I must touch upon the Trayvon Martin tragedy – as our president called it. The death of any one young man is a tragedy, the death of hundreds is a statistic, to paraphrase the eminent humanitarian Joe Stalin. I do this in the context of the recent verdict and having recently gone to Castle Island in South Boston with my wife and grandkids after a visit to the Children’s Museum.
You may recall Fortnight telling us in his testimony about how he and Whitey walked around the Sugar Bowl at Castle Island. Google it if you want to have an idea what it is like. It’s a peninsular that sticks its head into the entry to Boston Harbor with nice walkways and what was once known as Castle William but whose name was changed to Fort Independence after the British relinquished their rule.
Castle Island and Trayvon Martin come to my mind when I consider the national news media coverage of his killing. When I read some of the articles I could not but think our media is stuck in an Old America where things were simple, or perhaps simply awful, when it came to race relations. If given the opportunity to tell us about South Boston and race relations our national media would be quick to inform us that Southie is a place where blacks dare not tread because of the vicious racist whites. That would have been true in Old America; but that’s not what Southie is now.
When I was at Castle Island within the last month I thought it was the most integrated place in America. It was crowded with whites, blacks, Asians and Latins all going about their pleasure and intermingling in peaceful harmony. Walking down a path I saw a group of young white men and women were sitting on the side of a hill listening to a young black man discourse on something or other; walkers (and runners) of all races perambulated around the fort. I thought this is what America should be like a mutual respect among people and a live and let live attitude.
What I found most shocking about the Zimmerman case, as Trayvon’s killing is called, is the manner in which the media abetted those who would turn it into something racial. This was an incident between two civilians and the death resulted during a fight. The actions of one man acting outside of government can not be said to reflect the attitude of all America.
Yet that’s what the media sought to make it. The media wrongly strove to stoke up ill feeling among the races where it doesn’t exist. Unfortunately, many people are readily able to find it when encouraged.
Hardly can one think the media was otherwise that malicious if you look at the following. Here’s the transcript of the call Zimmerman made to the police just before the encounter. .
Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.
Dispatcher: OK, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic?
Zimmerman: He looks black.
NBC News broadcast on its Today show the following as being the conversation that Zimmerman had with the dispatcher.
Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.
NBC’s defense to the suit by Zimmerman is that it was only doing what other media outlets were doing. They were playing up the racial angle of the Zimmerman story. In other words regardless of whether it existed, if it makes a good story and plays into some of the tragic stories of our past then pump it up. The national news media thought maybe we can create something out of it and tell the people this is still Old America.
I’m not saying racism has been eradicated from the heart of every person or that there aren’t any resentments in Southie that the blacks and Latins have intruded on what some consider “our territory.” But those have been suppressed by desire of most to get along. I see us being far away from the media’s stereotyping of us as a racist people and I resent the media’s desire to bring us back to Old America.
There will always be people ready to claim racism. It is a profit industry for some. The most notorious being Al Sharpton who has parlayed hate of whitey into a cable television gig. I have to agree with the Washington Post which wrote: “Unfortunately, though, much of the public debate has done grievous disservice to the legitimacy of these issues. Hucksters and political demagogues exploited tragedy — a boy’s death, a family’s grief, a man’s freedom — and created what has become the now all-too-familiar media circus of oversaturation and rush to judgment.”
President Obama said back on March 23, 2013, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon. When I think about this boy, I think about my own kids.”
I’d like to remind our president that Joe Stalin’s not the type of guy he should be taking advice from. Everyday on the streets of America young men who would have looked just like his son are being killed. It’s not Trayvon’s death that is the tragedy, it the death of all those young men every day which is the true tragedy in America.
And the other tragedy is the “follow the leader” mentality of our present day news media which stokes up hatred among our American people. It has a right to do it but the concept of a free press was that there would not be a uniformity of voices, but a clash of opinions and an open debate. We are far from that as we’ve seen in the Whitey saga and the Zimmerman killing. Our national media is becoming like what we saw in the USSR when the Old America existed.
Matt – Brother Bill is correct about Southie in the “olden days”.. Before the busing crisis in the “70’s, there were many blacks swimming on Southie’s beaches. In fact, so many that one particular area (I think it is/was called Pleasure Bay was known as “(perjorative) lagoon”.
James:
You could count on the fingers of one hand how many blacks lived in Southie.
~In order to help improve and increase their vocabulary (and my own !), this summer I’ve instituted a “Word of the Day” program w/ several of my nieces. Quite often the words have been taken from this blog. Tomorrow’s word of the day shall be: “Perambulate”. Thank you, Mr. MATT.
~* Nieces *.
Gus:
Don’t feel bad, I once sent out a legal letter to a group of heirs in a probate case I was handling spelling nieces as neices. It didn’t make a good impression.
Gus:
That’s a great idea. I used to do it with my wife when we were first married. The English language overflows with good words. I try not to use the ones like “perambulate” because simple words are best but sometimes the 2 dollar word just seems to fit.
The words I remember from that time were discombobulate, quixotic, and ubiquitous, for some reason they always stuck with me. Discombobulated is a perfect word because it sounds like its meaning. Right now without knowing more I’d say “Carney’s defense is quite discombobulated.” Quixotic comes from the character Don Quixote and you’d say “Carney’s thinking that he has a chance to get Whitey off the hook is quixotic.”
Ubiquitous would be used to say, “the fear of Whitey in the 1980s in Southie was ubiquitous.” Then there’s obstreperous and recalcitrant that came out of my mouth lately when I was telling my four year old grandson how he was behaving. He’d repeat the word back to me saying, ”don’t say I’m obstreperous, I don’t like that word.” He had no idea what it meant but he knew it was a compliment.
~ Nice post Matt. Al Sharpton – ugh.
~ Jon- al Sharpton ugggh is exactly correct!!The prosecutor’s office is also getting sanctioned Angela Corey is a real dirtbag for firing decent police,and making this political.
Doubting:
True – it shows how people will do evil wanting to please others.
Jon:
It amazes me that he is a host of show – I guess it shows how poorly MSNBC is doing in its ratings.
~ Matt- MSNBC is being sued by Zimmerman for editing the 911 tape to make him sound a particular way that would feed into the racial aspect. I have No love for GZ, I think a fistfight is just that a fistfight nothing more. But the jury spoke and now it is time to deal with that reality. To have Angela Corey on TV calling him a Murderer after the JURY has spoken is SOUR GRAPES. NOW the justice department is going to RE-open an investigation that the FBI decided on already and reverse it’s own ruling? Eric Holder should really get his head out of his ass. The President made a dumb comment about if he had a son it would look like the victim TRAYVON.. Well like GZ has been dubbed by the media as a white latino ?? So Obama is a White Black man ?? I don’t know it just seems to be getting to ANOTHER level of absurdity.
DOUBTING THOMAS
Anonymous,
Can’t disagree with most of what you wrote.
~Fortnight is a clever nickname. I am embarrassed I didn’t think of it first. While it is an unusual term here, I read The Guardian daily and fortnight is used daily in their articles. Here we had a term that means 2 weeks all along and now I am just putting it together. Well done.
Another:
Thanks It finally came to me after the name Brutalman didn;’t quite fit.
~1. Journalism is a national disgrace; they are taught in schools of journalism to lie, race bait, hate whites, and treat all human beings as somehow “less” than them; the Media and FEDs love attacking successful old white guys, like Reagan’s Secretary Raymond Donovan and young white-Latino guys like Zimmerman; 2. Before the 1970s busing debacle, Southie’s beaches were filled with whites, blacks, Brazilians, other Latinos and Asisans (they still are); the Media invented a fiction of a racist community based on the actions of a few, as the Media invented the fiction that Bill Bulger was not an exemplary honorable man; 2.A. the L-Street Gym’s Weight Room Boxing Rooms have many hard men, professional boxers, mma guys, street fighters, cops and ex-cons, etc,, and for forty years, at least, whites, blacks, Latinos, Asians etc mingle without trouble—same you’d find in any gym anywhere; 3. Southie born and raised people have a mild resentment against “Yuppies” (good natured) none against peoples of varying religions-races-ethnic backgrounds, although they don’t like FEDs, Media-liars (there are many good honest people in the press rooms, like Larry Tye and don’t forget Globe Santa’s Billy Connolly (no relation to me, but a priceless gem of a man; and former noon-time runner) and 4. I always wondered why the President didn’t say, “George Zimmerman could have been my adopted son, or natural son.” 5. When we start looking at all peoples as sons, daughters, brothers, friends or “enemies” jihadists are enemies of the good and there’s good and bad in all peoples” and keep looking at individuals without regard to color, we’ll have achieved MLK’s visionary dream: judge each of us, man and child, by the content of our character. The FEDs, DOJ, Boston Media, National Media have amply demonstrated to one and all their general lack of character.
~` And just before this trial, we were inundated with Jodi Arias talk and before that…. etc. etc. Perhaps this all started with O.J. but trials have become as much as or more an entertainment event that generates big dollars in the form of TV ratings than actually dispensing justice. The point is well made is that news stations are creating news angles instead of reporting on what is available. Their is big money in making this a race case, jack up ratings, jack up ad revenue.
When you consider what 30 second ad rates are during sensational trials and during “Verdict Watch(tm)” the commercialization of our justice system can really make one consider its effectiveness. When people are trying to get on juries so they can write books, make appearances and other ways to monetize their civic duty we will be entering very dangerous territory, IMHO.
~William:
1. Don’t agree. The younger members of our society who go into journalism do it for noble purposes. They want to help make America into the best type of nation they think possible. There is no white hatred taught. It is natural though to see that the power has been handled by white men mostly and that for many years they weilded it unevenly.I wouldn’t say that would be a wrong perception.
2. The Southie you are talking about may have had one or two blacks around but before busing two of the housing projects were mostly white and the D street project was the only one with a smattering of blacks. All the Southie schools with 90% or more white. Louise Day Hicks ran for office in Southie and her campaign slogan was “you know where I stand.” It wasn’t a media fiction, it was a fact that few blacks lived in Southie.
2A – Don’t know much about locker rooms.
3. You paint a picture of a Southie that I do not recognize. It was for many years a closed insular society.
4. Obama made a mistake – he’d have been best to make this a national issue rather than to highlight the one out of the thousands of shooting deaths of young men. He was trying to express sympathy for the dead kid why would he do the same thing for the guy with the gun?
5. I don’t remember having a choice in what color I was going to be. So I assume no one else did. Therefore people should not be disciminated against for that over which they have had no say.
~ Matt, (1)I worked in Southie projects when I was sixteen, seventeen, and I’ve been going to L-Street gym (Curley Community Center) and Southie beaches and the Southie neighborhood since the sixties. We moved out of Southie about 1950. So, you’re right from 1940s to early 1960s, Southie, like Eastie, the North End, Brighton, Savie were more “insular”. From late sixties on, society, opened up. Remember the NCAAP marched (were invited and welcomed to march) in the Veterans private St. Pat’s Day Parade in 1964 at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. I was there. The old Insular Community is a press manufactured stereotype. I worked in Southie from ’86-2006, and worked in various parts of Boston and Boston neighborhoods from 1971-1986 (10 of those 15 years) I’ve got a good feel for the City and its neighborhoods; we hung out in Dorchester throughout the 60s, 70s, and 80s, and even today still visit friends and frequent place there. (2 )Schools throughout Boston were 70-80% White because that population was 70-80% white in the 1950s-early 1970s. Around 1981, A friend visited me from Washington D.C., and asked how come there were so few blacks in Churches and meetings we went to. I explained that in 1970-1980 the minority population in Massachusetts was between 5% and 10% minority, whereas around greater Washington DC (DC and proximate suburbs)it was 30%. His misperception that Boston area Institutions were excluding blacks/Latinos/Asians was fortified by a malignant press hocking racism. (3) I know what’s being taught in the schools and schools of journalism as I still work (part-time) at a college and attend lectures, read handouts, course schedules, brochures: Leftist agitprop is alive and well in academia. The vast majority of young people begin schools of journalism idealistically and end up, within a few years post-grad and post the meat grinder of leftist agit-prop (90% of journalists voted for Clinton & OBama) as left-wing radicalized reporters, journalists who hate America, the military, American history and old white men, like Jefferson. Most graduate well versed in Gender Identity Studies and “White Privilege” and “Constitutional Deconstruction” and “English literature deconstruction”, while few if any ever heard of Joseph Warren or Jonas Salk.
William:
1. I represented the School Committee for the City of Boston during the busing case.
2. Schools through out Boston outside of the black areas were 90% white and over – that was because it reflected the neighborhood make up – the blacks were confined to Mattapan and North Dorchester. I don’t remember that I had any black friends in Savin Hill or ever saw a black contemporary there.
3. I think you underestimate the younger generation – I think that they can think for themselves no matter what is taught or who the teacher is. You underestimate our youthful reporters.