Friday, July 19, 2013

Barack Obama, Black President, Has Finally Entered the Room: What if Trayvon Martin Had a Gun and Stood His Ground?

President Obama has spoken less about race than any other President in recent memory. Today's surprise speech on the Trayvon Martin case is a payment on that gross neglect against the debit on his account as the country's first black president.

Perhaps, President Obama just saw a private screening of the new Wolverine movie and felt especially heroic. Or maybe he simply woke up and realized that yes, he is President of the United States of America and has an obligation to speak on the national injustice that was George Zimmerman's acquittal. Obama is also a very smart man, one who is mindful of his historic legacy; history would not judge him kindly if he stood mute on the post civil rights equivalent of the Emmett Till case.

The divided response to Obama's speech will reveal what we already know. Black folks and others will be happy that for a few moments their shining black prince and superhero had arrived. The change we voted for was speaking to the White House press corps and the nation at large. Conservatives and the White Right will respond to Obama as though a leprechaun showed up at their private dinner party, took a crap on the floor, smiled at them, and then promptly exited the room without comment. Disbelief and rage.

For the Tea Party GOP, the very fact that a black man and his family are in the White House as something other than janitors or maids is unacceptable. Conservatives will rage against Obama's suggestion that he could have been Trayvon Martin and that the dead teenager could have also stood his ground against a stalking, vigilante, wannabe cop named George Zimmerman, the man who killed him in cold blood that rainy evening in Florida. The Obama derangement syndrome and mania of racism that has possessed the country's de facto White Political Party are a tired script which the White Right cannot escape.

Will Obama's speech on the Trayvon Martin verdict be all sound and fury signifying nothing? One more moment in the symbolic politics of the country's first black president which will ultimately not result in any structural or institutional challenge to white supremacy? The answer will most certainly be "yes". But, that does not mean that a little warmth, and a smile from the glow of the fantasy of what a Black President could have been--the brother who just spoke to the nation a few moments ago--is not appropriate and welcome.


10 comments:

Miles_Ellison said...

Right after Obama's speech, there was some right wing crackpot on the radio screaming about how Obama never could have been Trayvon Martin because he's President and taxpayers spend billions of dollars for him to travel to Africa. Of course that was not even in the same solar system as the point Obama was actually making. The problem here is that Obama is speaking a language that people either can't or refuse to understand.

Ta-Nehesi Coates sums up the essence of the Trayvon Martin verdict:

When you have a society that takes at its founding the hatred and degradation of a people, when that society inscribes that degradation in its most hallowed document, and continues to inscribe hatred in its
laws and policies, it is fantastic to believe that its citizens will derive no ill messaging.



It is painful to say this: Trayvon Martin is not a miscarriage of American justice, but American justice itself. This is not our system malfunctioning. It is our system working as intended. To expect our juries, our schools, our police to single-handedly correct for this, is to look at the final play in the final minute of the final quarter and wonder why we couldn't come back
from twenty-four down.

To paraphrase a great man: We are what our record says we are. How can we sensibly expect different?



No matter what any black person, even one who is President of the United States, says about tragedies like this, it will never be understood, comprehended, or empathized with. In a society that wasn't racist, the injustice of this tragedy would be universally understood and dealt with appropriately. But in the current reality that is the United States, black people have no right to life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness that white people are bound to respect. Speeches won't change that.

Shady Grady said...

This is great writing Chauncey. We linked to it.

"The divided response to Obama's speech will reveal what we already know. Black folks and others will be happy that for a few moments their shining black prince and superhero had arrived. The change we voted for was speaking to the White House press corps and the nation at large. Conservatives and the White Right will respond to Obama as though a leprechaun showed up at their private dinner party, took a crap on the floor, smiled at them, and then promptly exited the room without comment. Disbelief and rage."



My thoughts are that this might be a palliative because federal charges will be difficult to bring but time will tell.

chauncey devega said...

How kind. Appreciated. No federal charges. I am still mulling over what he said. Next week I will look at the actual text which is very important as he pulled one of his throw a bone to the post civil rights colorblind conservative moments in the speech as well. I tell folks, if you want to be serious about understanding political discourse look at the performance, its context, and how it was delivered and received. Then go to the text. The latter almost always tells you something very, very important.

chauncey devega said...

I was gonna write something similar to Coates but decided not to. He said everything necessary.

The Janitor said...

Today's surprise speech on the Trayvon Martin case is a payment on that gross neglect against the debit on his account as the country's first black president.


LOL!!! Good one. I liked how you put that.


The crazy part is, as little as he does speak about race, if you let the Fox News crowd tell it, everything he does is about race and race-baiting. The man can't win for losing.


But that aside, the point that stood out to me the most is in how he revealed the hypocrisy of the entire pro-Zimmerman crowd who have been beating the rest of us over the head for the past week about Zimmerman's absolute right to protect himself with a gun. How many times did Juror B37 say that? "He had a right to defend himself."


But when you flip the script and give the black guy the gun then it does something. It makes that same pro-2nd Amendment crowd take a pause and think for a minute b/c that's not who they had in mind when they talk about gun rights. It's the same kind of pause they give when their daughter brings her boyfriend home to the family dinner for the first time and they discover that he's black.


Expecting somebody else, were you?


You see, to them, it's only about "gun rights" if it the gun is in the hands of an honest god-fearing White person. They are the only people who should have that right. Once you start giving guns to Black folk...well...you guys saw what happened to the Black Panthers in Cali during the 70's.


It's a 2-way street folks. If Zimmerman had a right to defend himself then Martin damn sure had that same right.

The Janitor said...

This is not our system malfunctioning. It is our system working as intended.


I said the same thing right after the verdict. The true tragedy of this case is that the system in Florida worked exactly how it was supposed to work.

Miles_Ellison said...

That's a not-so-subtle point that often gets missed in cases like these.

Lewis Orne said...

Usul Devega, we are going to see a fox news/crazed racist white american response the likes of which god has never seen...

10 points to those who know where I paraphrased that comment from.. haha

Michael Varian Daly said...

Making the rounds: http://nebris.tumblr.com/post/55979466880/i-am-trayvon-martin-the-picture-on-the-left

chauncey devega said...

Goodness. So much on that site to titillate the senses and surprise the eyes.. Good stuff. You should circulate your piece to some bigger sites. I am sure one will bite. Very effective.