Posted on 03/30/2012 4:44:59 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
AS a black man who has been mugged at gunpoint by a black teenager late at night, I am not naive: I know firsthand the awkward conundrums surrounding race, fear and crime. Trayvon Martin's killing at the hands of George Zimmerman baffles this nation. While the youth's supporters declare in solidarity "We are all Trayvon," the question is raised, to what extent is the United States also all George Zimmerman?
Under assault, I didn't dream of harming my teenage assailant, let alone taking his life.
Zimmerman reacted very differently, taking out his handgun and shooting the youth in cold blood.
What gives?
Welcome to gate-minded America.
From 2007 to 2009, I traveled 27,000 miles, living in predominantly white gated communities across this country to research a book. I threw myself into these communities with gusto - no Howard Johnson or Motel 6 for me. I borrowed or rented residents' homes. From the red-rock canyons of southern Utah to the Waffle-House-pocked exurbs of north Georgia, I lived in gated communities as a black man, with a youthful style and face, to interview and observe residents.
The perverse, pervasive real-estate speak I heard in these communities champions a bunker mentality. Residents often expressed a fear of crime that was exaggerated beyond the actual criminal threat, as documented by their police department's statistics. Since you can say "gated community" only so many times, developers hatched an array of Orwellian euphemisms to appease residents' anxieties: "master-planned community," "landscaped resort community," "secluded intimate neighborhood." No matter the label, the product is the same: self-contained, conservative and overzealous in its demands for "safety." Gated communities churn a vicious cycle by attracting like-minded residents who seek shelter from outsiders and whose physical seclusion then worsens paranoid groupthink against outsiders. These bunker communities remind me of those Matryoshka wooden dolls. A similar-object-within-a-similar-object serves as shelter; from community to subdivision to house, each unit relies on staggered forms of security and comfort, including town authorities, zoning practices, private security systems and personal firearms.
Residents' palpable satisfaction with their communities' virtue and their evident readiness to trumpet alarm at any given "threat" create a peculiar atmosphere - an unholy alliance of smugness and insecurity. In this us-versus-them mental landscape, them refers to new immigrants, blacks, young people, renters, non-property-owners and people perceived to be poor.
Zimmerman's gated community, a 260-unit housing complex, sits in a racially mixed suburb of Orlando, Fla. Mr. Martin's "suspicious" profile amounted to more than his black skin. He was profiled as young, loitering, non-property-owning and poor. Based on their actions, police officers clearly assumed Zimmerman was the private property owner and Martin the dangerous interloper. After all, why did the police treat Martin like a criminal, instead of Zimmerman, his assailant? Why was the black corpse tested for drugs and alcohol, but the living perpetrator wasn't?
Across the United States, more than 10 million housing units are in gated communities, where access is "secured with walls or fences," according to 2009 Census Bureau data. Roughly 10 percent of the occupied homes in this country are in gated communities, though that figure is misleadingly low because it doesn't include temporarily vacant homes or second homes. Between 2001 and 2009, the United States saw a 53 percent growth in occupied housing units nestled in gated communities.
Another related trend contributed to this shooting: our increasingly privatized criminal justice system. The United States is becoming even more enamored with private ownership and decision making around policing, prisons and probation. Private companies champion private "security" services, alongside the private building and managing of prisons.
"Stand Your Ground" or "Shoot First" laws like Florida's expand the so-called castle doctrine, which permits the use of deadly force for self-defense in one's home, as long as the homeowner can prove deadly force was reasonable. Thirty-two states now permit expanded rights to self-defense.
In essence, laws nationwide sanction reckless vigilantism in the form of self-defense claims. A bunker mentality is codified by law.
Those reducing this tragedy to racism miss a more accurate and painful picture. Why is a child dead? The rise of "secure," gated communities, private cops, private roads, private parks, private schools, private playgrounds - private, private, private - exacerbates biased treatment against the young, the colored and the presumably poor.
******
Rich Benjamin is the author of "Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America" and a senior fellow at Demos, a nonpartisan research center.
Some of them are set up as Condos, rental units, or maybe even a combination of methods with the tenants also being the building's owners ~ these structures, mostly rehabs, are called CO-OPS. (which is exceptionally popular in some of New York city's toughest neighborhoods).
Large numbers of lowrise apartment and condominium developments are also "gated communities' with restrictions at the main entrance (the gate), the interior entrances, and major common facilities such as swimming pools.
One of the better ideas for improving security in older inner city public housing units has been to build interior fences that keep outsiders from bothering the people living there as they go to and from other places (stores, schools, work, church).
What we have in Florida are all the traditional forms of "gated communities" plus a variation on that theme, what I call "The Broken Gated Community". That's the one where the Great Obama Recession has impoverished folks to the point they have to fire the guards!
Why should some people escape crime by gating their community? Not fair! We should all be subject to same high crime. Equality rules! Poor Trayvon was just trying to escape from his crime infested neighborhood into nice safe neighborhood of Zimmerman. /S/S/S
Blah, make that Buckwheat. And I was late. Oh, well.
Did he interview Rev. Jeremiah Wright? He lives in a gated community.
Child? Only to his parents is a 6'2" 17 year old out wandering in the dark with a hoodie who attacks someone, knocks them down & pounds their head on the ground still a "child" ... someone's child is always their child, no matter how old & I won't begrudge them that. To the rest of us, Trayvon was NO child ..... nor was he or did he act like one.
“Under assault, I didn’t dream of harming my teenage assailant, let alone taking his life. “
Maybe cuz HE was the one with the gun
Cold blood - Martin was the living dead? Maybe the autopsy report will tell us.
>>what if the hispanic didnt have a gun? Would his head have been smashed like a pumpkin on the sidewalk?
Then they would have arrested Trayvon and put him in prison, and Corinne Brown and Jesse Jackson could whine about “all the young black men in prison”.
“Under assault, I didn’t dream of harming my teenage assailant, let alone taking his life.”
A) Because he got the drop on you.
B) The guy who shouldn’t have had a gun had one and you didn’t.
C) At that point, your dreaming is kind of moot.
Gee, I remember when you could keep your doors open. Wonder what happened that gated communities are needed/wanted.
Those white crackers need to learn their place.
is the place where he was killed anywhere on a straight line between his house and the store where he went to buy skittles?
Still, if you'll just look at the videos of that community you'll notice the surrounding "WALL" is just high enough to keep in the toddlers and still let out the dogs.
I went to Google Earth and toured the part of the complex visible from the public roads ~ there is no coverage "inside" the wall. The basic building is a four unit townhouse. There are about 70+ such units. There's a passage between the buildings. It seems to be grassy ~ no sidewalk at all. The complex is divided into two major areas with a main street cutting off the East side from the Western 2/3s. There's a sidewalk there. There's also a sidewalk along the ring road.
When you look at the news videos you'll see police tape up around a grassy area. Presumably there's a sidewalk somewhere. Inasmuch as that sidewalk is so important to an understanding of the case it would be a good idea for someone who thinks it's the ONLY really important physical feature there to get busy and find out exactly where it was.
I spent a fair amount of time examining the area and couldn't find it.
I THINK ZIMMERMAN SHOULD HIRE A LAWYER AND IMMEDIATLE SUE THESE MEDIA WHORENALISTS OUT OF BUSINESS
THEY ARE COMPLICIT IN INCITING VIOLENCE AGAINST HIM
He’s much more upset about the very occasional white-on-black shooting, and doesn’t give a damn about the much more frequent black on black and black on white homicides.
The sidewalk is clearly visible in Google Earth. It’s also visible in this diagram. http://www.wagist.com/2012/dan-linehan/evidence-that-trayvon-martin-doubled-back#comments
Tell me, how long have you been following this story?
The basic story is both went out for an errand. Then one of them was shot.
There's a lot of stuff in the story that leads to murkiness since none of this ties together as neatly as a story on CSI.
The author seems to have stumbled onto a sado-masochistic homoerotic plot. To be robbed and then raped, no room to hate.
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