Trayvon’s Friend Rachel Jeantel Prompts National Debate About Black Youth Culture

After Rachel Jeantel left the witness stand following another six hours of grueling cross-examination by George Zimmerman’s lawyers, she immediately prompted a national debate about the language and attitudes of black youth culture and whether her testimony had helped or hurt the defendant.

Jeantel was billed as the prosecution’s star witness because she was the last person to talk on the phone to Trayvon Martin right before he was killed by a gunshot from Zimmerman. Her testimony is crucial because she reported that Zimmerman aggressively followed 17-year-old through the subdivision until he had no choice but to confront Zimmerman.

But that key fact in her testimony has been somewhat lost in the raucous debate about the language used by the 19-year-old Jeantel, her disrespectful attitude toward the defense, her inarticulateness and seeming lack of intelligence.

It is a fascinating instance of black youth culture, with its language and attitudes, splashed across a national stage as it collides with the protocol of the criminal justice system.

The key question will be how the jury— five white women and one Latina—views Jeantel’s believability after her two days of testimony. Will they be influenced by her language and attitude to view her as not very likable, and then make the jump that she is not to be trusted and believed?

Will they see Martin as an unsavory and less sympathetic character because he referred to Zimmerman as a “creepy-ass cracker,” according to Jeantel’s testimony, and also a “nigga?”

Will they understand that the word “cracker” that Jeantel attributed to Martin is less a malicious slur draped in his ill will toward Zimmerman than a toothless slang word black teens use to describe white people — just as they use the word “nigga” to describe everybody, including each other?

While many observers in the white and black communities are lambasting Jeantel for her lack of intelligence, more savvy trial-watchers will focus on the fact that she never wavered in her contention that Zimmerman was following Martin, which is the most important aspect of her testimony.

High-profile defense attorney Billy Martin told host Rev. Al Sharpton on MSNBC that despite all the noise about her language, “the jury is going to look at facts that make her believable, key facts. The key word she was consistent on is, this ‘creepy guy is following me.’ And the key elements here are not some of the slurs that may have been used. They may be offensive and the jury may not want to hear them, but on the key elements, was he following him, and did Trayvon Martin have a choice, I think the jury’s going to be convinced that Zimmerman, based on her testimony, was in fact following him and Trayvon Martin had no choice but to try to run, and he could not.”

Attorney Martin said that when he was a prosecutor in Washington, D.C., a lot of nasty and offensive language would have to be repeated aloud in court during trials, particularly involving homicides.

“This is not unusual in a homicide case to have vulgar language and activity that people find uncomfortable,” he said. “I think a juror and juries look right through that and look at what are we really trying to determine. They’re not trying to see if one was a good person or a bad person. There are facts here. And these facts will show who was the aggressor, who had the ability to flee and who had the gun…I don’t think these slurs are going to make a difference.”

In fact, former federal prosecutor Kendall Coffey said the tactic by defense attorney Don West to try to emphasize Jeantel’s inability to understand English and her lack of intelligence — she said she couldn’t read a letter she had a friend write to the Martin family because it was written in cursive — might ultimately backfire.

“There were a couple of points where the defense was starting to be a little patronizing,” Coffey said. “That always backfires. I like the way she stood her ground on that. You saw throughout some of the questioning how she would correct some of the defense lawyers, not rudely but simply standing up for herself. So whether the jury found her sympathetic or not, I think there had to be sort of a grudging respect for this very young woman who was dealing with a situation she couldn’t have imagined ever encountering, who by and large stuck true to her testimony and true to her beliefs.”

The defense tried to damage Jeantel’s credibility by showing how her story changed over the past year, particularly how her testimony differed from the description she gave in the letter her friend wrote for her.

The letter, in which Martin’s name is spelled incorrectly, gives her blow-by-blow account of what happened, which she said was intended for Trayvon’s parents, not for public consumption.

“He started walking then noticed someone was following him,” read the letter. “Then he decided to find a shortcut cause the man wouldn’t follow him. Then he said the man didn’t follow him again. Then he looked back and saw the man again. The man started getting closer. Then Trevon turned around and said Why are you following me!! Then I heard him fall. Then the phone hung up. I called back and got no response. In my mind I thought it was just a fight. Then I found out this tragic story. Thank you.”

In her testimony, she described Martin calling Zimmerman a “creepy-ass cracker,” and said she warned him to walk away, saying “it might be a rapist.”

After Martin told her he was going to try to “lose him” and get to the home, the man who was following him reappeared, prompting the confrontation.

Jeantel has consistently said she heard Martin ask Zimmerman why he was following him. But in an earlier account, she said Zimmerman replied, “What are you talking about?” But on the stand she said Zimmerman replied, “What are you doing around here?”

Jeantel testified she heard Martin’s phone headset fall and then Martin say “Get off!”—after which the phone went dead.

West asked Jeantel why she did not tell Martin’s family or their lawyer, Benjamin Crump, that the teen yelled “Get off!” Jeantel said, “because Crump is not law enforcement.”

West at one point tried to imply that Martin could have started a fight with Zimmerman but decided not to tell Jeantel about it.

“Of course, you don’t know if he (Martin) was telling the truth or not,” West said to Jeantel.

“Maybe if he decided to assault George Zimmerman, he didn’t want you to know about it?” answered West.

“That’s real retarded, sir,” Jeantel said. “When you don’t know the person, why risk it? Trayvon didn’t know him.”

“She’s the only one that can pull this off, because of the phone records.”

Wrap some tape around your head because it might just explode from this excerpt from her deposition with lead prosecutor Bernie De La Rionda:

BDLR: OK, and is that phone number under your name or under somebody else’s name?

Dee Dee: Now, it should be now under my name.

BDLR: And do you know what the provider is…is it T-Mobile? Or do you know?

Dee Dee: Yeah, T-Mobile…[mumbles]…I think.

It should “now” be under my name? She doesn’t know who she writes the check to every month? Excuse me?

This little tidbit is just one of many from the circumstances of the various interviews of “Dee Dee” that suggest that her testimony was created by Parks/Crump before she was the one auditioned and cast as the person to deliver it.

Do read the whole thing if you have the time. You will see that these guys knew that this whole thing stank out loud a year ago.

http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2013/02/06/beyond-absurd-about-witness-8-dee-dee-telephone-interview-trayvon-martin-family-attorney-benjamin-crump-i-did-not-ask-her-name-or-address/

I am shouting and jumping up and down and having a fit.

For all the right reasons. When schools were integrated, before the New Left used events to destroy the peaceful order that the schools had with fomented unrest (race rioting in schools, incited by communists), not only were the academic expectations for black children every bit the equal of those expectations for white children, but black children were expected by their teachers and often by their parents to excel in order to be respectable in the community at large.

The reason for that was indeed cultural, even societal in many areas, in that blacks often had to work to a higher standard in order to receive credit for their ability, in order to overcome a social inertia which had postulated they could sing and dance, and made reasonably good menial laborers, but which rarely gave credit for the doctors and scientists among blacks.

Such prejudices were seldom limited to racial parameters, we even see them today when snarky comments are made about political candidates graduating from a State College instead of an Ivy League University--the podunk State grad has to run rings around the person with the 'proper' degree to get the credit they deserve. The coastal urbane still look down their noses at flyover country.

Anyway, as racial unrest was incited in the newly integrated schools, at first there was resistance from the elders in the black community and school staff where I grew up. These people knew no good would come of this, after all, the children were at least as well positioned to take advantage of the means their parents saw as the ticket to prosperity: an education. That was the stated purpose of integration: to allegedly afford the same educational opportunities to blacks that whites had.

In typical Communist fashion, instead of bringing everyone up to the same level (and I'm not saying the black schools were not well staffed, many of the teachers were very good, by any standard), everyone was brought lower than before, to a new least common denominator, with the exception of a few schools where those in the local political power structure sent their children (before the flight to private schools).

Many of their parents had worked as field laborers, in kitchens, on the wharves unloading oysters, building piers, seawalls, roads, and houses, and knew the rigors of hard labor--and like anyone else, wanted better for their children. Better their children were doctors, lawyers, even secretaries, than scrubbing toilets and cutting tobacco (although the latter put many children through college).

But the New Left subverted that, they turned the High Schools which hadn't been gerrymandered out of being integrated into war zones. Those who had been raised to never refer to their darker skinned neighbors as "ni**er" learned the word when they were 'jumped', pummeled and mugged by groups of black youths and 'paybacks' went the other way. A fight that had little reason and no purpose quickly produced its own, and an era of unprecedented racial hostility was born.

Discipline fell apart as attorneys attacked school white staff who attempted to keep order as "prejudiced" against the blacks, and white students picked up the cry of 'we have equal rights, too'. Black teachers and staff were less than eager to punish white students because of possible racially based repercussions.

Order was lost, and with it, a generation.

Students who had achieved little were graduated to remove them from the ranks of the miscreants in the schools, if they were not hauled off in handcuffs by law enforcement.

Along the way, set-asides, quotas, "affirmative action" all moved the herd along, and entire neighborhoods changed to avoid the issue (essentially re-segregating the schools somewhat), but the goal of excellence in education was lost.

The Communists of the New Left prevailed, and for all their claims of 'looking out for their brothers', the damage done, the incredible setbacks continue, bringing the US closer to a race war than perhaps at any time in its history. Even the unrest of the '60s was limited to some areas, and often only the youths of that generation (The elders I knew wanted nothing to do with the growing unrest. One commented to a relative "We sent those folks home. They were down here trying to stir up trouble with our white folks, and we ain't never had no trouble with our white folks."

But now, with the exception of those who have not bought into the New Left victimhood anti-white (the man is holding you down) meme, the more pervasive attitude is one of 'the white man owes me'. The old guard, those elders who wanted better for their children, who saw hard work and educational excellence as the key to prosperity, is largely gone, at least so the media would have us believe. Unfortunately, the media would give the same perception to black people--that the gangsta lifestyle is the legitimate majority, and perhaps this has become a self-fulfilling prediction, enabled by the selective popularization/exploitation of "music" which glamorizes that fast track to cultural decay. That that decay has transcended cultural and racial barriers via popularization in the media, from movies to music and TV.

Are there angry black people out there? You betcha! Pull that on my culture (it's being done) and I'd be ticked off, too.

The real anger, though is being focused (by theNew Left's idealogical descendents, more communists) on the wrong people, naturally, as a means to hoodwink people who have been robbed of opportunity and prosperity by the very agents and agencies who claim to have their best interests at heart, but who only want to maintain control of a population by truly cutting off avenues to prosperity which might truly free that population, for their own personal prestige and profit.

Unless and until we all demand better, demand more, and rise to mutually defeat the destructive policies which continue to destroy the very fabric of Western Culture, the decay will continue. This begins at home with parents, parents who demand their children be better, learn more, excel, stay clean and sober, and morally straight, who will band together with other parents and other communities to demand better, not cheaper, not more funding, not more set-asides or mulligans but rigid standards which must be met.

Without this, there is a future full of lazy illiterates administering medical care to an aging population who can read the labels, and the collapse of the very civilization which relies on the very intelligence it eschews.

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