Thursday, August 08, 2013

The Trayvon Martin Commemoration

The president set the tone for the fiftieth commemoration of the “I Have a Dream” speech delivered by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Washington in August 1963. When he said the jury (6 women, one black, one Hispanic) erred recently in acquitting George Zimmerman of any crime connected with the death of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, last year, and noted that he could have been Martin 35 years ago, he kept alive race-baiting as an art form, thus encouraging blacks to make Martin into a martyr of some sort and connecting his death with King’s.

The Martin-Zimmerman affair featured two men standing near each other on the same sidewalk. Martin decided that Zimmerman should not be there so he knocked Zimmerman down, broke his nose and attempted to completely bash his skull on the sidewalk, whereupon Zimmerman fatally shot Martin, who apparently was totally unmarked save for the bullet-wound. From the beginning, this was an open-and-shut case, in which the president actually said the jury and prosecution acted stupidly, just as he did in 2009 about a white policeman in Cambridge, Mass. He knew nothing of the details in either circumstance, just let out the clutch on his mouth before putting his brain in gear.

With the president’s leadership—especially in his declaration about “honoring” Martin somehow (for beating-up a white guy?)—the black community is in a turmoil against white people, notwithstanding that Zimmerman, half-white, classified himself as Hispanic, sort of like Obama classifying himself, half-white, as black. Actually, who cares? So, the commemoration this year is not about King and civil rights but just a “hate whitey” rally on the mall, which it mostly always has been anyway.

A local organizer of a trip to Washington to be part of the observance was quoted in the Lexington Herald-Leader: “This is not a commemoration … it is a continuation. It is to continue Dr. King’s dream.” Because of huge entitlements/quotas enacted in Congress to aid blacks in the 1960s, there has been some improvement in the black community but the “dream” has never materialized; therefore, it can’t be continued. In many ways, blacks – especially black men – have turned a potential windfall into a nightmare, not a dream.

A tip-off on the nature of the “commemoration” is seen in the fact that the Rev. Al Sharpton’s organization, something called National Action Network, is in a leadership role. It was Sharpton who went to Sanford after Martin was killed to start the “hate whitey” demonstrations. He was helped in this by agents sent by Attorney General Holder from the Department of Justice. Holder, undoubtedly at Obama’s behest, is still trying to figure a way to hang Zimmerman, using federal machinery.

In Lexington in July, there was a “Justice for Trayvon” rally. According to the paper, it was then that the wheels were set in motion for the trip to Washington, the obvious conclusion being that this is all about Trayvon and not King, a terrible miscarriage of theme that insults King, who would have deplored a crusade against the upholding of the law. The trip-organizer said she contacted Sharpton’s outfit when she became angry with the Zimmerman acquittal and was told to turn her anger into action. Obviously, her anger had nothing to do with King and the commemoration.

Despite the fact that a black man has been voted into the presidency not once but twice even though blacks comprise only about 13% of the population, the “hate whitey” crusades continue. Obama is in the White House because whites voted him in, and key positions in governments on all levels are filled with blacks. Until the Supreme Court finally said “enough,” they’ve enjoyed preferential treatment, such as in college applications, for many decades. This is not to mention Section 8 housing and all the rest.

On the Mall in D.C., the participants in the trip will gather in the shadow of the Buddha-like, made-in-China statue of King – three-stories tall, taller than the statue of Lincoln if he were standing instead of sitting – to honor Trayvon Martin, who had only to ignore Zimmerman instead of attempting to beat him to death. By further contrast, the statue of FDR in a wheelchair is merely life-size.

For this, the folks on the two-night trip will pay at least $350, counting food (conservatively at $73). It would have seemed unseemly to have a “Trayvon Martin Commemoration,” so Sharpton and others simply high-jacked the fiftieth anniversary of the King speech and march of 1963, thus keeping racism alive and well.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

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