Inconvenient narratives in the Martin case
Via The Crawdad Hole, a very interesting chart of FBI crime statistics for 2009.
What it shows is that whites kill whites, and blacks kill blacks. And interestingly, “other” kills “other.”
It’s not the narrative heard much in the media, because it does not play into stereotypes as to violence.
They don’t have statistics on murders by political affiliation, but the media is on a never-ending search for Tea Party murderers.
How do we know George Zimmerman was not a Tea Party supporter? We would have heard about it instantaneously had it been the case. Same if he was a Republican.
And that is the narrative, Republican/Tea Party/Right-wing talk radio caused Zimmerman to stereotype Martin:
Turns out Zimmerman is a Democrat:
The individual at the center of the controversial Trayvon Martin shooting is a registered Democrat.
George Michael Zimmerman, born Oct. 5, 1983, Voter ID #107862946, registered as a Democrat in Seminole County, Fla., in August 2002, according to state voter registration documents.
It is unclear whether he voted for President Barack Obama in 2008.
He’s also listed on his voting record as “Hispanic” not “white Hispanic.”
BuzzFeed Politics is treating the revelation that Zimmerman was a registered Democrat with scorn, but I doubt they would have reacted that way if it turned out Zimmerman was a Tea Party supporter.
Be prepared for outrage! that someone mentioned that Zimmerman was who he was.
Comments
[…] little bit of clarity in the Trayvon Martin hullabaloo. What’s interesting is that if you are a white murder victim, […]
[…] an incident that, if the worst case were proved true, would be something so rare that it involves fewer than 300 criminals a year. 300 in a land of 300,000,000. This is not about news; it’s about an […]
[…] I get impression that the kids were told that they could be easily shot just for being black. Which is a horrible thing to teach them because the great majority of white Americans pose no threat to black children. I suspect that the kids have to know that they are unlikely to share Trayvon’s horrible fate because they have never met anyone who was killed by a “white Hispanic” neighborhood watch captain. In fact, white on black (and black on white) crime is rare. […]