Riots: Ain't Nobody Gonna Like It

Watching the Zimmerman trial, I wonder whether we may not be in for big trouble. Racial hostility is much higher in the United States than it is allowed to appear. In the Twittersphere there is much traffic from blacks, saying that if Zimmerman walks, they will kill him themselves, riot, or kill random whites. On many sites around the web, whites of a sort not found on NPR are saying, “Bring it on.” This is not your granny’s recipe for domestic tranquility.

Let’s not kid ourselves. Race underlies almost everything in this country that spends half its time denouncing racism. This is true of trials, and particularly true of show trials. When the police who beat Rodney King, were acquitted by a white jury, the cops being clearly guilty, blacks burned Los Angeles. When OJ Simpson, clearly guilty, was acquitted by a black jury, whites didn’t burn anything, but were angry and perfectly aware that the verdict was political.

The prosecution’s case against Zimmerman is so weak that unless the fix is in, he will walk. Katie, bar the door.

How did we get here? It’s a long story.

An important part of the world view of blacks is the belief that whites enslaved them. This makes sense if you believe a race is a coherent being with a life stretching over the centuries, as a man’s life stretches over decades. (Compare The Jews Killed Christ. “Gosh, Rachel. You don’t look old enough. You sure you did it?”)

It makes no sense to whites who reflect that no white in America has ever owned a slave, and no black has ever been one. Blacks know this, but it is hard to focus anger on things done by dead whites long before you were born.

Blacks know, correctly if in most cases vaguely, that Negroes, as they were then known, were indeed brought in chains to America. Whites today weary of hearing about slavery since they had nothing to do with it, but it happened and it was ugly. The ensuing slavery was no better. Slaves were in fact whipped, raped, tortured, and kept illiterate, as anyone knows who has actually investigated. (If you want an introduction to slavery as it actually was, read Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839. (The owner was a Yankee. BT)

Lynchings occurred, many, many of them, and they were hideous. (27.4% Of Lynchings Were White. BT) Blacks know this. Further, Jim Crow abides held in living memory. So blacks have a case.

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