Posted on 09/26/2013 3:47:43 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Slowly, I'm beginning to understand the freight of meaning in President Barack Obama's comment that Trayvon Martin could have been him.
George Yancy's "Walking While Black in the 'White Gaze' " in The New York Times sent shivers down my spine. Fifty years ago, he was a kid in north Philadelphia carrying a telescope, and a white police officer said to him, "Man, I almost blew you away. I thought you had a weapon."
Yancy says he's waiting for the day a white president says, "There is no way that I could have experienced what Trayvon Martin did (and other black people do) because I'm white, and through white privilege, I am immune to systemic racial profiling."
"Walking While Black in the 'White Gaze' " is an elegant essay that considers Martin Luther King Jr., Bernice King, Malcolm X and Frantz Fanon on being black and David Hume, Immanuel Kant and Thomas Jefferson on being white looking at blacks.
This is an essay worth reading if, like me, you are white and struggling every day to identify white privilege. We can't resist it if we don't see it.
A companion piece to Yancy's scholar's cry of anguish is a post on Questlove's Facebook page recounting a moment of anguish in an airport. Questlove, a musician who plays with The Roots and just released a new album with Elvis Costello, wrote a stream-of-consciousness reflection on being a big black man and frightening people. Questlove isn't writing for us whites. He's writing for his Facebook friends and fans. But his essay has attracted attention from Rolling Stone and New York Magazine.
Questlove recounts one time when his presence frightened a woman: "all the time i'm in scenarios in which primitive exotic looking me (6'2, 300 lbs, uncivilized afro for starters) finds himself in places that people that look like me aren't normally found. i mean what can i do? i have to be somewhere on earth correct?"
And he tells us his constant struggle, even today when he's rich and famous, not to feel like he's worthless. As he says in his Facebook note, "the overall message this whole trayvon case has taught me: you aint shit."
In his death, Martin offers us a gift, an opportunity to ponder and be changed by the anguish of the other. If we can open ourselves, if we can remember, if we can tell one another. Or else we can forget, and in forgetting, inflict more anguish.
I’m sure the worms consider him a gift right now.
She should stick to her bs of pushing abortion and gay marriage while pretending to be a nun.
He offered to share some stolen jewelry in his will?
I’m pretty sure that Trayvon never gave anything to anyone, not even his mother. He was a worthless leech on society and died as one. Of course this qualifies him to be a hero among the leftist vermin who also have no use to anyone and are two legged viruses.
More Purple Drank for the rest of us?
For reals, homes.. Skittles need get behind this and offer up some prizes for real. Ain't even playin'.
Yancy says he’s waiting for the day a white president says, “There is no way that I could have experienced what Trayvon Martin did
If I was President I could say that this very day!
Since I am not a drug user/dealer/thief/ gang banger wannabe I would not experience what Trayvon did. Of course Trayvon himself did not need to experience it if he had made better choices for his life. There. Feel better Mr Yancy?
There is no way I could be Obama.
He got educated as a foreign student, went to 3 colleges so he says, became a community organizer, a Senator, a US Senator and President all because he was black and could read a teleprompter.
They confiscated that, but I guess the beat-down GZ wouldn't take is still up for grabs.
I would tell Sister Mary Amnesia this:
Now that I am no longer an active soldier, I am not required to defend you. You’re on your own.
I’m still trying to figure out exactly what “white privilege” is. I keep hearing leftists mention it, but they can never seem to define it in a coherent way.
“...I am immune to systemic racial profiling...”
Yancy obviously isn’t worried about being the victim of a polar bear hunt.
Walking while White can get you beat-up, if not murdered outright, in many American cities these days.
"There is no way that I could have experienced what Trayvon Martin did (and other black people do) because I'm not gonna jump somebody and try to beat him to death.."
Trayvon’s death gave his town slightly safer streets.
His best gift to us was attacking an armed man.
Did he leave his gold teefsez to somebody?
The Zimmerman episode was politicized by the regime to serve it purposes and continues to do so which is resulting in random racial warfare. It is also perpetuated by fools who accept the regimes propaganda narration without question. Which is why I’ve been waging seems like a one man campaign to get the facts out using FR postings.
Until someone major in the political opposition wises up and exposes the sinister media to regime connection
and realizes that what the regime did here has a profound connection to the political system that is slowing being employed. Racial murders and stife are going to contine along with the perpuation of a urban myth.
Perhaps you are.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.