7/28/2019 A post-racial U.S.? Killing & demonizing Trayvon Martin shatter the myth

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Continued on the other sid

workers.org July 9, 2013

A post-racial U.S.?

Killing and demonizing Trayvon Martinshatter the mythBy Monica Moorehead

When Barack Obama became the rstArican American to be elected president othe United States in 2008, many bourgeoispundits proclaimed that the U.S. could -nally move toward becoming a post-racialsociety. Tis notion was reinorced whenObama was reelected in 2012.

A post-racial society would indicate thatthe capitalist U.S. is no longer ruled by insti-tutionalized or structural racism, in whichwhite supremacist policies and attitudes arepropagated by the super-rich and through

various arms o state repression imposedon the masses.

Has the U.S. really become a more equalsociety based on racial harmony? Haventthe justications or the recent setbacksin voting rights and armative action im-posed by the U.S. Supreme Court attempted

to present this more equal society as actrather than ction? Can the election o oneBlack man to the seemingly most powerulpolitical position in the imperialist worldwipe away, in ve years, hundreds o years oinequality, oppression and genocide againstwhole nations?

Well, i you were to ask an Indigenousperson barely subsisting on a reservation inthe Southwest, an undocumented workerrom Latin America or Arica acing depor-tation, or an Arican-American in the ruralSouth or Harlem, nine times out o ten the

answer would be an emphatic No. Manywomen and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgen-der and queer people would answer that the

very existence o sexism and homophobiahas assured they dont eel equal as well.

Higher rates of worseningconditions for people of color

In truth, acts and statistics point out thatconditions or people o color have only got-ten worse, not better, since Obama took oce.

Disproportionately, people o color acehigher rates o unemployment and under-

employment, espe-cially or youth, andworse educational op-portunities, housingand health care dueto deepening globalausterity.

One o the starkestindicators o the al-

lacy o a post-racial U.S. is the prison popu-lation. Te U.S. has both the worlds largestprison population and the highest percent-age o prisoners. Tere are about 2.3 millionpeople in U.S. prisons and jails. A 2010 U.S.Census Bureau report states the number in-carcerated, per 100,000 o each groups over-all population, are 380 white, 966 Latino and2,207 Black. (prisonpolicy.org)

And these numbers do not include or-mer prisoners who are either on probationor on parole close to 5 million beyondthose already behind bars, mainly or minor

drug oenses and or being poor.Te racial proling o youth o color, par-

ticularly Black and Latino youth, by policehas reached epidemic proportions. In NewYork City alone in 2012, over 530,000 peoplewere proled by police. Some 55 percent wereBlack, 32 percent were Latino/a and 10 per-cent white. (New York Civil Liberties Union)

Te Malcolm X Grassroots Movementpublished a 2012 report on the Extraju-dicial Killing o Black People by Police,Security Guards and Sel-Appointed LawEnorcers. It showed that during the rst

six months o 2012, a Black youth was killeby police or vigilantes every 36 hours in thUnited States.

Trayvon Martin & Zimmerman trial

One o those mentioned in this reporwas rayvon Martin, who was stalked anthen shot to death by George Zimmermaon Feb. 26, 2012, in a gated community iSanord, Fla. Zimmerman is currently otrial acing second-degree murder chargeor atally shooting the unarmed, 17-yearold Arican American.

Te tragic shooting o Martin and the tral o Zimmerman are not isolated developments. Te trial should be viewed politicallwithin the context o a general indictmeno the genocidal policy o targeting youth ocolor. In so many ways, however, this is being countered by the trial proceedings.

A New York imes article, Zimmermacase has race as a backdrop, but you wonhear it in court, states: Te judge made clear that statements about race would bsharply limited and the term racial pro

Zimmerman has

a sordid history

o profling Black

youth as young

as 10 years old.

Racial profling

is the main issue.

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WORKERS WORLD EDITORIALContinued from the other side

ing not allowed. (July 7) Te act is,however, that Zimmerman has a sordidhistory o proling Black youth as youngas 10 years old. Racial proling is themain issue.

Part o Zimmermans deense teamstrategy is to turn everything upside

down and make it appear that Martin,the victim, racially proled Zimmerman,and not the other way around. Tey wantto convince the jurors that Martin wasthe aggressor and had no right to deendhimsel against an armed vigilante. oxi-cology tests on Martin at the time o hisdeath are being introduced by the deenseas alleged evidence that marijuana wasound in his blood again in an eort toaccuse the teenager o being the aggressor.

Like so many other trials, whats hap-pening in Florida is demonizing the vic-

tim. Tis is a standard tactic when theperson killed or injured is rom an op-pressed nationality, is poor and workingclass, while the perpetrator is a police o-cer or a racist vigilante. Tis kind o un-equal relationship reects class divisionsbased on deep-seated racism.

Te entire movement should be pre-pared to respond in the streets withrighteous anger i the jury o six women,none o them Arican American, setsZimmerman ree to threaten more youtho color.

o say that a post-racial society can beachieved now under capitalism, no mat-ter who sits in the White House, is an il-lusion. Te capitalist class needs racismand all orms o inequality and bigotryto divide and conquer the multinationalworking class in order to maintain its po-litical and economic hegemony, here andworldwide. Only unity and solidarity canwin justice or the rayvon Martins and eventually replace capitalism itsel,root and branch, with a socialist society

based on ull equality and cooperationor all nationalities.

Standing up to racist courts

In the pre-Civil War era, courts in the U.S.

regularly gave legal cover to slave catchers

to search across the countryside or runaway

slaves in order to return them in chains to

ace torture, rape and murder. Afer aboli-

tion, Black people were convicted o petty or

nonexistent crimes to create chain gangs as

a legal source o slave labor, particularly in

the South.

Courts were not used to prosecute lynch

mobs and Klan murderers. Tey in act acted

to give them legal authority afer the act.

What about today? Te huge number o

oppressed people behind bars shows that the

courts are just a transit point to ll the prisons

with Arican-American and Latino/a youth.And even when a huge public campaign

orces the killer o a Black teenager to be tried,

the courts do not lose their racist character.

In the Florida trial o George Zimmer-

man, rayvon Martins killer, there is not one

Arican American on the jury.

Nevertheless, brave individuals will dare

to stand up and speak the truth, even in this

den o injustice. For two days, Rachel Jeantel,

a high school senior and longtime riend o

Martin, testied at Zimmermans trial. For

hour afer hour, she stood up to a witheringcross-examination by Zimmermans lawyer

that was clearly designed to put both Martin

and her on trial.

On the night o Feb. 26, 2012, Jeantel was

on her cell phone talking with unarmed

Martin as he walked to his athers home. He

realized he was being stalked by Zimmerman.

Jeantel told the court o Martins growing ear.

She described how momentarily he thought

he had lost his pursuer, only to discover that

he was still being closely ollowed.

Jeantel testied she heard Martin shout-

ing, Get o! Get o! beore the phone wen

dead. Zimmerman had shot the teenager

through the heart.

Don West, Zimmermans lawyer, relent-

lessly attacked Jeantel and her devastating

testimony. Over and over, he suggested that

she knew that Martin had attacked Zim-

merman beore he was shot. And over and

over, she said that was absolutely not true,

that it was Zimmerman, not Martin, who

started the ght and then killed her riend.

At one point, Jeantel said that Martin de-scribed his ollower as a creepy-ass cracker.

West seized on this to mean that it was Mar-

tins racist attitude toward his armed stalke

that somehow caused his own death. Jeantel

challenged that alsehood, saying that race

was an issue because white Zimmerman was

ollowing Martin in the gated Florida neigh-

borhood. Martin had done nothing. Why

was Zimmerman pursuing him, unless he

considered the Black youth a criminal or jus

being there? A proanity-laced tirade by Zim

merman against those people, quoted by thprosecutor, reinorced Rachel Jeantels point.

estimony in the Zimmerman trial is ex-

pected to continue or two more weeks. De-

spite all the obstacles in seeking a air trial in

a U.S. court, the galvanized Black communi

campaign, combined with the courageous

words o Rachel Jeantel, oer the best chanc

or justice in this case.

July 1, 201