By Dennis Prager
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
The George Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin issue has been
manufactured by the left -- the black left and the white left -- and by the
left-wing (mainstream) media.
For most Americans, their entire informational and
intellectual universe is shaped by the left -- from elementary school through
graduate school, and of course, in the news media. They rarely, if ever,
encounter non-left viewpoints. As Diana Mutz, a professor of communication and
political science at the University of Pennsylvania, has written: "Those
with the highest levels of education have the lowest exposure to people with
conflicting points of view."
Which brings us to the killing of Trayvon Martin.
With regard to race, the left's portrayal of America
consists of the following postulates:
--The United States is a racist country -- meaning,
specifically, white hostility to blacks.
--The reason black males make up a highly
disproportionate percentage of the prison population is not that black makes
commit a highly disproportionate percentage of violent crime, but that the
American justice system is racist.
--All whites in America have the immeasurable advantage
of "white privilege." This is taught to students in most American
universities.
--When non-blacks score higher than blacks on academic or
civil service exams, the exams are racist.
--Conservative opposition to Barack Obama is due in large
measure to racism.
None of the above is true. But truth is less important to
the left than advancing these postulates. Therefore, the left uses every
opportunity to depict an event as evidence of white racism.
In Jena, La., in 2006, six black high school students, in
the words of the Associated Press, "severely beat" a white student,
who was left unconscious. They were charged with attempted murder, a charge
that led to national demonstrations, instigated by Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson
and the NAACP, on behalf of the black students, thereafter known as the
"Jena Six." Several months prior to the beating, nooses were found
hanging from a tree on the Jena High School campus, and after the beating a
national outcry by the media and left-wing groups ensued against the alleged
racism of the whites of Jena. It turned out that the nooses had nothing to do
with blacks or lynching. The nooses were a prank by three students aimed at
white members of the school rodeo team.
The same year, the New York Times and Duke University led
a national campaign against white members of the Duke lacrosse team for
allegedly gang raping a black stripper. It was all a lie, so much so that the
local North Carolina district attorney, Mike Nifong, who brought criminal
charges against the team members, was eventually disbarred.
The left knocks on every possible door in the hope that
it will prove how racist whites are. Most of the time, the charges are untrue.
Meanwhile horrific attacks against whites, such as the 2012 dousing with
gasoline and setting on fire a white 13 year-old Kansas City boy by two black
teens ("You get what you deserve, white boy," they said) or the 2007
kidnapping and torture-murders by five blacks of Channon Christian, 21, and
Christopher Newsom, 23, both white, are ignored by the left and the media.
Newsom was repeatedly sodomized by objects, and shot to death. Channon
Christian was gang-raped vaginally, anally, and orally for days, had her
genitals beaten, was urinated on, and, while alive, bleach was poured down her
throat and scrubbed over her body. She was then stuffed into a garbage can with
bags tied around her head and slowly suffocated to death.
One can imagine the media attention if whites had done
those things to a black 13 year-old or to a black woman and her boyfriend.
Just this past weekend scores of young blacks -
"bash mobs" - rampaged through various Southern California cities,
knocking people over, and vandalizing and stealing from stores. Though the
accompanying video shows only black youths doing these things, the Los Angeles
Times report only identifies them as "thieves,"
"participants," and "unruly young people."
The George Zimmerman case is one of those doors that the
left knocks on to show how racist America is. In order to portray the Florida
shooting as an example of racism, the media obscured, omitted, distorted, and
sometimes lied.
The media:
--Transformed George Zimmerman into a white. The New York
Times, as in the Duke lacrosse case, led the way, first identifying Zimmerman
as a "white Hispanic," then as "half-Peruvian," then as a
man "who identifies himself as Hispanic."
--At the outset, when people's perceptions were being
formed, published photos of Trayvon Martin as a cherubic boy, not as the less
than cherubic teenager, and rarely mentioned or showed the photos of George
Zimmerman's injuries.
--Rarely, if ever, noted how much of Zimmerman's life had
been spent with blacks (including two black girls who were like stepsisters)
and standing up for and mentoring blacks.
--Rarely, if ever, mentioned the checkered past of
Trayvon Martin, who had been caught with stolen jewelry and a burglary tool in
his backpack; been suspended from his school three times; defaced a school door
with the letters "WTF"; and had marijuana in his system the night of
the confrontation with George Zimmerman.
--Fabricated the "iced tea" part of the
"iced tea and Skittles" narrative. This is important because the
drink he was actually carrying was AriZona Watermelon Fruit Juice Cocktail.
According to a popular recipe, that is the favored drink to combine with
Skittles and prescription, or Robitussin, cough syrup to produce a potion for
getting high known as "lean" and "purple drank" (and known
among some as "the poor man's PCP"). On his Facebook page, Trayvon
Martin had discussed making lean.
--Rarely, if ever, noted that the best-known law
professor in the country, a prominent liberal, Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law
School, not only argued that the Zimmerman trial should never have taken place,
but that the special prosecutor, Angela Corey, who brought the charges, should
be disbarred (just as Mike Nifong was) for distorting justice for political
reasons.
And on Friday, the president of the United States, the
quintessential man of the left, poured gasoline into the left-wing-made fire.
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