By: Marilyn Assenheim
On Wednesday and Thursday of last week, GlobalGrind went out of its way to advance The Lyin’ King’s vision of racial harmony. Both pieces received over 30,000 Facebook “likes.” Both opinion pieces established a premise, as fact, that white people can never understand the black condition. Both pieces went out of their way to reinforce that what was on display during Rachel Jeantel’s testimony in the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin trial, was not actually what was seen and heard. What makes this worth noting is that this is deliberate balkanization of a segment of America. It seeks to replace justice with self-serving cant.
Back in the day, the racial dismissal in vogue was “it’s a black thing, you wouldn’t understand.” The problem with that assumption is that any sane person, of any color, really does understand. Rachel Samara, who authored the first preemptive strike,” What White People Don’t Understand About Rachel Jeantel”, said, among other things:
“I can imagine George Zimmerman’s defense is just hoping some of those 5 white jurors have some prejudices… or hell, are even racist, because if they are, their tactic to make Rachel out to be less intelligent, rather than less credible than she actually is, might actually work. “
“It seems the middle-aged white men on both sides of this case are totally unaware of what Rachel’s life is like – a 19-year-old high school student of Haitian descent who knows nothing more than the few block radius she has grown up in. The cultural differences here are exponential.”
“Rachel was consistent. Yes, the defense proved she had lied in the past, but she didn’t deny it. On the contrary. She was very honest about it, and even led us to sympathize with her reasoning for it – ”
To begin with, an assumption of what the defense or prosecution has in mind is not fact. It is bigotry. They hope the jury is racist? If Samara is insistent that white people can’t comprehend black people, how can anyone believe what she postulates about white people? Next, Jeantel’s “Haitian descent” is irrelevant. Jeantel is a native of Miami, not Mars. The cultural difference is not “exponential.” It is non-existent. Finally the defense proved, conclusively, that Jeantel lied; not in “the past” but on the stand. Jeantel gave evidence that she’d written and sent a letter, cataloguing what Martin said to her, during their last conversation. When asked to read that letter Jeantel admitted that she did not write or send it. By her own admission, this “intelligent, 19-year old high school student” confessed that she is unable to read or write cursive script. The letter was written in cursive script.
Christina Coleman amplified the pitiful Jeantel angle with a piece entitled “Why Black People Understand Rachel Jeantel.” To be clear, Coleman includes Latinos among white people. Presumably, to use Samara’s and Coleman’s paradigm, “white people” must be anyone that isn’t “black.” Coleman reckons Jeantel was bullied by the legal system:
“…instead of trying to understand her, people are reducing the miscommunication to semantics… her broken ‘Kings English,’ and her anger. Without even realizing that she comes from a home where Creole is her first language, or that her friend was killed just seconds after he last spoke to her. Wouldn’t you be frustrated in front of a court that refuses to understand you?”
“… if there is anything that black people can understand that those judging her are not, it’s the loss of life without justice.”
“…your world and our world are…excuse the cliché…worlds apart. And that, my friends, was never Rachel Jeantel’s fault.”
My first language isn’t English, either. Jeantel had enough English to use racial epithets as frequently as punctuation. Coleman’s question presupposes that Jeantel, in the entire history of American jurisprudence, is the only witness that has ever been “upset” on the stand. Moreover, it isn’t the court’s responsibility to “understand” a witness. Jeantel offered the court evidence. Then she lied about it. The court certainly “understands” when a witness lies. Nothing in Jeantel’s background makes that okay. Next, Coleman convicts Zimmerman: “loss of life without justice.” If ever there was a lack of intelligence on display, Coleman trumped the benighted Jeantel with that ill-conceived expression of wishful thinking. Lastly, Coleman insists that blacks are a world unto themselves. She asserts that black and white populations are “worlds apart” and that this “was never Jeantel’s fault.” It is the fault of anyone who perpetrates that idea and believes it.
Dr. Walter E. Williams is an economist, author, commentator, and academic. He is also black. His website contains a printable, tongue-in-cheek certificate absolving white Americans of guilt against blacks. Political correctness has conferred the black separateness fantasy ongoing license. It openly began when Al Sharpton wasn’t held responsible for the for the lives he destroyed with his Tawana Brawley machinations. That trend continues. Extremists engineer racist incidentsagainst themselves , hoping to create racial furor. No one is ever punished for it. Black on white violence goes unreported and unprosecuted. But rational human beings, regardless of color, understand that declaring oneself victimized neither advances their cause nor does it make deceitful assertions true.
If any segment of Americans chooses to create a subculture, slang-uage and behaviors that intentionally segregates them from other Americans their choice does not forgive them their responsibility as Americans. There is still only one law in this nation; everyone must abide by it. Attempts to fashion oneself indecipherable by the rest of society, because of a perverted desire to preserve victimhood in perpetuity, is a despicable ambition. It is cowardly and, above all, wrong.
Any segment of the black community that clings to prejudice as a security blanket only reduces its own options. That ploy, straining an ever-more-tentative stranglehold on America’s evaporating guilt, is losing its power. As it should after a 200 year run.
Comment :
It occurs to me that Michelle Obama comports herself in the same way that Rachel Jeantel did in the courtroom where she was expected to be the prosecution's star witness against George Zimmerman, who is on trial for killing Trayvon Martin in self-defense.
Michelle Obama is loud, crude, wears hideously expensive, ill-fitting clothes, complete with slacks that showcase panty-lines that look like crevices in the Grand Canyon. Liberals decried the fact that "pundits" (which is code-speak liberals notably use when they are trying to subtly and insidiously have the readers think they're referencing conservatives when in reality it's other liberals) criticized Jeantel's weight and attitude.
Much about Jeantel reminded me of the Obama woman. The Obama woman is gregarious and esteems herself far above reality. She is unattractive, unlike Jeantel, who is simply unlearned pursuant to acceptable haute couture. And when it comes to criticizing Jeantel's speech, hers pales in comparison to the Obama woman saying she was only proud of America because it elected her husband and her infamous comment of "all this for a damn flag." I would say those comments put her on the bottom of the pissoir where Jeantel was being schooled.
Jeantel said that using pejoratives like "cracker" and "nigger" are common references in her lexicon and the lexicon of those where she lives. That, too, reminds me of the Obama woman's condemnation of students of color who did not share her contempt for whites when she attended Princeton.
Justin Peters tried the old guilt trip. Writing for Slate.com, he implied that Jeantel gave conservatives (white ones, and blacks who wanted to be white) "an excuse to point and laugh at a poor, black teenager who comes from an America that we'd rather not acknowledge exists." It's the liberal way.
Personally I would have said substitute the Obama woman's name for Jeantel and you have a woman staying in the White House, who comports herself like Rachel Jeantel with Ivy League degrees and uses our taxpayer dollars like her personal American Express Black (arguably the most prestigious credit card in the world). I would have also said the Obama woman and her husband come from a place we would like not only to forget existed but in fact wish never existed, but there's no getting around the reality of hell.
Michelle Obama is loud, crude, wears hideously expensive, ill-fitting clothes, complete with slacks that showcase panty-lines that look like crevices in the Grand Canyon. Liberals decried the fact that "pundits" (which is code-speak liberals notably use when they are trying to subtly and insidiously have the readers think they're referencing conservatives when in reality it's other liberals) criticized Jeantel's weight and attitude.
Much about Jeantel reminded me of the Obama woman. The Obama woman is gregarious and esteems herself far above reality. She is unattractive, unlike Jeantel, who is simply unlearned pursuant to acceptable haute couture. And when it comes to criticizing Jeantel's speech, hers pales in comparison to the Obama woman saying she was only proud of America because it elected her husband and her infamous comment of "all this for a damn flag." I would say those comments put her on the bottom of the pissoir where Jeantel was being schooled.
Jeantel said that using pejoratives like "cracker" and "nigger" are common references in her lexicon and the lexicon of those where she lives. That, too, reminds me of the Obama woman's condemnation of students of color who did not share her contempt for whites when she attended Princeton.
Justin Peters tried the old guilt trip. Writing for Slate.com, he implied that Jeantel gave conservatives (white ones, and blacks who wanted to be white) "an excuse to point and laugh at a poor, black teenager who comes from an America that we'd rather not acknowledge exists." It's the liberal way.
Personally I would have said substitute the Obama woman's name for Jeantel and you have a woman staying in the White House, who comports herself like Rachel Jeantel with Ivy League degrees and uses our taxpayer dollars like her personal American Express Black (arguably the most prestigious credit card in the world). I would have also said the Obama woman and her husband come from a place we would like not only to forget existed but in fact wish never existed, but there's no getting around the reality of hell.
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MYCHAL MASSIE
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