for even posting that bs

JamesMMartin said...

You know what, Zimmerman is the tip of the iceberg. Half of the U. S. House is made up of creepy crackers. Mitch McComical is a creepy cracker and 90% of the Tea Party. Marco Rubio is a creepy cracker with Cuban roots. Ditto Ted Cruz, only with Mexican roots. Entire states are made up of creepy crackers, e.g. Alabama and Mississippi, with the exception of some progressive Demos and African-Americans themselves. To condemn Trayvon for calling Zimmerman a creepy cracker is like saying saltines are made of white flour and some leavening and a bit of salt. So what? If calling people creepy crackers makes a person racist, I plead guilty since I've called people like that other George (Wallace) creepy crackers since the mid-Sixties.

John Kurman said...

Don't sweat it. Outside of smoke signals or the telegraph, the internet is the worst communication medium ever.

la-A said...

sorry negro, cracker is racist. Sorry. Also George is not white, sorry that your black friend got killed. Too bad he was given a pass on everything including starting a race riot. This is not about race. It is about an attempted murder of zimmerman and zimmerman turning it around and killing in self defense.

George Balas said...

FUCK YOU NIGGER!!!!!!!!!!!!

Kara said...

I can't believe how these colorblind racists think! I am white, upper-middle class, and am just disgusted by most white people I know when it comes to this issue. Why do white people think racism isn't a problem anymore, and if it is, it's a problem of racism against whites? I just don't get it. And if anyone ever suggests that their viewpoint is racist by way of colorblind racism, an anger erupts from them as if they have been insulted to the upmost degree! What is that? I believe that seething underneath the surface of these honkies is a true racism towards black people. Honest to God. I truly think they resent black people for ever complaining about the power imbalance in this country in the first place, and the fact that it is changing (too slowly). They resent affirmative action and any perceived reverse discrimination. They just don't get it, and they really, in all honesty, don't want to be bothered with it. Oh, and one more thing: Jeantel was perfectly understood by me when she talked. I think it's so racist and shitty the way both sides basically put her down in closing. I thought she was believable, honest, emotional, and talked like any other teenager! I understood what she was saying and the damn court reporter didn't. That's pathetic. What was so weird about her speaking? I just don't know. Also, I haven't written in cursive since the 5th grade, so I can't write in it anymore probably. And? What does that make me?

Kara said...

Zimmerman isn't even white by the way. And I think he might have said a very bad c-word on that 911 tape instead of "punks" but there's no way to know that. Either way, he was racial profiling that poor kid. I am so mad about this case, but even more so about the way the state and all of society is brushing off major issues. One being that this case IS about race. In a lot of ways it is. I don't know how to say exactly what I need to say but I feel even the prosecutors weren't passionate enough and neither were the police. I feel it would have been investigated differently if the victim had been white.

chauncey devega said...

You can't help them. Best to avoid them. Maintain your sanity. Follow the golden rule in life. When you look into the mouth of madness you become mad. The white racial frame works much the same way.

Henry Smallwood said...

Cracker is a stereotype, intended to dismiss "those people (assumed white, ignorant and racist)," without having to deal with them as individuals. In the Zimmerman case, prosecutors never showed evidence that he was doing anything other than walking back to his vehicle when Trayvon Martin sucker-punched him to the ground, then bashed Zimmerman's head against the sidewalk. The jury found that a reasonable person in that situation would have feared for his life and did what he was forced to do to keep from being killed. Perhaps in Zimmerman's place you would have let Martin murder or maim you, but I doubt race would have influenced your decision. If George had been able to accept that Trayvon had "gotten away," and if Trayvon did not feel obliged to attack a man over being "disrespected," then one person would have his old life back and the other would have lived past seventeen. Damn, it's heartbreaking, but it's not the culmination of five centuries of African history in North America.

The Realists said...

So now that all of you negroes had your chance to opine about the misery that poor welfare wench "endured" I suppose we can all agree that she looked like the trash she IS in front of the world that actually THINKS instead of blaming. Yes?