March 20, 2012
Three weeks ago, 17-year old Trayvon Martin was gunned down by self-appointed neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman. Despite Zimmerman admitting to following, confronting, and killing Trayvon, he has yet to be arrested or charged with any crime.1
Just minutes before Trayvon was killed, Zimmerman had called police stating that Trayvon looked "suspicious." Trayvon was unarmed and walking back to his father's home in Sanford, Florida when Zimmerman accosted him.
At the crime scene, Sanford police botched their questioning of Zimmerman, refused to take the full statements of witnesses, and pressured neighbors to side with the shooter's claim of self-defense.2 As it turns out, Sanford's police department has a history of failing to hold perpetrators accountable for violent acts against Black victims and the police misconduct in Trayvon's case exemplifies the department's systemic mishandling of such investigations.3 And now, the State Attorney's office has rubber-stamped the Sanford police's non-investigation, claiming that there is not enough evidence to support even a manslaughter conviction.4
Trayvon's family and hundreds of thousands of people around the country are demanding justice.5 Please join us in calling on the Department of Justice to take over the case, arrest Trayvon's killer, and launch an independent investigation into the Sanford police department's unwillingness to protect Trayvon's civil rights. It takes just a moment:
http://act.colorofchange.org/sign/Trayvon
Walking home from the store shouldn't cost you your life, but when Black youth are routinely assumed to be violent criminals, being randomly killed is a constant danger.6 Before Zimmerman decided to get out of his parked car — gun in tow — to pursue Trayvon on foot that night, he called the police to identify Trayvon as a "suspicious person" — apparently because he was wearing a hoodie and walking too slowly in the rain for Zimmerman's liking. Despite being instructed not to follow Trayvon, Zimmerman proceeded to confront and fatally shoot the boy in the chest within a matter of minutes.7
Jesus Wore A Hoodie!
The case has been compromised from the beginning. When Sanford police arrived on the scene, Zimmerman was first approached by a narcotics detective — not a homicide investigator — who "peppered him with questions" rather than allowing him to tell his story without prompting. Another officer "corrected" a witness giving a statement that she'd heard Trayvon cry for help before he was shot, telling her she had heard Zimmerman instead.8 And beyond the questions of professional competence or even the police's disregard for the facts, Florida's notorious "Shoot First" law takes a shooter's self-defense claim at face value — incentivizing law enforcement not to make arrests in shooting deaths that would lead to murder charges in other states.9
Sanford has a history of not prosecuting when the victim is Black. In 2010, the white son of a Sanford police lieutenant was let go by police after assaulting a homeless Black man outside a downtown bar. And, in 2005, a Black teenager was killed by two white security guards, one the son of a Sanford Police officer. The pair was arrested and charged, but a judge later cited lack of evidence and dismissed both cases.10
Please join us in calling on the Department of Justice to arrest Trayvon's killer and launch an investigation into the Sanford police department's mishandling of the case and when you do, ask your friends and family to do the same:
http://act.colorofchange.org/sign/Trayvon
Thanks and Peace,
-- Rashad, Gabriel, Dani, Matt, Natasha, Kim and the rest of the ColorOfChange.org team
March 19th, 2012
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Black Teens often complain of being treated differently than their white counterparts by teachers, police, restaurants, retail stores and adults. Now You Get To See What Many Experience Day To Day Thanks To A Recent Experiment Done By ABC's 20/20.
For smoother viewing hit start, then hit stop allowing the video red line to fill to the right. Then hit start again.
Black, White Teen Vandals Break Into a Car, Generating Different Responses From Public
By CLEM TAYLOR and NATALIE D. JAQUEZ
Feb. 20, 2008—
Editor's Note: The last name of each "What Would You Do?" participant was removed to protect his or her privacy.
It was an early spring afternoon in a suburban New Jersey park. Families, couples, runners and dog-walkers populated the area.
Attention was turned to a group of three white teenage boys walking toward a car an older, well-kept model in an open parking lot. They laughed at the car's "vintage" appearance.
Zac vaulted up on the car's hood and Justin K. looked around, furtively eyeing passersby. Meanwhile, Sam pulled a Jimmy stick from his pants and began breaking into the car.
Watch the premiere of the series "Primetime: What Would You Do?" Tuesday, Feb. 26 at 10 p.m. ET
"There it is! There it is!" The driver's side door popped open and the boys piled in, looking for anything worth taking.
People passed by but paid little or no attention to the mischief-makers, until the boys pulled out cans of paint and began spraying graffiti on the car.
A couple of women who engaged in brief conversation with the boys later said they were actually far more concerned about their well-being than they let on during the exchange.
"They [the boys] started getting increasingly strident and jumping on [the car] and pounding on it," said Laurette. "Then we said, 'Let's get away from this and call the police.'"
'You Got an Illegal Tool There!'
Shortly after, another couple of women noticed the boys. The women spoke, but both walked away from the scene.
While Maggie acknowledged, "I should have done something," Mary, the other woman, said she was reluctant to get involved.
"There have been times when I've been a witness to things and had to take off work, and it has been really involved. I try to mind my own business," said Mary.
Later, another middle-aged woman who seemed troubled by the teen vandals stopped a safe distance away from them and pulled out her cell phone. Was she typing a text message or contacting police?
When a fit middle-aged man who had just finished a run wandered past the boys and asked what they were up to, the boys bluntly told him to mind his own business.
As the man walked away, one of the boys yelled, "Adios, have a nice day," just to goad him. In doing so, the boys called the man's attention back to them and the car, angering him and heightening the confrontation.
And then he saw their Jimmy stick. "You got an illegal tool there! The cops would love to know that," he warned them. "That's a jimmy. That's an illegal tool. It's a felony. I suggest you pick it up and move on."
"We're not going nowhere," said Justin K., defiantly.
With that, the man walked off, and asked the woman with a cell phone to dial 911.
At that moment ABC News correspondent John Quinones jumped in, but the man, Brian, was pretty steamed at both the boys and at the "What Would You Do?" crew. When he finally cooled off, Brian and his wife, Dawn, stopped for a chat.
"I was keeping my eye on them. I was waiting for my husband to come back because I wasn't going to confront three boys by myself," Dawn told us.
Brian said he got involved because of a lesson his father taught him.
"You can't turn a blind eye or a deaf ear if somebody's in trouble," he said. "It wasn't [my property] but, you know, it was somebody's. We're all in this together."
Moments later, Brian and the actors exchanged apologies and handshakes.
Jack Dovidio, a psychology professor at Yale University, applauded Brian's actions, in spite of the possible risk he took.
"He took action that was selfless and was about stopping something bad from happening. He made a difference," Dovidio said. "I don't think it was the smart thing to do necessarily, but I think it was the good and right thing to do."
Sleeping Kids Generate 911 Calls
Three separate 911 calls were placed from the park that day: One was about the three white teens vandalizing the car, and the other two calls were from a man reporting the occupants of another car parked in a lot about 100 yards away from the scenario.
"There's a couple of guys in the car lying down, like, they look like possibly they're getting ready to rob somebody," the caller said.
A few minutes later, the caller was back on the line. "We got three black kids lying in the car," he said. "We have a lot of little kids around. I'm just keeping an eye on things."
As it turned out, the "three black kids" were the relatives of Justin C., a young African-American actor whom ABC News had hired for a later portion of the experiment. They were sleeping in the car while they waited for Justin C.
Justin C. said it was a hurtful reminder that racism is alive and well, and that people are still frightened by the color of other people's skin.
"Whether it's because of the media, because of history, we as Americans have an association with blacks and crime," Dovidio said, emphasizing that "both blacks and whites have that association."
Though Justin C.'s relatives were doing nothing more sinister than sleeping in their car, Dovidio said, "We can make that into a potential criminal act."
Black Vandals vs. White Vandals
Soon after those 911 calls were placed, the next phase of the experiment began. The three white teen vandals were replaced with Justin C., Jelani and "Matlok," three African-American actors. Would the responses to the vandals in this mostly white suburb be any different?
Just as the white actors had done, the three African-American vandals jumped on the car, spray-painted graffiti and used the jimmy stick to break into it. Almost immediately we noticed an increase in direct interventions and calls to 911.
A woman and a man walked by the scene at nearly the same time, and without much hesitation each pulled out their cell phones and reported the vandals to 911.
And while these two opted not to confront the boys directly, the next woman did. While walking her dachshund, Christina asked the boys what they were doing, to which one of them responded, "Having fun."
She walked a few yards further, called 911 to report them for "beating up a car," then continued on her way.
We spoke to all three of these passersby and while they expressed anger that many others had not gotten involved, they also seemed to understand the risk of doing so.
"I was shocked that the park had so many people and nobody was doing anything," said Robin, the first caller.
Thomas, who called around the same time, said he was just more comfortable calling 911 than confronting the kids directly.
"Teenagers are kind of unpredictable," Haller said. "Who knows? You hear all sorts of crazy stories. Moreover, he said, "They seemed like they weren't afraid of being caught."
Christina, in spite of having spoken to them, said she felt the boys were aggressive and therefore thought it best to call 911 instead of risking a confrontation.
"I wasn't going to go especially right up to them, because they had tools that could be used against me and there's three of them and one of me." And, she added, "my little dog."
Act First, Think Later
For every group of more timid souls, there was someone perfectly willing to confront trouble head-on, even at personal risk.
"Hey, is that your car?" yelled a woman who approached the boys with her husband and children.
"No, is it yours?" retorted Matlok.
"No, but you shouldn't be doing that," the woman scolded him.
Vanessa said she felt an immediate sense of outrage at the brazen act of vandalism.
"How dare you come in our backyard and do something like that in the middle of the day in front of our kids?" she said after her encounter with the boys.
"I don't care where you're from. I don't care what color you are," Vanessa added. "You know you're doing something illegal & you better believe I'm still going to call the police."
Vanessa's husband was concerned that she had put herself in danger by confronting the kids.
"My husband was right to say, 'What if those kids had a gun?' And at that moment, honestly, I didn't think about it. The way I am," said Vanessa, "if I see something, I do something right away."
"She was angry and she was willing to act on that anger in a way that jeopardized her well-being," Dovidio said. "People think some of the time, but we operate on emotion all of the time."
Acting Like 'A Good Parent'
As the black teenage boys continued to inflict damage on the car, not only were they generating more 911 calls than the white vandals, many more people began to stop and intervene.
"We got to a point where there was like three people calling the cops at the exact same time," said Jelani, one of the actors.
Those brave enough to directly confront the African-American teens sometimes asked how the teens would feel if someone were vandalizing their car.
But Matlok was quick to quip, "This car's a piece of crap anyway."
Another particularly gutsy woman, walked right up to the boys to ask if they were locked out, but on closer inspection she realized they were up to no good.
"Stop," said the woman.
"Why?" asked Matlok.
"It's illegal. Somebody's going to call the cops."
Sang engaged in a four-minute conversation with the vandals and, when asked, even told them her name.
One of the boys then spray-painted her last name on the left quarter panel of the car.
"Now we're going to say that you did it!" Matlok told her gleefully. "Now we're gonna call the cops on you." The boys broke into laughter.
"I didn't want to antagonize them any further," Sang said later. "They did have a stick whatever they were banging with so at that point I stepped back and said, 'Okay, let me go, you know, get a cell phone.'"
Dovidio commended Sang for her bravery, but also for her clever approach.
"It was about engaging them, instructing them," Dovidio said. "It was about being what a good parent would be to those kids; that you shouldn't be doing this and I'm going to tell you to stop doing it."
Skin Color and the Public's Response
Clearly the number of interventions and 911 calls with the African-American youths exceeded those with their white counterparts. So we asked those who approached the black kids or reported them to police, "Would you have acted any differently if the boys were white?"
Sang said, "I would have done the same thing. Maybe I would have stopped them sooner."
Joan A. and Martha had a similar response: "I did notice they were African-American young boys in a white neighborhood," said Joan A. "But if they had been white kids, I mean, I would have done exactly the same thing."
Martha agreed, "I might have done it quicker if they were white kids."
"Actually, I probably hesitated because they were black," said Joan D. "I don't like to assume that three black kids are up to trouble. But they were clearly up to trouble," she recalled, laughing. "But had it been three white kids I'd have done the same thing. I might have called quicker."
The Actors' Perceptions
After two days of shooting, the six actors three white and three African-American gathered to reflect on the experiment that had become a learning experience they hadn't expected. They told us they were baffled by the people who saw the damage, yet didn't stop or call 911.
"Some people & it seemed like they were kinda, like, too nervous maybe to say something," Matlok said.
Justin K., a white actor, observed: "I was actually shocked to see how many people would actually take a good look at what we were doing and just walk on by without even interfering at all."
But what the all of the actors found most troubling were the calls made to 911 to report Justin C.'s relatives for sleeping in their car while he prepared to start work.
"That was ridiculous. Pretty low," said Zac, another of the white actors.
"It's wrong," said Justin K. "I mean, here we are breaking into a car and there they are sleeping, you know?"
"I was offended," said Sam, the third white actor. "They weren't bothering anyone so it's really disgraceful."
For these young African-American actors, it was simply a troubling new chapter in an old story, but one that still hurt.
"These kids [the white actors] were destroying this car and trying to break in" Justin C. said. "They're not even worried about it."
"Meanwhile, they're worrying about Justin's family over there," said Matlok.
"Sleeping while being black," Justin C. said, finishing Matlok's sentence and shaking his head, looking more sad than angry.
Shopping While Black!
This test is so bias it's not even funny. The white kids merely spray-painted the car, it looked like they owned it and they were just walking around spray-painting it. Obviously they didn't attract too many phone calls. Then the black kids were jumping on the car, hitting it with bats/sticks, and seemed to be actually damaging it and appeared to be more out of control than the white kids. Obviously they drew more attention, phone calls, etc. Jesus Christ, people are so ignorant. Not to mention you never know who the passer-byers were. Whose to say that the morally right people happened to be passing later instead of earlier? Different people, different actions, different tests. The tests were equal or fair at all. In the words of the British, this is a load of 'poppycock'.
Posted by: Wow. | September 01, 2011 at 11:06 PM
Josh,
In reference to your three comments below,
I see you have spent over an hour
on BlackJesus.com commenting
extensively on my content.
You must have been thinking that
Jesus had to have been anything other
than white, how else would you have
arrived at this site.
And that's the whole point of this blog,
to uncover the lie that Jesus was white.
We can debate his shades of blackness
till the cows come home.
I have found first hand that this lie has
given most Caucasians a false sense
of superiority. It's evident that regardless
of how many facts I present on issues
effecting Black people, people like
you will find some way to refute them,
based on your own biased false opinions
and not with any opposing facts.
By the way, when white people die they
do turn Black eventually. No not light brown,
not a shade of brown, but Black.
Remember Jesus did die for all of us no
matter what color we are.
Posted by: BlackJesus.com | September 02, 2011 at 11:19 AM
What is troubling is that this Pd has a history of not investigating crimes committed against black people ,yet they have Black officers. What do they do besides sit on their hands ?????????? If they sit by and say nothing they are as bad or worse than their white partners
Posted by: Sieben13 | April 13, 2012 at 12:11 PM
When I was a teen -- a light brown teen whose color is quixotically often referred to as "white" -- I was routinely accosted by police officers. Truth be told, some of my "homies" were true-to-life criminals, eventually involved in crimes other than violation of pharmaceutical regulations. I think the reason we were pulled over and stopped often had to do with he poor condition of the car we were driving. I learned important lessons -- such as that you can be ticketed for using a rag as a gas cap. At other times, it might have been the way I dressed and looked. It was my choice to look that way and I tended to ridicule cops who thought my intentional choice of clothing meant anything at all.
That said, I intuitively agree that "black" teens tend to be profiled more than light-skinned teens. Part of it is cultural, but it's an aspect of culture that involves gangsta personas. Let me be clear. A lot of well-dressed black folks are pulled over too, often unfairly. But the way we respond to unfair treatment can make a difference in how things play out.
Now lets get to Trayvon. No, he didn't deserve to be shot. But in the national attention that's followed, we've embraced a debate that -- if we sympathize with him and his family -- encourages us to ignore the basic facts. Yes, Zimmerman was following him. Guess what? It's your right as a black person to follow me. If you think I don't have legitimate business on your street - can you say "south central" -- you can keep an eye on me, or even approach me. Trust me. I'll get the message and move on. Or maybe - just maybe - we'll find some mutual respect.
That's not what happened in Trayvon's case. Every indication is that he approached Zimmerman to ask why he was following him. "You got a problem?" "Well you do now." Maybe someone made up those words, but, well, lets just say if I'm walking through your south central neighborhood and see you following me as I walk through your neighborhood, that's not the approach I'm gonna pick. Nor will I punch you in the nose, tackle you and bang your head on the ground. Why? Well, because you might be packing heat, among other reasons. Huh!
Then we have these pictures of 14 year old Trayvone. Trouble is, the Trayvone who died was 17 years old, six-foot-something, and at that age -- like one of my step daughters -- where Tweeting thuggish comments somehow feels empowering. No. That doesn't mean he deserved to be shot. But had he lived, his parents might have been hoping he'd tone down the thugishness and focus on his college career - learn to debate articulately rather than posing a thug persona. But a lot of us go through that, and we don't deserve to be shot.
Yeh, I think the deck is stacked against black folks -- especially those who, unlike the president of the United States -- are heirs of slaves and whose dialect reflects the Southern experience. I know that part because I'm also a emigrant from the south, and know what how that dialect makes me look in the eyes of "Yankees." And when Trayvone's case came up, it only made sense to see it through that filter. Thing is, there was so much more at play. He was the son of a divided family. He'd probably been through some stress with that. He was dealing with early experiences with pot. Been there, done that, but it can color one's judgement - especially when one is trying to find their way in life. And if we're to believe his twitter feed, he'd been playing with some real crime. Theft. Disadavantaged by a broken home, disadvantaged by a society - a southern society, I might add - that has old grudges against black folks, I can understand a kid experimenting with theft. He didn't rob Zimmerman, and for that Zimmerman had no reason to shoot. But he did approach Zimmerman to ask why he was following him. By many if not most accounts, he physically accosted Zimmerman. Not good. I'm just saying we need to consider the totality of circumstances along with the social context of bias against black folks. I extend my sincere condolences to his family and friends.
Now, as for the "What would you do" episode - I'll admit I didnt' carefully read the entire story. Why? Well, black is beautiful and all, but that strong tag that makes every word bold faced doesn't make the text any more readable. Just because typeface is more black doesn't make it more readable. I'm sure some of the typographers that figured that out over the centuries had at least a few drops of black blood, so it's okay to take their word for it.
But the parts I did read -- I notice that it's an entertainment show, not science. And in the case of the black youths, one woman had the courage to approach them and attempt to instruct them. Maybe I missed the paragraph that revealed her racial profile, but black, red, yellow or white, she was courageous and represented an impression many of us "non-blacks" have about "blacks" - you're smart, approachable, reasonable and sometimes more socially intelligent than some folks on our side of the color wheel.
What's my point? It's been said racism takes two forms (racial attitudes, to be correct, as racism is a doctrine related to public policy) -- those two forms are failing to recognize the unique qualities related to race, and attributing unique qualities related to race. With such a narrow rope to walk, I'm sure I've not gotten through this post without offending on both sides of the precarious balance. But, knowing the Black Jesus spread grace and forgiveness to all people, I'm hoping I can get out of this neighborhood without getting shot, and hopefully, have both shown and gained some respect in the mean time.
Posted by: Andra | June 08, 2012 at 11:28 AM