Stepping into the fray

I read a commentary article at guardian.co.uk entitled “Zimmerman verdict: the devastating message it sends”.

I’m not a legal expert or anything. Nor have I followed the facts of the Zimmerman case. But there’s one statement in the article:

Zimmerman’s pursuit of and confrontation with him was premised on the assumption that the very presence of a black teenager in a gated community was sufficient cause for alarm.

Once again, let me be entirely clear about this: I do not know the exact details of the case. I am not a legal expert. But I want to say one thing based on the sentence above: In the United States in 2013 the presence of a black teenager anywhere is cause for alarm.

The same day of the Zimmerman verdict I was picking up laundry from the cleaners and a crazy black youth was crossing the street right as I was entering the cleaners. As I was at the counter he came in the entrance, flailing his arms, babbling foul-sounding garbage out loud, acting beligerant and crazy.

I did what any sane woman would do: I immediately exited the store leaving my laundry basket at the counter, got into my car parked outside and locked the door and waited.

A couple minutes later the crazy guy emerged from the cleaners, goes directly towards my car, bashes the window so hard I thought it was going to break, then plops a bunch of stuff down on the trunk and starts changing his shirt. After a minute he walked away and I called 911 to report him.

That incident is pretty typical of where I live. Where I live, if you see a black youth, you go the other way immediately. The news is replete with incidents day after day in which people are victimized by black youth, often who are carrying firearms. The sad truth is, a person could be at the wrong place, at the wrong time, minding their own businesses, and in an instant their life could be over because of some stupid incident involving a violent black youth carrying a firearm. I know that the police in my city confiscate hundreds of firearms from black gang members who come into this city expressly to sell drugs in the open-air markets which span many blocks.

Just one week ago there was a horrendous surveillance video posted of a black man brutally kicking a woman in the face after she had just been mugged. There have been other horrendous incidents. A couple days ago a black youth went into a jewelry store and shot dead two asian clerks. Some months ago a white female had stopped her vehicle along the road to search for her mobile phone which had fallen behind the seat. When she got out of the car to look for it on the passenger side a black male came up to rob her. When the male saw her dog barking he grabbed the dog and brutally threw it onto the ground, killing it.

Some weeks ago there was an incident at a mall which I’ve been to multiple times where a group of black youths in a Cutlass or some other large car pulled up to a woman in the parking lot, pointed a gun at her and took her purse. A few months ago some black youths robbed at gunpoint the iPhones of students from the rec center of the community college campus which I had been attending. Then there was the incident some months ago when a couple black youths went in to rob a neighborhood performing-arts club in a nearby town that is popular for things like bluegrass music and ended up shooting and seriously wounding one of the staff there. These are just some of the stories, off the top of my head, which I can recount from reading the news in recent months.

Then there was the time, some years ago, when I was on a local inter-city train and as sitting there on the upper deck when a black youth boarded and sat opposite me. He sat there, pulled out a firearm, and was loading a clip with bullets. Right in front of me. He looked like a lit fuse. I had the realization that something extremely bad could have happened at any second. In one instant, this stupid, violent dumbfuck could go off and I, and possibly many others on the train would be dead or seriously injured. The sad and sick reality is that there are thousands like him roaming around at large with firearms and law enforcement is failing to deal with the problem.

There was a time perhaps when one could have felt reasonably safe even in this part of the city, quietly going about one’s business. But that time is not any more. Nowadays, if you are out anywhere in public and one or more black youth come near you, you move away immediately. You assume you are a target for robbery or violence of some kind. What is the actual risk? Is it 5%? 2%? Whatever it is, people do not play roulette with their lives and their well-being. To expect people to do so in order to score humanitarian brownie points is just sick and disgusting.

Quite frankly I’m disgusted when I keep reading supposedly liberal comments appearing to take moral high ground when they are completely out of touch with the reality that thousands of people live in. It is never the blood of these commentators which is spilled. They sit there in their cubicles pontificating about what is moral, just, and right. But I will only say that the reality in America in 2013 is that when you see a black youth, you go the other way.

The crime levels are astronomical. The violence levels are astronomical. With all this violent music and extremely bad influences for people things are going downhill. We live in a society where instant gratification rules and brutality is the unspoken currency of society.

As I said, I do not know the details of the Zimmerman case, but I can say that – and I find it quite lamentable – that people do not feel safe around black youths. Even if they are not hoodlums, they often emulate the culture – the beligerant and aggro behavior that is common in rap and hiphop – because that is what media pumps at them. This of course is not limited to any particular race. There’s an upsurge in stupid, gutteral, violent behavior among youth across the board.

But in my city, if you happen to be going along the street and see the cops arresting a black youth, you feel like cheering inside because it means one less crazy, violent dumbfuck on the streets. When black teenagers are approaching one assumes that they are armed and dangerous and you absolutely get away immediately.