Time for whites to start wearing these.
Posted on 04/08/2012 1:49:53 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
A black boy shot because his attacker thought his hoodie made him look suspicious. An Iraqi woman brutally murdered by someone who left a note telling her to "go back to your country, terrorist." These were the incidents that led one hundred Columbia students to gather on campus on April 5 at the Muslim Students Association's vigil "Hoodies and Hijabs Against Hatred: Justice for Trayvon and Shaima," cosponsored by the Columbia Democrats, the Columbia-Barnard International Socialist Organization, the Columbia Queer Alliance, and the Interfaith Caucus.
For an hour, students stood holding candles and taking turns speaking about race, prejudice, and injustice. The students who came out to the vigil quickly moved beyond the particular cases of Trayvon Martin and Shaima al-Awadhi to protest against the institutionalized racism and stereotypes that create the kind of legal and cultural system where an adult man can shoot an unarmed black boy dead and walk free.
"It's about more than just these two," explained Alay Syed, a Barnard College first-year and Vice President of the Muslim Students Association. In her introductory remarks, Syed set the tone of the evening. "We're here to speak out against the hatred and intolerance that touch everyone, about the thousands of Trayvons that we will never know about." Syed's focus on the broader problems of racial profiling, harassment, and violence allowed the protestors to get past the specifics of the cases, such as recent evidence suggesting that al-Awadhi's murder was not a hate crime, and down to the more disturbing underlying problems. The murder of two individuals was tragic, but what brought Columbia out to protest with real anger was the racial motivation of the killings. Martin and al-Awadhi were murdered because of what they looked like.
Students came out wearing either hoodies or hijabs, symbolically adopting the garments of the murder victims. Columbia's vigil was just one of many at universities across the nation in which students wore articles of clothing which were blamed for Martin's and al-Awadhi's deaths in order to challenge the idea that anyone's character can be divined from their appearance. While many students explicitly denounced culturally pervasive racism when they took their turn speaking at the vigil's microphone, others felt that the issue was more nuanced. "There should be less of a focus on explicit racism," said Swara Salih, a Columbia College sophomore and member of the Columbia Democrats. Salih and instead offered an idea of intersectional stereotyping. "There's a problem in our society that we categorize people into types based on a number of factors, including socioeconomic class as well as race."
Behind their hoodies and hijabs, a diverse section of Columbia students gathered: men and women, black, white, and brown, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and atheist. Identity was blurred, and that was exactly the students' point: no assumptions can be made from appearance, whether from race, clothing, or a combination of the two, and certainly no assumptions can be made which justify murder.
The kind of "Stand Your Ground" laws which George Zimmerman is hiding behind in Florida disagree with this presumably basic statement that you can't judge a book by its cover - the sort of thing that the rest of us learn in elementary school. "Stand Your Ground" laws instead protect stereotyping - if you feel that you are being threatened, you are legally justified in reacting with deadly force. How might you feel that you are threatened? The law doesn't care. In Zimmerman's case, being near a large black boy wearing a hoodie was threat enough. In effect, "Stand Your Ground" laws enable and even condone prejudiced stereotyping by declaring that concepts of "threat" based in false, racist ideologies justify murder.
Trayvon Martin paid the ultimate price for George Zimmerman's twisted worldview. Zimmerman may pay none. It is up to activists like the Columbia students who protested on Friday to continue speaking out against validations of prejudice wherever they reveal themselves. Only by showing our continued outrage will we change the culture and the system which it created.
Time for whites to start wearing these.
Don’t let facts get in the way of your editorializing/pandering, Jeanine. Now go back to your safe white sanctuary and pat yourself on the back for being such a good little liberal.
What about Blacks who don’t agree with this mindless hysteria?
Is there also someone there to protest the stereotype of people “clinging to their guns and bibles”?
Trayvon Martin did not die because he was wearing a hoodie. This is just crazy irrationality. Leftists are very good at it. It doesn’t mean a dam thing.
Trayvon Martin did not die because he was wearing a hoodie. This is just crazy irrationality. Leftists are very good at it. It doesn’t mean a dam thing.
“no assumptions can be made from appearance, whether from race, clothing, or a combination of the two, ...”
KKK garb is cool, then?
So the life of Trayvon Martin has value, but the lives of most young black men have no value?
And justice for Moslems has value, but in the overwhelming majority of cases (like when acid is poured onto the faces of their women) it has no value?
This is the ideology of liberalism.
The Nation? Intellectual morons.
“KKK garb is cool, then?”
For the Democrat party, yes. They started the KKK, and KKK members are all democrats.
All the evidence indicates the Iraqi woman was murdered by her husband, although I haven’t yet seen that he’s been charged.
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>> and KKK members are all democrats. <<
True.
I just wonder if these people are really foolish enough to believe that you can’t make assumptions about a person based on their clothing, ever... They feel good about themselves for saying it, are they naive enough to live it?
What in the world is that?
Scum of the earth.
What does it look like?
Eric Harris’ Duster With Mask And Gloves:
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