Opinion
It's all about race
By Pat Buchanan
If it had been a white teenager who was shot, and a 28-year-old black guy who shot him, the black guy would have been arrested.
So assert those demanding the arrest of George Zimmerman, who shot and killed Trayvon Martin. And they may be right.
Yet if Trayvon had been shot dead by a black neighborhood watch volunteer, Jesse Jackson would not have been in a pulpit in Sanford, Fla., howling that he had been "murdered and martyred." Rep. Hank Johnson would not be raging that Trayvon had been "executed." And ex-Black Panther Bobby Rush would not have been wearing a hoodie in the well of the House.
Which tells you what this whipped-up hysteria is all about.
It is not about finding the truth about what happened that night when Zimmerman followed Trayvon in his SUV, and the two wound up in a fight, with Trayvon dead.
It is about the exacerbation of and the exploitation of racial conflict.
And it is about an irreconcilable conflict of visions about what the real America is in 2012.
Zimmerman "profiled" Trayvon, we are told. And perhaps he did.
He saw a male. And males are 90 percent of prison inmates. He saw a stranger over 6 feet tall. And he saw a black man or youth with a hood over his head.
Why would this raise Zimmerman's antennae?
Perhaps because black males between 16 and 36, though only 2 percent to 3 percent of the population, are responsible for a third of all our crimes.
Listening to the heated rhetoric coming from demonstrations around the country, from the Black Caucus and TV talkers -- about how America is a terrifying place for young black males to grow up in because of the constant danger from white vigilantes -- one wonders what country of the mind these people are living in.
The real America is a country where the black crime rate is seven times as high as the white rate. It is a country where white criminals choose black victims in 3 percent of their crimes, but black criminals choose white victims in 45 percent of their crimes.
To much of America's black leadership and its media auxiliaries, what happened in Sanford, as Jackson put it, was that an innocent kid was "shot down in cold blood by a vigilante."
Yet, from police reports, witness statements and the father and friends of Zimmerman, another picture emerges.
Zimmerman followed Trayvon, confronted him, and was punched in the nose, knocked flat on his back and jumped on, getting his head pounded, when he pulled his gun and fired. That Trayvon's body was found face down, not face up, would tend to support this.
Some Sanford police believed Zimmerman; others did not.
But now that it is being investigated by a special prosecutor, the FBI, the Justice Department and a coming grand jury, what is the purpose of this venomous portrayal of Zimmerman?
And convicted of no crime, he is being crucified in the arena of public opinion as a hate-crime monster and murderer. Is this our idea of justice?
No. But if the purpose here is to turn this into a national black-white face-off, instead of a mutual search for truth and justice, it is succeeding marvelously well.
Pat Buchanan is the author of "Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?"
If it had been a white teenager who was shot, and a 28-year-old black guy who shot him, the black guy would have been arrested.
So assert those demanding the arrest of George Zimmerman, who shot and killed Trayvon Martin. And they may be right.
Yet if Trayvon had been shot dead by a black neighborhood watch volunteer, Jesse Jackson would not have been in a pulpit in Sanford, Fla., howling that he had been "murdered and martyred." Rep. Hank Johnson would not be raging that Trayvon had been "executed." And ex-Black Panther Bobby Rush would not have been wearing a hoodie in the well of the House.
Which tells you what this whipped-up hysteria is all about.
It is not about finding the truth about what happened that night when Zimmerman followed Trayvon in his SUV, and the two wound up in a fight, with Trayvon dead.
It is about the exacerbation of and the exploitation of racial conflict.
And it is about an irreconcilable conflict of visions about what the real America is in 2012.
Zimmerman "profiled" Trayvon, we are told. And perhaps he did.
He saw a male. And males are 90 percent of prison inmates. He saw a stranger over 6 feet tall. And he saw a black man or youth with a hood over his head.
Why would this raise Zimmerman's antennae?
Perhaps because black males between 16 and 36, though only 2 percent to 3 percent of the population, are responsible for a third of all our crimes.
Listening to the heated rhetoric coming from demonstrations around the country, from the Black Caucus and TV talkers -- about how America is a terrifying place for young black males to grow up in because of the constant danger from white vigilantes -- one wonders what country of the mind these people are living in.
The real America is a country where the black crime rate is seven times as high as the white rate. It is a country where white criminals choose black victims in 3 percent of their crimes, but black criminals choose white victims in 45 percent of their crimes.
To much of America's black leadership and its media auxiliaries, what happened in Sanford, as Jackson put it, was that an innocent kid was "shot down in cold blood by a vigilante."
Yet, from police reports, witness statements and the father and friends of Zimmerman, another picture emerges.
Zimmerman followed Trayvon, confronted him, and was punched in the nose, knocked flat on his back and jumped on, getting his head pounded, when he pulled his gun and fired. That Trayvon's body was found face down, not face up, would tend to support this.
Some Sanford police believed Zimmerman; others did not.
But now that it is being investigated by a special prosecutor, the FBI, the Justice Department and a coming grand jury, what is the purpose of this venomous portrayal of Zimmerman?
And convicted of no crime, he is being crucified in the arena of public opinion as a hate-crime monster and murderer. Is this our idea of justice?
No. But if the purpose here is to turn this into a national black-white face-off, instead of a mutual search for truth and justice, it is succeeding marvelously well.
Pat Buchanan is the author of "Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?"
Commentary
Pat Buchanan right as usual telling it like it is
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