Ta-Nehisi Coates's Blog, page 26

Yeah, Alec Baldwin Really Is A Bigot

Reuters

Responding to Andrew Sullivan's argument, and my own, that Alec Baldwin is—in fact—kind of a bigot, Wes Alwan offers the following defense:

For calling a photographer a “cocksucking fag” in a blowup caught on video, and another journalist a “fucking little bitch” and “toxic queen” on twitter, Baldwin has been roundly condemned as a “bigot” and “homophobe,” despite the fact that he has been a vocal supporter of gay rights. ...

These condemnations are grounded in a number of highly implausible theses that amount to a very flimsy moral psychology. The first is the extremely inhumane idea that we ought to make global judgments about people’s characters based on their worst moments, when they are least in control of themselves: that what people do or say when they’re most angry or incited reveals a kind of essential truth about them. The second is that we are to condemn human beings merely for having certain impulses, regardless of their behaviors and beliefs. The third is that people’s darkest and most irrational thoughts and feelings trump their considered beliefs: Baldwin can’t possibly really believe in gay rights, according to Coates, if he has any negative feelings about homosexuality whatsoever. The fourth, implied premise here – one that comes out in the comical comments section following Coates’ post – is that we are to take no account whatsoever of the possibility of psychological conflict. We refuse to allow ourselves to imagine that a single human being might have a whole host of conflicted thoughts and feelings about homosexuality: that they might be both attracted to it and repelled by it....

It is just as ludicrous to condemn people for being afraid of or repulsed by homosexuality as it is to condemn them for having violent impulses. Freud thought that homophobia and same sex attraction (which is not the same thing as homosexuality per se) were universal and mutually implicating (a man, for instance, might be both repelled by and fascinated by homosexuality because he associates it with the both terrifying and thrilling prospect of submitting and being penetrated). Whether or not you like such associations or agree with Freud, you cannot condemn people merely for being afraid of something, or for having certain feelings or associations: what counts are their considered thoughts and behaviors. The bigot who gets on TV to tell you that homosexuality ought to be against the law does not belong in the same category as a vocal advocate of gay rights who has not purified himself entirely of negative feelings about homosexuality. Homophobic feelings are no more of a choice than homosexuality itself...

Before I offer a rebuttal, I think it's important that we take an account of the evidence. Two years ago, Baldwin—hounded by paparazzi—Baldwin reacted as follows:

It seems Alec finally had enough ... This time, Alec -- clutching a pink stuffed animal -- approached one of the photogs who was hanging out in front of his apartment building and lashed out, "I want you to shut the f**k up ... leave my neighbor alone ... get outta here."

At one point, at the beginning of the confrontation, It sounds like Alec says to the photog, "I know you got raped by a priest or something."

Then, in an effort to assert his dominance, Alec got right in the pap's face ... and in a menacing tone said, "You little girl."

You should watch the video in the hyperlink to get the full effect of this.

A few months ago, offended by something a reporter—who is gay—had written, Baldwin said the following:

George Stark, you lying little bitch. I am gonna fuck you up … I want all of my followers and beyond to straighten out this fucking little bitch, George Stark. @MailOnline … My wife and I attend a funeral to pay our respects to an old friend, and some toxic Brit writes this fucking trash … If put my foot up your fucking ass, George Stark, but I’m sure you’d dig it too much … I’m gonna find you, George Stark, you toxic little queen, and I’m gonna fuck….you….up.

Then two weeks ago Baldwin, again hounded by paparazzi, pursued the cameraman and once they'd back off called one a "cock-sucking fag." Baldwin claimed that he'd actually said "cock-sucking fathead." He also added that he was unaware that "cock-sucker" was a derogatory term for gay men.

Yesterday, it came out that Alec Baldwin will no longer have a show on MSNBC. Baldwin offered the following commentary on his cancellation:

But you've got the fundamentalist wing of gay advocacy—Rich Ferraro and Andrew Sullivan—they're out there, they've got you. Rich Ferraro, this is probably one of his greatest triumphs. They killed my show.

Baldwin didn't blame his own repeated use of anti-gay—dare I say bigoted—slurs. He blamed "the fundamentalist wing of gay advocacy." 

My way of understanding this is simple. If I were to be found to, in anger, repeatedly employ anti-Hispanic slurs, to refer to my enemies as "wetbacks" or "illegals," if I were found to address an actual Latino journalist with the term and threaten to say "kick his ass back across the border," and then having lost my job here at The Atlantic blame "the fundamentalist wing of La Raza," I think you would be justified in calling me a bigot. I don't think my support for, say, the DREAM Act, or my horror at Arizona's immigration laws

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From Super-Predators to the 'Knockout Game'

The Times looks into the latest "trend" in which young black boys try to knock a random person out with one punch. What they find is unsurprising:

And in New York City, police officials are struggling to determine whether they should advise the public to take precautions against the Knockout Game — or whether in fact it existed.

“We’re trying to determine whether or not this is a real phenomenon,” Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said on Friday. “I mean, yes, something like this can happen. But we would like to have people come forward and give us any information they have.”

The Times looked into one of the more prominent incidents:

Much news coverage of reported knockout attacks includes 2012 footage from a surveillance camera in Pittsburgh of James Addlespurger, a high school teacher who was 50, being swiftly struck to the ground by a young man walking down an alleyway with some friends. Yet the Pittsburgh police said the attacker insisted the assault was not part of any organized “game.”

“This was just a random act of violence,” Police Commander Eric Holmes said in a televised interview last year. “He stated that he was just having a bad day that day.” The assailant saw Mr. Addlespurger, the commander said, “and decided this was a course of action he was going to take.”

Telecasts have also shown teenagers in Jersey City, their faces blurred, describing knockouts, which they defined as anyone might; someone is struck and knocked out. But they did not report that it was a game.

Bob McHugh, a police spokesman in Jersey City, said there had not been a single reported knockout incident there.

“If there ever was an urban myth, this was it,” he said. Still community concerns spurred by the video prompted a member of the City Council there, Candice Osborne, to post on her Facebook page, “there have been NO reported instances of this type of assault.”

This is not like finding a dime-bag in someone's pocket, or even catching someone with a vial of crack. People who assault other people for amusement should be prosecuted. Understanding this, it's also worth pointing out that, in terms of long-term trends, we are in the midst of a historic dip

But since the days of slavery, into the days of super-predators, and now the time of the Knockout Game, there has always been a strong need to believe that hordes of young black men will overrun the country in a fit of raping and pillaging. It's how we justify ourselves. Information can't compete with national myth.

       

From Super-Predators To 'The Knockout Game'

The Times looks into the latest "trend" in which young black boys try to knock a random person out with one punch. What they find is unsurprising:

And in New York City, police officials are struggling to determine whether they should advise the public to take precautions against the Knockout Game — or whether in fact it existed.

“We’re trying to determine whether or not this is a real phenomenon,” Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said on Friday. “I mean, yes, something like this can happen. But we would like to have people come forward and give us any information they have.”

The Times looked into one of the more prominent incidents:

Much news coverage of reported knockout attacks includes 2012 footage from a surveillance camera in Pittsburgh of James Addlespurger, a high school teacher who was 50, being swiftly struck to the ground by a young man walking down an alleyway with some friends. Yet the Pittsburgh police said the attacker insisted the assault was not part of any organized “game.”

“This was just a random act of violence,” Police Commander Eric Holmes said in a televised interview last year. “He stated that he was just having a bad day that day.” The assailant saw Mr. Addlespurger, the commander said, “and decided this was a course of action he was going to take.”

Telecasts have also shown teenagers in Jersey City, their faces blurred, describing knockouts, which they defined as anyone might; someone is struck and knocked out. But they did not report that it was a game.

Bob McHugh, a police spokesman in Jersey City, said there had not been a single reported knockout incident there.

“If there ever was an urban myth, this was it,” he said. Still community concerns spurred by the video prompted a member of the City Council there, Candice Osborne, to post on her Facebook page, “there have been NO reported instances of this type of assault.”

This is not like finding a dime-bag in someone's pocket, or even catching someone with a vial of crack. People who assault other people for amusement should be prosecuted. Understanding this, it's also worth pointing out that, in terms of long-term trends, we are in the midst of a historic dip in violent crime, not a rise.

But since the days of slavery, into the days of super-predators, and now the time of the Knockout Game, there has always been a strong need to believe that hordes of young black men will overrun the country in a fit of raping and pillaging. It's how we justify ourselves. Information can't compete with national myth.

       

The Answer to the Crisis in Democracy Is More Democracy

Via Andrew Sullivan, I see Eric Posner in Slate arguing that "centrists" should be in mourning over the filibuster. I think Posner's case to progressives, liberals, and lefties deserves particular attention:

To provide an extreme example, under a pure system of majority rule 51 percent of the population could pass a law that transferred the wealth of 49 percent of the population to the majority. If at the next election, the other side managed to win, it could expropriate the wealth back. The resulting instability, as different groups took turns expropriating each other’s wealth, would impoverish the country over time. If one group never took a turn winning, then the outcome would be inequitable as well as bad for the public at large. If all of this sounds too implausible to be of concern to you, then remember Jim Crow in the South, and the many decades disenfranchised African-Americans spent as electoral losers.

When progressives stop cheering, they may remember that they are historical opponents of majority rule. It was “tyranny of the majority” that produced racist laws in the South or, if you want, the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Conservatives also traditionally objected to majority rule. For them the problem was the tyranny of the property-less majority that resulted in laws that repudiated debts, violated contracts, and expropriated property before the ratification of the Constitution put a stop to all of this. Along with the two-chamber structure, fear of unconstrained majorities on both sides of the political aisle explains many more features of the American political system—the presidential veto, federalism, the rise of judicial review, and, yes, the voting rules in the Senate.

Scott Lemieux takes on this argument, pointing out that there was nothing whatsoever "democratic" about Jim Crow. Indeed the notion that "disenfranchised African-Americans" were "electoral losers" argues against itself. Black people could not vote. That was the central problem. To be an "electoral losers" you have to be permitted to compete. 

A dose of history is needed here. Jim Crow was created to beat back majority rule, not to profit from it. Indeed, Jim Crow was most vicious precisely in those states where black people were a majority. As late as 1930, the majority of people living in Mississippi were black. For South Carolina, 1920. In 1890, for Louisiana. 

In the wake of "Redemption" black voting in these states—and across the South where significant minorities of blacks lived—was nullified by a long night of domestic terrorism. 

And domestic terrorism wasn't a quiet affair, but something to be taken to lustily, as when "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman boasted of lynching blacks from the Senate floor:

We did not disfranchise the negroes until 1895. Then we had a constitutional convention convened which took the matter up calmly, deliberately, and avowedly with the purpose of disfranchising as many of them as we could under the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments. We adopted the educational qualification as the only means left to us, and the negro is as contented and as prosperous and as well protected in South Carolina to-day as in any State of the Union south of the Potomac. He is not meddling with politics, for he found that the more he meddled with them the worse off he got.

As to his “rights”—I will not discuss them now. We of the South have never recognized the right of the negro to govern white men, and we never will. We have never believed him to be equal to the white man, and we will not submit to his gratifying his lust on our wives and daughters without lynching him. I would to God the last one of them was in Africa and that none of them had ever been brought to our shores. But I will not pursue the subject further.

Or when Klansman and Mississippi Senator Theodore Bilbo said:

White people will be justified in going to any extreme to keep the nigger from from voting. You and I know what's the best way to keep the nigger from voting. You do it the night before the election. I don't have to tell you any more than that. Red-blooded men know what I mean. 

In the 19th and early 20th century, it is not too much to say that a despotic, terrorist faction held considerable sway in our national government, and was the law in many state governments. This faction—the Democratic Party's "Solid South"—did not rule simply be withholding the franchise from blacks, but from whites also.

From Ira Katznelson's indispensable history of the New Deal, Fear Itself:

... in 1890, the planter-dominated Democratic Party ... convened a constitutional convention that established a literacy test and a four-dollar poll tax payable during the the course of the two years before the election. These measures not only eliminated black voting but radically reduced the white electorate as well ...

More:

Across the country as a whole, nearly 60 percent of eligible persons voted in the 1940 presidential election. In the South, no state reached a 50 percent level. In Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina turnout rates were were at or below 20 percent.

Midterm congressional elections attracted even fewer voters. In 1938, Mississippi had a population of 2,138, 796, of whom 49 percent were African-American, yet all seven of its Democrats in the house ... ran unopposed that year .... In all voters in Mississippi cast 35,439 votes .... In California, by contrast, no member of the House from any of its twenty districts, each contested, received fewer than 52,516 votes.

And what happened when African-Americans rose up in the early 20th century and attempted to overthrow a regime which reigned through undemocratic state-endorsed, state-sponsored, terrorism? Why, there was a filibuster, of course:

The Senate today ended the thirty-day Southern filibuster against the Wagner-Van Nuys Anti-Lynching Bill by voting, 58 to 22, to lay it aside to take up the $250,000,000 emergency relief resolutions, on which a final vote is pending.

The filibuster had blocked the Senate throughout the present session on all business except adoption of the Farm and Housing Bill reports.

The vote came after nearly two hours of vigorous debate, in which Senator Wagner warned that the fight was not over. It was a ``strange'' situation, he said, in which, with seventy or more Senators assertedly in favor of the legislation, the necessary two-thirds vote could not be obtained to invoke closure.

There's nothing "centrist" about this, unless you by "centrist" you mean a skepticism of people voting, paired with an ignorance of history. It's true that we should be suspicious of other mythologies—such as the idea that "the people" are always the font of all things good. As Lemieux points out, democracy can't devolve into straight majority rule.

But even that skepticism deserves some context. During Reconstruction, Northern reformers opposed giving women the vote because, they argued, Southern women would simply put in power the same old unreconstructed Confederates. But that happened anyway—John B. Gordon, Alexander Stephens, Wade Hampton, Tillman, and a wave of avowed white supremacists dominated Southern politics for a century. Keeping women disenfranchised saved no one. We chose dishonor over war, to paraphrase Churchill, and got both.

One wonders what a democratic South—with all women and all men enfranchised—would have looked like. We didn't get to see that until the late 1960s when America finally became a democracy in more that just name. And even now people are working to roll back democracy, to reserve voting rights for those who hold guns, and withhold them from those who hold books. The filibuster will not save us from this.

       

You, Me, and Every Word We Know

I've never really understood why every other year, it seems, we need another debate over who can and can't use the word "nigger." But here we are in this time of "Whither Richie Incognito?" at it again. You can see me try to tease out some of that thinking in a column this Sunday for The Times. The logic, from my perspective, is fairly obvious and relies more on common sense than a Ph.D. in semiotics:

A few summers ago one of my best friends invited me up to what he affectionately called his “white-trash cabin” in the Adirondacks. This was not how I described the outing to my family. Two of my Jewish acquaintances once joked that I’d “make a good Jew.” My retort was not, “Yeah, I certainly am good with money.” Gay men sometimes laughingly refer to one another as “faggots.” My wife and her friends sometimes, when having a good time, will refer to one another with the word “bitch.” I am certain that should I decide to join in, I would invite the same hard conversation that would greet me, should I ever call my father Billy.

"Billy" is what my paternal grandmother and my Aunt Joyce (Dad's older sister) used to call him. Needless to say, I have never called my father "Billy." The idea that all language in all situations should be open to all people is preposterous, and would quickly destroy communication itself. Language depends on context and relationships. If you believe, as I do, that the relationship between black people is distinct, than it follows that their use of language would be distinct. 

But accepting black peoplehood has always been something of a problem in America, if only because it says that there are limits to white power, that running everything doesn't actually mean running everything. Specifically for the word "nigger," it means accepting something profound—that a group can take a word meant to mark them as pariahs, flip it, make it their own. Try to imagine Hester Prynne rocking the scarlet letter. But try to imagine something more—it's not just that "nigger" has become our own, it's that it's become a marker which says "We are different from you, because of you, and this can never be changed."

But again, this is not so original. I will never joke about a "white trash picnic." I like women. I will never be a woman. Because of that there's a whole range of communication which I will never partake in. (I often think about my reticence at calling myself a "feminist" in this light.) I love France and I love the French language. I will never be French. I will never be comfortable with the kind of self-deprecation and self-mockery which I heard French people employ when discussing their own country.

Communities are not simply about warmth, hugs and nice dinners. They are also about borders. I strongly suspect that were you to interrogate the history of communities who are seen as a problem by those in power—the Jews in Europe, women everywhere, the poor in 18th-century London—you would see a similar contentiousness over the borders (and perhaps even the names) which they claim as their own.

       

You, Me And Every Word We Know

 

 

I've never really understood why every other year, it seems, we need another debate over who can and can't use the word "nigger." But here we are in this time of "Whither Richie Incognito?" at it again. You can see me try to tease out some of that thinking in a column this Sunday for The Times. The logic, from my perspective, is fairly obvious and relies more on common sense than a PhD in semiotics:

A few summers ago one of my best friends invited me up to what he affectionately called his “white-trash cabin” in the Adirondacks. This was not how I described the outing to my family. Two of my Jewish acquaintances once joked that I’d “make a good Jew.” My retort was not, “Yeah, I certainly am good with money.” Gay men sometimes laughingly refer to one another as “faggots.” My wife and her friends sometimes, when having a good time, will refer to one another with the word “bitch.” I am certain that should I decide to join in, I would invite the same hard conversation that would greet me, should I ever call my father Billy.

"Billy" is what my paternal grandmother and my Aunt Joyce (Dad's older sister) used to call him. Needless to say, I have never called my father "Billy." The idea that all language in all situations should be open to all people is preposterous, and would quickly destroy communication itself. Language depends on context and relationships. If you believe, as I do, that the relationship between black people is distinct, than it follows that their use of language would be distinct. 

But accepting black peoplehood has always been something of a problem in America, if only because it says that there are limits to white power, that running everything doesn't actually mean running everything. Specifically for the word "nigger," it means accepting something profound--that a group can take a word meant to mark them as pariahs, flip it, make it their own. Try to imagine Hester Prynn rocking the scarlet letter. But try to imagine something more--it's not just that "nigger" has become our own, it's that it's become a marker which says "We are different from you, because of you, and this can never be changed."

But again, this is not so original. I will never joke about a "white trash picnic." I like women. I will never be a woman. Because of that there's a whole range of communication which I will never partake in. (I often think about my reticence at calling myself a "feminist" in this light.)  I love France and I love the French language. I will never be French. I will never be comfortable with the kind of self-deprecation and self-mockery which I heard French people employ when discussing their own country.

Communities are not simply about warmth, hugs and nice dinners. They are also about borders. I strongly suspect that were you to interrogate the history of communities who are seen as a problem by those in power--the Jews in Europe, women everywhere, the poor in 18th century London--you would see a similar contentiousness over the borders (and perhaps even the names) which they claim as their own.

       

More Scalias and Thomases Please

As Harry Reid pushes to end the ability of the minority party to filibuster judges and executive appointees, I think it's worth reconsidering this quote from Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley:

"Many of those on the other side who are clamoring for rules change and almost falling over themselves to do it have never served a single day in the minority," Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said Tuesday in a floor speech. "All I can say is this—be careful what you wish for."

"So if the Democrats are bent on changing the rules, then I say go ahead," he said. "There are a lot more Scalias and [Clarence] Thomases that we'd love to put on the bench. The nominees we'd nominate and put on the bench with 51 votes would interpret the constitution as it was written."

I don't know. I think understanding the electoral stakes of an election in stark and clear terms is really healthy. Threatening to appoint "more Scalias and Thomases" is basically threatening to appoint more judges who would unwaveringly hew to their vision of the country. That any political party would like to do this strikes me as unsurprising. The place to decide whether we're going to have "more Scalias and Thomases" is the ballot box. That's why during debates candidates are usually asked about the kind of judges they'd appoint. The place to decide whether having "more Scalias and Thomases" actually worked out is the election following. 

Elections don't always have consequences, but they should. You can't judge a party's agenda if they don't get a chance to actually implement. Judicial and executive appointments are indispensable to that endeavor. If you don't want to even have the experiment, if you don't like being in the minority, win the damn election—which is another way of saying, make the case to the American people. 

There's a separate issue here about the wisdom of lifetime judicial appointments. But the filibuster needs, at the very least, reform.

       

More Scalias And Thomases Please

As Harry Reid pushes to end the ability of the minority party to filibuster judges and executive appointees, I think it's worth reconsidering this quote from Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley:

"Many of those on the other side who are clamoring for rules change and almost falling over themselves to do it have never served a single day in the minority," Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said Tuesday in a floor speech. "All I can say is this -- be careful what you wish for."

"So if the Democrats are bent on changing the rules, then I say go ahead," he said. "There are a lot more Scalias and [Clarence] Thomases that we'd love to put on the bench. The nominees we'd nominate and put on the bench with 51 votes would interpret the constitution as it was written."

I don't know. I think understanding the electoral stakes of an election in stark and clear terms is really healthy . Threatening to  to appoint "more Scalias and Thomases" is basically threatening to appoint more judges who would unwaveringly hew to their vision of the country. That any political party would like to do this strikes me as unsurprising. The place to decide whether we're going to have "more Scalias and Thomases" is the ballot box. That's why during debates candidates are usually asked about the kind of judges they'd appoint. The place to decide whether having "more Scalias and Thomases" actually worked out is the election following. 

Elections don't always have consequences, but they should. You can't judge a party's agenda if they don't get a chance to actually implement. Judicial and executive appointments are indispensable to that endeavor. If you don't want to even have the experiment, if you don't like being in the minority, win the damn election--which is another way of saying, make the case to the American people. 

There's a separate issue here about the wisdom of lifetime judicial appointments. But the filibuster needs, at the very least, reform.

 

       

Why Black Folks Tend to Shout

Very few black people were shocked by the lamentable return of George Zimmerman to the headlines:

Mr. Zimmerman, 30, was charged with domestic aggravated assault, domestic battery and criminal mischief after he and his girlfriend, Samantha Scheibe, had an argument at their home in Apopka, northwest of Orlando, said Chief Deputy Sheriff Dennis Lemma of Seminole County. Ms. Scheibe told investigators that she had asked Mr. Zimmerman to leave the residence, and that he had begun packing his belongings, including two firearms, before growing agitated and turning violent.

Deputy Lemma said that Mr. Zimmerman had “broken a table and, at one point, pointed a long-barreled shotgun” at Ms. Scheibe, who said he had aimed at her for about a minute. Later in the altercation, the authorities said, Mr. Zimmerman forced Ms. Scheibe, who was uninjured, out of the home before obstructing a doorway with furniture.

“He just pushed me out of my house and locked me out,” Ms. Scheibe told a 911 dispatcher.

Zimmerman has a somewhat different version of events:

In his own 911 call before the deputies entered the home, Mr. Zimmerman said that Ms. Scheibe was pregnant with his child and that he wanted “everyone to know the truth” about Monday’s episode.

“I never pulled a firearm. I never displayed it,” he said. “When I was packing it, I’m sure she saw it. I mean, we keep it next to the bed.”

He also said Ms. Scheibe was responsible for the broken table when she started “smashing stuff, taking stuff that belonged to me, throwing it outside, throwing it out of her room, throwing it all over the house.”

It may well be true that, against all his strivings, trouble stalks George Zimmerman. It may be true that George Zimmerman never pointed a shotgun at his girlfriend's face. That Ms. Scheibe smashed a table, took his stuff, started throwing it and then called 911 on herself. That she was simply being poetic when she said "you pointed your gun in my freaking face and told me get the fuck out" and then added "he knows how to do this. He knows how to play this game." 

And it may be true that in September when Zimmerman's estranged wife, Shelly Zimmerman, claimed that he had punched her father and threatened them with a gun she was embellishing*. That when she called 911 and said "I'm really afraid. I don't know what he's capable of. I'm really scared," she was suffering some form of hallucination. That Zimmerman had not smashed his wife's iPad. That it was his wife that assaulted him with it. That Shelly's father had challenged Zimmerman to a fight.

And it may well be true that Trayvon Martin was empowered by a heretofore unknown strain of marijuana which confers super strength. That in a fit of Negroid rage, a boy with no criminal history decided to ambush a hapless neighborhood watchman. That the boy told Zimmerman, "You gonna die tonight, motherfucker," punched him, banged his head against the concrete repeatedly and then reached for his gun. That in killing the boy, Zimmerman rid the world of a gun-runner and drug dealer. 

And it may well be that George Zimmerman is yet another victim of the nefarious forces of  black privilege. That he is helpless against the hordes of hyper-violent blacks, crazed women and the machinations of Eric Holder. That George Zimmerman continuing to live armed is evidence of sane public policy and a polite society. 

Only God knows what George Zimmerman did on that rainy night in Sanford. God is not in the habit of talking—because we are not in the habit of listening. 

* Correction: An earlier version of this post referred to Shelly Zimmerman as George Zimmerman's ex-wife. We regret the error.

       

Why Black Folks Tend To Shout

Very few black people were shocked by the return of George Zimmerman to the headlines:

Mr. Zimmerman, 30, was charged with domestic aggravated assault, domestic battery and criminal mischief after he and his girlfriend, Samantha Scheibe, had an argument at their home in Apopka, northwest of Orlando, said Chief Deputy Sheriff Dennis Lemma of Seminole County. Ms. Scheibe told investigators that she had asked Mr. Zimmerman to leave the residence, and that he had begun packing his belongings, including two firearms, before growing agitated and turning violent.

Deputy Lemma said that Mr. Zimmerman had “broken a table and, at one point, pointed a long-barreled shotgun” at Ms. Scheibe, who said he had aimed at her for about a minute. Later in the altercation, the authorities said, Mr. Zimmerman forced Ms. Scheibe, who was uninjured, out of the home before obstructing a doorway with furniture.

“He just pushed me out of my house and locked me out,” Ms. Scheibe told a 911 dispatcher.

Zimmerman has a somewhat different version of events:

In his own 911 call before the deputies entered the home, Mr. Zimmerman said that Ms. Scheibe was pregnant with his child and that he wanted “everyone to know the truth” about Monday’s episode.

“I never pulled a firearm. I never displayed it,” he said. “When I was packing it, I’m sure she saw it. I mean, we keep it next to the bed.”

He also said Ms. Scheibe was responsible for the broken table when she started “smashing stuff, taking stuff that belonged to me, throwing it outside, throwing it out of her room, throwing it all over the house.”

It may well be true that, against all his strivings, trouble stalks George Zimmerman. It may be true that George Zimmerman never pointed a shotgun at his girlfriend's face. That Ms. Scheibe smashed a table, took his stuff, started throwing it and then called 911 on herself. That she was simply being poetic when she said "you pointed your gun in my freaking face and told me get the fuck out" and then added "he knows how to do this. He knows how to play this game." 

And it may be true that in September when Zimmerman's ex-wife, Shelly Zimmerman, claimed that he had punched her father and threatened them with a gun she was embellishing. That when she called 911 and said "I'm really afraid. I don't know what he's capable of. I'm really scared," she was suffering some form of hallucination.  That Zimmerman had not smashed his wife's iPad. That it was his wife that assaulted him with it. That Shelly's father had challenged Zimmerman to a fight.

And it may well be true that Trayvon Martin was empowered by a heretofore unknown strain of marijuana which confers super strength. That in a fit of Negroid rage, a boy with no criminal history, decide to ambush a hapless neighborhood watchmen. That the boy told Zimmerman "You gonna die tonight, motherfucker" punched him, banged his head against the concrete repeatedly and then reached for his gun. 

That in killing the boy, Zimmerman ridded the world of a gun-runner and drug dealer. That  Zimmerman was a victim of the nefarious forces of  black privilege. That  Zimmerman is helpless against the hordes of hyper-violent blacks, crazed women and the machinations of Eric Holder. That George Zimmerman continuing to live armed is evidence of sane public policy and a polite society. 

Only God knows what George Zimmerman did on that rainy night in Sanford. God is not in the habit of talking--because we are not in the habit of listening.