http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=50546

It’s all about race now
by Patrick J. Buchanan
03/30/2012

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If it had been a white teenager who was shot, and a 28-year-old black guy who shot him, the black guy would have been arrested.

So assert those demanding the arrest of George Zimmerman, who shot and killed Trayvon Martin.

And they may be right.

Yet if Trayvon had been shot dead by a black neighborhood watch volunteer, Jesse Jackson would not have been in a pulpit in Sanford, Fla., howling that he had been “murdered and martyred.”

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For all the abuse he has received, Geraldo Rivera had a point.

Whenever cable TV runs hidden-camera footage of a liquor or convenience store being held up and someone behind the counter being shot, the perp is often a black male wearing a hoodie.

Listening to the heated rhetoric coming from demonstrations around the country, from the Black Caucus and TV talkers — about how America is a terrifying place for young black males to grow up in because of the constant danger from white vigilantes — one wonders what country of the mind these people are living in.

The real America is a country where the black crime rate is seven times as high as the white rate. It is a country where white criminals choose black victims in 3 percent of their crimes, but black criminals choose white victims in 45 percent of their crimes.

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Some Sanford police believed Zimmerman; others did not.

But now that it is being investigated by a special prosecutor, the FBI, the Justice Department and a coming grand jury, what is the purpose of this venomous portrayal of George Zimmerman?

As yet convicted of no crime, he is being crucified in the arena of public opinion as a hate-crime monster and murderer.

Is this our idea of justice?

No. But if the purpose here is to turn this into a national black-white face-off, instead of a mutual search for truth and justice, it is succeeding marvelously well.

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I hope we can get back to the search for “truth and justice”.

Which will probably land us in the middle somewhere. Like the victim was no angel, but probably innocent. And the shooter may have gone over the line by not stopping his pursuit quickly enough, but probably innocent.

And, both “sides” of the issue need to turn down the volume and turn up the understanding.

I think a lot of this tracks back to the “(pseudo) War on (some) Drugs” and the Federal welfare destroying the Black Family and the Black Churches. And, as usual in this blog reflecting a fat old white guy injineer’s opinion, the trouble is with the Gooferment.

Dona Nobis Pacem!

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