The Black Commentator: An independent weekly internet magazine dedicated to the movement for economic justice, social justice and peace - Providing commentary, analysis and investigations on issues affecting African Americans and the African world. www.BlackCommentator.com
 
Mar 22, 2012 - Issue 464
 
 

Cover Story
Trayvon Martin:
Suspicious Person in the U.S. Empire
Represent Our Resistance
By Dr. Lenore J. Daniels, PhD
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board

 

 

Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.

-Primo Levi

Nihilism is a direct consequence of the helplessness and powerlessness that unrelenting class exploitation and oppression produce in a culture where everyone, no matter their class, is socialized to desire wealth - to define their value, if not the overall meaning of their lives by material status.

-bell hooks, Where We Stand: Class Matters

White House Press Secretary, when asked by a reporter if the President has any response to the murder of an unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, 28, an armed with a 9mm gun, referred the reporter (and us) to the law enforcement in Florida and to the U.S. Justice Department.

This is the same law enforcement who thought nothing of bagging the body of this child, Trayvon Martin and writing in place of his name, “John Doe.”

Self-defense, cried Zimmerman, and, of course, given the gated community in which law enforcement picked up the child’s body, Zimmerman would be right, would he not? Arrest for murder - what country do you live in? And besides, and even most importantly, Martin was Black and Zimmerman is white!

Of course to Zimmerman, as with most citizens in the U.S., Martin would be a suspicious person.

So what crime took place?

The imperialist mindset of the average citizen of the U.S. is best observed in more towns and cities where the average Mr. and Ms. Zimmerman defend self, family, neighborhoods, their right to conqueror and murder, children, too, indeed the American Way, without the 9 mm.

The imperialist mindset that picks up a gun to patrol a gated community in Florida is the same mindset that murders 16 unarmed Afghani civilians and conducts illegal wars, shock and awe. It is the same mindset that murders, maims, tortures, imprisons and impoverishes millions, causally and daily, and labels all this carnage progress.

Again, what C.R.I.M.E. took place?

Given all that we citizens are taught to know in this country, tell me, what crime took place?

In my own neighborhood, in the very liberal and high-minded town of Madison, Wisconsin, neighbors, neighbors feel obliged to place the adjective “Black” before the gender description of a man or woman. “That Black woman” or “That Black man” is a trigger pulled. It is a body, head in noose, swinging from a tree, and it is causal and daily - so what crime took place in Florida?

Remember Oscar Grant and an acquitted Oakland law enforcement department and Troy Davis and a justified U.S. Justice system!

After Police Chief Bill Lee’s “fair and thorough” investigation, what more is to be considered? Lee dismissed charges of “irregularities” (The Miami Herald, March 20, 2012). “Investigators found no probable cause to arrest Zimmerman because there was no evidence to disprove his version of events.” End of story, right? After all, this is America!

When the reporter continued his questioning of Carney, he recalled how Obama reached out to brother Professor Henry L. Gates. There was kinship every citizens of the U.S. could recognize. Brothers of the same ilk, huh - brothers for the same cause - protectors rather than protesters - without the 9mm. Many Black women are sisters, too. They are a league, uncomfortable in their own skins, hateful, as any good citizen of an imperialist mindset of any threat to the system.

Only the abnormal accepted as the norm.

What could possibly be criminal in this country, in this world now where Obama can order the indefinite detention of anyone, including Americans, anywhere in the world? What is abnormal about law enforcement agencies and racial profiling policies, the U.S. Justice Departments criminalization of Black, Red, and Brown people, and the military-surveillance apparatus seek out and destroy democracies and pillage the resources from the majority?

The U.S. Empire sanctions the right to murder with impunity on behalf of the powerful corporations who build the detention camps and hasten the death of the majority. It would be insane, except it is all so normal. This is what most U.S. citizens are taught to know.

For those “allies” who join in U.S./Israeli imperialist ventures, there will be contracts and profits! Material gain, not morality, is the name of the game. You cannot appeal to the morality of the capitalist rulers and certainly not to the “appointed” “Black,” “Red,” “Brown” leadership, surrogates, when money is the reward.

Suspicious persons, like suspicious nations, are mowed down!

You cannot start singing Gospel tunes and moaning and channeling Martin L. King. It is a system, a mechanism out of control, and its machine-like facilitators cannot hear you because they are dead - morally dead!

It is greed and fear. Keep the “little people” in a state of fear about each other and we collect all the wealth and power in the world! No song sung by Mahalia or Aretha will change this state of affairs, no acquittal-happy justice system either. Only the people, the citizens themselves, have the power to rise up and crush the imperialist mindset from within and without. Then maybe there will not be another Trayvon Martin or George Zimmerman or Oscar Grant or Mehserle or 16 dead Afghani civilians or Staff Sergeant Robert Bales.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Lenore Jean Daniels, PhD, has a Doctorate in Modern American Literature/Cultural Theory. Click here to contact Dr. Daniels.