Death of the Gated Community

--Haves and Havenots,
Arend van Dam

Hickory Dickory Dock,
The mouse ran up the clock.
The clock struck ten,
The mouse came again
 --Hickory Dickory Dock, Nursery rhyme

Self-Defense is not murder 
--Sleeping with the Enemy (1991) 

In 1988, the crime rate in the United States rises four hundred percent.
The once great city of New York becomes the one maximum security prison
for the entire country. 
. . .

The United States Police Force, like an army,
is encamped around the island. There are no guards inside the prison,
only prisoners and the worlds they have made.
The rules are simple: once you go in, you don't come out.  
--Escape from New York (1981)
______________________

Its summertime, and that means the news cycle is hungry for more of the crazy in Florida; we do not disappoint.

This summer will see the latest recrudescence of the 26 February 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman as jury selection is underway for Zimmerman's 2nd degree murder trial. We will not discuss the excellence or degeneracy of either the shooter or the victim.

As we have written before, it a sad story oft-repeated, young black male with a brief history of flirting with the wrong side of the law, killed before be could manifest whatever it was he would mature into, usually killed by another of his own race. There is little to make this story any more noteworthy than the too-many other daily iterations of Martin's death, but the name and nationality of the shooter caught the eye of some crime reporter scouring the police blotter.

What a bombshell this might have been: Jewish man (=Zimmerman) shoots black teen (Are Jews armed? Don't they volunteer for the ACLU getting blacks their rights?) A sociological truism is that the underdog who is assisted will one day turn against his champions (=perceived betters), and people like Louis Farrakhan made sure no love was lost between the black and Jewish communities. But shooting? Surely Jewish people do not go shooting up blacks for racist reasons. This would have indeed been a coup for some gun-jumping journo, but it was not to be.

Turns out the shooter is Hispanic, and had volunteered time tutoring young black youths in his gated community of The Retreat at Twin Lakes in Sanford, Florida, described as "a multi-ethnic" gated community. The Zimmermans had lived there since 2009, and Mr. Zimmerman was the community watch captain. So we do not have a rogue Jewish shooter, nor do we have a version of the Crips and the Bloods.

Now, since it is not a rare occurrence for a young black man to be shot by a police officer or a peer, why the outrage surrounding the death of Trayvon Martin? Perhaps the story has become one of place, rather than players. Perhaps this story actually marks the death of the gated community, once the last refuge of affluent whites seeking protection from the ravages that play out daily in the inner cities of our country.

This story has touched a nerve: does it signal the end of the line for "White Flight"? Where do the whites go now that the last bastion of "whitehood" has been breached? The gated community is no longer a white haven, and is patrolled by Hispanic volunteers who will confront the perceived interlopers.

The sanctity of the gated community has been corrupted and penetrated from within by a degraded economy which does not discriminate when taking its victims down. Gated communities are no longer guaranteed havens or retreats from the ills that plague this world, for the residents have all been jostled about by the vagaries of an unstable world.

The Retreat at Twin Lakes in Sanford, Florida -- the now multi-ethnic gated community -- is no longer a place of retreat. It is just another community of striving individuals who do not care to look out of their windows when they hear a scuffle or a gunshot. The losers are the people who used to believe that gates could protect them.

26 Feb 2012: R.I.P., Gated Communities. Your death was slow but inexorable; you, the victim of a tanked economy and an ever-multi-culturing society. Whether you will be missed, and/or replaced, remains to be seen.

Dark Night

--Sleepwalking in America

The first and principal benefit
caused by the arid and dark night of contemplation:
the knowledge of oneself and of one’s misery
--Dark Night of the Soul, St. John of the Cross

--Have you met the devil?
I want to meet him too.
--Why do you want to do that?
--I want to ask him about God.
He must know. He, if anyone
--Seventh Seal (1957)
_________________

Sunday Homily: Propriety

It may seem an odd topic for RangerAgainstWar, but we, your humble writers, are often in the process of asking ourselves how to get it right, this appropriate living - behavior thing. Beyond identifying some of the problems, we are not sure.

The recent Aurora, Colorado shootings at the premiere of "The Dark Knight Rises" brought propriety back as a topic. Needless to say, another senseless, meaningless performance from a disenfranchised, perhaps deranged individual, and impropriety is not the word for such an unspeakable action. There is not much to say beyond another soon to be delivered dissection of another 15-second-murderous-famer by an obsequious press in collusion with a nation which does not really want to know why these senseless acts are now occurring with predictable regularity.

The thing that is improprietous is President Obama's visit to the Aurora Hospital which currently houses ten of the survivors. Colorado Governor John Hickenloope and Aurora Mayor Steve Hogan should be on-site. But for Obama, who interrupted his campaigning in Florida, this smacks of campaign flourish. The President should not glorify every failure via his presence, lending a gravitas which should be saved for events of national import. This is just another shooting event du jour.

We do not mean to be priggish, but a message sent from the White House would have sent the correct tone. Does our President intend to run hither and thither to address every heinous act? Obama is neither a goodwill ambassador nor a triage nurse.

What advice from the Gospels do we have on how to treat our fellows? The Golden Rule, the 10 Commandments and the Good Samaritan are a start, but these offer advice to the individual navigating his world, and do not need the reinforcement of a secular president. If they don't work prima facia, then perhaps they don't work.

The Aurora shooting occurred at the midnight premiere of the third installment in the Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight. The series has been hailed as a masterful depiction of the comic book characters, but it is far from light entertainment; the films raise sadism and violence to an art form, or so the aficionados say. One of the dead is a six-year old girl, her mother still in intensive care.

Who would take a young child to the midnight showing of such a gore fest? That is a story of societal malfunction in itself. The UK Telegraph ran a piece in '08 addressing the issue (Our attitude to violence is beyond a joke as new Batman film, The Dark Knight, shows).

We feel Mr. Obama has made several missteps in his capacity as Chief Executive of the United States. Several involve giving lie to the fact that we are a post-racial nation, as the pundits so glowingly declaimed after his election.

[1] Obama inappropriately stepped into the Cambridge, Massachusetts arrest of black scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. by saying the police department "acted stupidly", and later holding a "beer summit" at the White House between the arresting officer and Gates.

[2] Next, in the Sanford, Florida incident of a Stand Your Ground killing of a 17-year-old black male by a 28-year-old Latino male, Obama chose to say of victim "If I had a son he'd look like Trayvon", hopelessly biasing the adjudication of the case.

[3] Now, Obama is visiting Aurora following another mindless mass shooting. It is surely simply a photo-op in a contentious campaign.

We have some serious issues as a nation, but these lie underneath the matters of State and are not things our President should be addressing, nor is he able to address them.

As one of our readers recently commented, if we need to talk about race, let's talk about race; if guns, then let's talk about guns.

Why must we behave disingenuously, taking the long way about the barn, and never solving anything anyway? Americans may be loud and brash, but the bravado is shrill as it lacks self-awareness.

It Didn't Have to Happen

Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law,
for my own safety's sake!
--A Man for All Seasons (1966)

One of these mornings
You're going to rise up singing
Then you'll spread your wings
And you'll take to the sky
--Summertime,
George and Ira Gershwin
____________________

The Trayvon Martin - George Zimmerman media circus continues, with Mr. Zimmerman's bail for a charge of second degree murder set at $1 Million. As expected, the social media lynch mob is ramping up again, too. President Obama mistakenly stepped in, biasing the case when he said, "When I think about this boy, I think about my own kids." What a mess.

Why wouldn't Obama think about Zimmerman, who would be the more logical cognate. Both Obama and Zimmerman are mixed race; both prioritize community action. Zimmerman had mentored black children in his development (though the parents are too afraid to speak out in his defense.) Then the prosecutor in the Martin shooting said, "This did not have to happen."

While she is correct -- the event did not need to go down the way it did -- that is a personal judgement, not a legal yardstick. It does not matter how it ended but rather, was it within the framework of the law. It does not matter what should have happened, but rather, what did. That is the basis of legal action.

The Trayvon Martin ™ incident is just another sad case in the annals of random death in the United States. Why do people march over this death, yet cheerfully accept daily Predator and Hellfire strikes around the world daily? Why do those who protest have no problems with a Chicago murder rate outstripping that of Kabul, up 60% this year, primarily involving young black men?

Why should Martin's death not have happened, yet dead bodies in Yemen courtesy of U.S. guided missiles concern us not at all?

All life is of equal value, and if we do not accept this, then we must accede to totalitarian rule. It is odd that America calls Obamacare "socialism", yet raises nary a whimper at real totalitarian actions which threaten our core beliefs and values.

Socialism is the supposed bogeyman, while our entire internal security apparatus puts KGB efforts to shame. We operate under totalitarian security yet get squeamish over socialized medicine.

What are we missing here?

[This being summer, we are mining the archives for some good also-rans that did not get play, some never-rans, and might try out some new things. We are in the armpit of FLA and do not boat or beach, so we're just plum tuckered out. Languor is the mood. Mojitos and Gin and Tonic wind down the day -- and no HFCS in that tonic, please!

This is not to say new thoughts will stop flowing; they will.]

Enlightened Racism

I thought they'd arrest him,
but when they found a Koran in his house,
they had him executed
--V for Vendetta (2005)

We are oft to blame in this,
-- Tis too much proved -
that with devotion's visage and pious action,
we do sugar o'er the devil himself
--Hamlet, Shakespeare
_________________

Let me preface this by saying, this topic should not be plastered across the daily news. However, we cannot resist easy armchair quarter-backing and fueling our personal animosities.

We mentioned Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's recent non-trial yesterday. Legal Web site Justia asked last month if it would be “The Trial of the Century?”, the "it" being the KSM trial. Check out the recent news and that designator seems to have quickly morphed into the emotional deets surrounding the Zimmerman trial in Florida.

One would think matters of State like the charges that were revived against KSM and four other suspects in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks would concern us, but those things do not allow us the high entertainment value and facile judgements that come with a sordid Southern small town shooting, kitted out with the combustible media overlay of racial profiling (Trial in Martin Case, Filled With High Emotion).

The Daily Kos recently sent me a petition to stop the sale of shooting targets depicting a faceless figure in a hoodie. The site has 1,524 entries to date under the tag, "Trayvon Martin . . . the boy who was carrying a bag of skittles and an iced tea."

Is it tasteless to exploit a tragedy? Sure. But no moreso than the bloody Hadji target we featured recently here; yet inexplicably, Daily Kos has no beef with that blood lust. If one hewed to democratic principles, then the delight in gore would be eschewed regardless of its ethnic guise. Save, for many good liberals, only some topics tickle their sympathies. It is this inconsistency of compassion which makes them hard to take seriously.

It is horrifying and heartbreaking to witness the impassioned partisanship over what should be strictly judicial issues. Before any decision is rendered, we are fighting mad on behalf of whatever dog we affiliate with, for whatever reason. Remember the furor surrounding the Anita Hill - Clarence Thomas hearings, the Duke Lacrosse (non-) rape case or the O.J. Simpson trial? People were not interested in justice being served, so much as airing their personal proclivities; these trials served as vicarious vendettas for many.

Why are so many liberals assuming the guilt of George Zimmerman? Why are conservatives tending toward his innocence? Whatever side you're on, you are a racial bigot. The judge should move to seal key evidence in the case from the public until trial.

That a company sees profit in making and a cohort of consumers will buy a suggestive target to shoot speaks of the frustration many feel. We are losing our grip on democratic form when we try people in the public domain.

As an aside, today's WaPo reports, "Bristol Palin show finally ready to run -- After being retooled again, the reality show focusing on her life as a single mother will debut in June." Well at least that, right?

It is becoming increasingly hard to believe we are a serious nation.

We Are Zimmerman

The “difference … between man and other forms of life”
is that man has invented what he calls
“morality’ and ‘reason’ to justify what he is doing. …”
--Patriotic Gore, Edmund Wilson

If you have the facts, argue the facts;
If you have the law, argue the law;
If you have neither, pound the table really loudly
--old lawyer's adage

The range of what we think and do
is limited by what we fail to notice.
And because we fail to notice
that we fail to notice,
there is little we can do to change;
until we notice how failing to notice
shapes our thoughts and deeds
--R.D. Laing

War is the spectacular and bloody projection
of our everyday life, is it not?
War is merely an outward expression
of our inward state,
an enlargement of our daily action
--The Causes of War, J. Krishnamurti
_________________

The U.S. serves as the neighborhood watchman of the world, proudly and without apology. We figure we are the Good Guys for trying to keep order and teach the heathens a better way. Unfortunately, since they often behave in ways antithetical to our neatly arrayed protocol and are full of tribal enmity and such, they get killed sometimes.

This neighborhood watchism of the U.S. is related to the outsized news coverage of a discrete tragic event which occurred in late February in a small town in Central Florida, a story which has quickly fired up most of the blogosphere.

We are outraged as a nation over the death of a single young black American shot by a supposedly self-appointed "neighborhood watchman." We know nothing beyond this fact, and the loud and persistent calls to bring Zimmerman to justice hinge on the following claims:

• Trayvon Martin (TM) ™ did not present a mortal threat, therefore the killing was a criminal act

• TM ™ was just a convenient target for Zimmerman's (Z) fantasy of being an American Super Hero

• Firearms are too readily used in our society

All of these are clearly articulated presumptions of a civilized society and a liberal democracy -- hard to refute on the abstract level. All life is valuable, to include that of the most heinous criminals and low-life serial killers. The U.S. is a nation of law, and no individual transcends these precepts.

If TM ™ was not a threat to Z or to anyone's life, then his shooting was not justifiable and not in accordance with our societal values. However, into the simplicity of the legality of the issue creeps the fact that we are NOT a post-racial society, and we are a violent one pretending to be otherwise.

Returning to our neighborhood watchman analogy, If TM ™ was killed illegally, then so too every Afghan, Iraqi and Pakistani whom we killed simply for being Afghan, Iraqi or Pakistani, for we just as assuredly racially-profiled them, too. It's quite simple on that level: We are hypocrites because get morally outraged over one act of supposedly inappropriate violence while supporting a national policy of inappropriate violence.

Yet we project our collective moral outrage and guilt upon Z for his willingness to apply deadly force in what we interpret as an illegal use of violence while we as a nation habitually murder the moral equivalent of TM ™ every day of the week in the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©), and do so without any self-mortification. And without the slightest irony, we figure if we stamp him (Z) out, we can gain some sort of vindication and atone for our transgressions. We love our martyrs, and if that were to happen, we would get a two-fer in the TM ™ saga.

The U.S. was on board with invading Afghanistan and Iraq and 10 years later is still killing people who posed no lethal threat to our national or personal well-being. Yet surely the Iraqis were simply trying to buy some Skittles and iced tea (biscuits and kaffir) with rags and not hoodies on their heads, and we killed them as frivolously as Z. supposedly did a helpless, cookie-baking young man.

While the Afghanis never entered the sanctum sanctorum of our protected personal lives -- the sacred gated community -- they did enter the symbolic sanctuary of our sacred financial and business lives when their supposed charges attacked the Twin Towers in 9-11-01. As a result of that violation and intrusion, our taxes and lack of outrage have allowed the U.S. to "go Zimmerman" on tens of thousands of hadjis.

We are all Zimmerman.

Media Lynch Mob

Everybody's so busy wanting to be down
with the gang.
"I'm conservative", "I'm liberal",
"I'm conservative". Bullshit!
Be a fucking person! Lis-ten!
Let it swirl around your head.
Then form your opinion.
No normal, decent person is one thing, okay?
--Chris Rock

The cops reported you as just an another homicide
But I can tell that you were just frustrated
From living with Murder Incorporated
--Murder Incorporated,
Bruce Springsteen

one may smile, and smile,
and be a villain
--Hamlet, I. v
__________________

Rounding out race week: What it means to be liberal.

One of Ranger's associates once asked me, "So what are you?" after their discussion of their early years in Catholic school. "I'm a human" I said (thank you John Lennon), so absurd seemed the question, as though he could draw a bead on me via such categorization.

So how do we know who anyone is? We have been discussing the rush to judgement this week on the Trayvon Martin case. In legal matters, we come to know what's relevant based upon the workings of our legal system. If we no longer have faith in the process, we have a problem.

The quick and severe sectarianism even in the legitimate press over this issue has been shocking. Among the commentariat, if one sides for the guilt of Zimmerman, one is correctly liberal, and if one calls for delegating the matter to the authorities, one must be a bigot. I am confounded by the majority of my supposed fellows who cannot countenance my position of non-outrage over the non-revealed facts.

To be a liberal thinker is to be broad-minded and inclusive, to consider as many angles as possible, and to shut off no option until it becomes a dead-end or fails to jibe with the preponderance of the data one ingathers. Yet -- it seems today, liberal equates with toeing the party line, swallowing an agenda, being either-or. How did thought become so factionalized and such a bully point?

In the Martin case, what does this imply, this imperative to whitewash any possible culpability of the killed member of a confrontation if he is black and his killer is not? I am not making any judgement here, but simply asking the questions. Is this another opportunity for the anti-gun crowd to argue their agenda?

We have a race problem in this country; of this there is no doubt. It is Hobbesian in proportion, as it really is all against all. Of course, this is not admitted in polite company, but if you drive a mile across Division Street in most towns, you'll see it. It is confusing why we cannot seem to get it together. Part of the problem is that we are not brave enough to speak about it; part is that we -- none of us -- do not even understand it. Magical thinking -- not acknowledging the problem or erasing any culpability is not solving it.

There are some nuts and bolts deficiencies, but there are esoteric and philosophical aspects, too. It may be that people always need a scapegoat. Maybe we are lazy and scared, or angry, or a little of all. What seems clear is that we like to be outraged and like to feel righteous, but still, NIMBY rules the day for most.

I loved the "Portlandia" clip about the principles deep and abiding concern for the provenance and well-being of the chicken they were ordering at a restaurant, but the bottom line? They are going to eat Harold the chicken, providing his upbringing is devoid of enough terror so as not to upset their delicate equilibrium after ingesting him. And this is not to bang Portland (how wonderful to have a microbrew - cafe culture; I wish we had such a thing!)

So you can gussy it up and make eating meat a little more palatable, or you can stop eating it altogether. Your degree of conviction is what is on the chopping block.

All I'm saying is, we have some race problems, and we have people entrenched on both sides of the matter. The problem cannot be solved through outrage over one incident which only got print because of some salacious thinking in the hardcore liberal circles. The problem is not going to be fixed by throwing money at it; it is intransigent, and has thus far resisted the solutions offered.

So, you can get up in arms at the police, or call people pansies for not walking in the Tenderloin or being suspicious of a guy with a hoodie pulled over his head. But it's all about place and time, concealment and intent: A burqa, niqab or a chadri would arouse similar suspicions in our terror-fearing world, and what to do about that?

I'll stick with my original statement: Martin's death would have been a non-starter, save for some crime reporter picking up up on the novelty of the name of the shooter. By the time it went national, the reporters had only just discovered that Zimmerman was not only not white, that he was, in fact Hispanic and Catholic.

The Jewish students who campaigned for and died fighting in the American Civil Rights Movement are forgotten; it is a long-known sociological phenomenon that those who help pull you up are later resented for the inequity of power which they once represented.

In one of the more grotesque examples of the hatred in the Left, the radical's darling rag, CounterPunch (The Second Killing of Trayvon Martin), describes Zimmerman as "a pathetic, chubby, Chaz-Bono-lookalike" -- boy that really makes you bust a gut, huh?

Writer Eskow goes on to enjoy more schadenfreude at Zimmerman's expense: "Any man who lived through public high school knows George Zimmerman, and may well have had occasion to kick his ass," because, you know, George is fat and pathetic, and looks like a transgendered individual. Hey, let's laugh at some she-males ... do we feel bigger, yet?

And the final line delivers the knock-out punch: Zimmerman has "a shyster lawyer" -- surprise, surprise. So, dammit, we have missed the bus on finding a Jew perpetrator, but we can surely skewer a Jew sort-of accessory to the fact, right?

I see this media lynch mob as a prime example of racist bullying, and racism is racism. If you want to present as anti-racism Mr. Eskow, et. al, it would be really good if you were not racist.

So the liberals do the weighing act, and I guess up against the shysters and the alternatively-gendered buffoons, Mr. Martin in his hoodie is looking pretty good. Is this the best we can do in our efforts to ferret prejudicial rot out of our society?

You are either all in about civil rights and human rights and trust in the rule of law, or you wallow in a personal miasma in which you are constantly tallying up the score of least-reviled individuals based on your proximity to the perceived threat.

It looks like easy outrage has trumped rationality for the moment.

Doing the Wrong Thing

Y'all take a chill!
Ya need to cool that shit out!
And that's the double truth, Ruth!
--Do the Right Thing (1989)
_________________

You live in the land of the free, with a great body of jurisprudence, don't you think this is just a little bit -- mad? From Slate:

Spike Lee's Retweet Causes Couple To Flee

A Twitter user spread the wrong address for the man who shot and killed Trayvon Martin.

By Abby Ohlheiser | Posted Wednesday, March 28, 2012, at 11:54 AM ET

94

Spike Lee retweeted the wrong address for Trayvon Martin's killer last week, forcing a Florida couple to flee their home

Photo by Drew Hallowell/Getty Images.

An elderly couple has fled their Sanford-area home after a tweet—disseminated by Spike Lee—mistakenly gave their address as that of George Zimmerman, the man who shot and killed Trayvon Martin in Florida last month.

The Orlando Sentinel reports that David (72) and Elaine McClain (70) received hate mail, threats, and visits from reporters looking for Zimmerman after their address was incorrectly pegged as that of the man who killed Martin last month in what he says was self-defense.

Elaine McClain has a son named William George Zimmerman, no relation to the Zimmerman in question. The couple is currently living in a hotel.

The Smoking Gun traced the original tweet back to a California man, who apparently sent a tweet containing the incorrect address to Lee and other celebrities with a request for a retweet. Lee obliged, retweeting it to his 240,000 followers last Friday. He's since removed the post, but it continues to bounce around Twitter.

William Zimmerman told the Sentinel that he lived at his mother and step-father's house briefly after college. He registered to vote, got a driver's license, and registered a car at that address.

The Armed Citizen

Can you hear and do you care and
Can't you see we must be free to
Teach your children what you believe in
Make a world that we can live in
--Teach Your Children, CSN&Y
___________________

Since we are in Florida and guns and police are occasional topics, Ranger will address the furore surrounding the 26 Feb 12 death of a 17-year-old black youth in the central Florida town of Sanford.

First to the hagiography of Trayvon Martin and concomitant vilification of his killer, Zimmerman. [Anything that follows is not to justify murder, if that needs be said.]

An associate of Ranger's in the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) commented this morning to him that Trayvon Martin's police file has been sealed. We know that Martin was in Sanford because he was expelled from his South Florida school for as-yet unverified offense(s). So what we do know is, both participants in this engagement had rap sheets. Neither were lily white when it comes to their experience with the law.

Another fact is that thousands of black / white /brown /yellow people shoot and kill thousands of other black / white / brown and yellow people every year in the U.S. Can they all be hate crimes?

The exact statistics are hard to come by; a rough estimate is 30,000 firearm deaths in the U.S. per year, with almost half of those being suicides. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC),the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) all release their own stats; the FBI also tabulates justifiable homicides separate from murders. For instance, in 2005, there were 337 justifiable, fatal shoots by the LEOs and 143 by private citizens.

Since this is a criminal investigation, the general public can have no idea into which category this killing falls. It doesn't make anyone smarter or more liberal to side with the black youth over the late 20's Hispanic in the absence of all the data. However, it does appear to make some people feel better to slot themselves with one over the other. Why would that be? Do liberals suffer a higher collective guilt over past treatment of black people than we do over the treatment of Hispanics? If so, why is that?

We suggest if you really sympathize with the plight of blacks, you back it up with equal concern over every blight facing the black community in America, namely:

• What are you doing about the disproportionate rate of sexually transmitted disease (STD's) -- especially AIDs -- in the black community? According to Zack Burgess of the Philidelphia Tribune:

"African Americans represent one-half of the new HIV infections, those living with HIV and those who succumb to it each year in the United States. We also have higher rates for other STDs. Not to mention that Blacks represent 50% of the 2.8 million new Chlamydia infections and our infection rates for Gonorrhea and Syphilis are 16 and 23 times those of whites respectively."

"Nowhere is this impact greatest than in young people, especially young women. A recent CDC study estimated that 48% of black adolescent girls in the United States had at least one STD. Moreover, many are unaware of it."

• As of 2008, the U.S. Bureau of Justice estimated there were over 846,000 Black men in prison, making up 40.2% of all inmates in the system at large. More black men are now in prison than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began.

• The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in 2010, 25 percent of all students and nearly 40 percent of black and Hispanic kids fail to graduate on time; the dropout rate is slightly higher for Hispanics than for blacks.

• About 25% of the U.S. Army is black (though a much smaller percentage join front line combat units.)

• Black women have the highest teen pregnancy rates of any demographic @ 117 per 1,000 women aged 15–19 -- over twice the rate for non-Hispanic whites (46 per 1,000)

• African Americans have 2.4 times the infant mortality rate as non-Hispanic whites. They are four times as likely to die as infants due to complications related to low birth weight as compared to non-Hispanic white infants.

• In 2004, the homicide rate among black victims in the United States was 18.71 per 100,000. In comparison, the overall national homicide rate was 4.86 per 100,000 and the national homicide rate for whites was 2.97 per 100,000.

• While African Americans comprise 13.5% of the U.S. Population, 43% of all murder victims in 2007 were African American, 93.1% of whom were killed were African Americans (Black on Black Crime Coalition.)

Do you know these statistics? Do you care? If you think Trayvon is some kind of aberration, than you do not, and your wailing and gnashing of teeth is fallow and will flame out once the next new outrage is fed to you. If you do not care about the reality girding this discrete episode of violence, you can save your bile.

Maybe it is just like those adverts for the World Health Organizations that solicit funds for children with bloated bellies. Kids are cute and we feel sorry for them. We would turn away if the ads featured adults with festering sores and vermin surrounding them. It feeds our egos to have the little picture in our wallet of "our" Third World kid"

Ditto the way the press is marketing the Martin-Zimmerman fight: We see the latter's mug shot, but the former's smiling, pre-17-year-old face. We envision laughter and Skittle-eating Trayvon, and the lurking vigilante, Zimmerman. We do not see the scowling, hooded Trayvon or the one sporting his gold rack, because that would plant a seed of doubt in our minds, and the press and your ego trafficks in simple black and white.

Outrage can feel cathartic, but to what end?

Next: The Armed Citizen II: Race in America