Raking Leaves and Thinking

Today was a beautiful spring day.  I was raking leaves.  We have lots of big trees and leaf management is always a big thing here.  Raking leaves also doesn't require much concentration.  So, I do a lot of thinking while raking leaves.

Today I was thinking about a lot of things, but one especially came into mind, the killing of the young black boy by a white man in Florida.  I wondered why it was getting so much media play with so many people with so little knowledge of the facts, including the president, weighing in on the matter.

We have killings every day.  Just watch the daily TV news.  Houston, our local TV media market, leads every newscast with anywhere from one to four killings every day.  "Why do these killings not get the extended news coverage the one in Florida is getting," I wondered.  Bill O'Reilly on FoxNews the other night decried the number of killings every day in Southside Chicago, Obama's old community organizing stomping grounds.  A six year old little Hispanic girl had just been killed by the stray bullet of random shootings by a gang of hooded black  hoodlums.  Did it get extended media coverage?  No.  Did Obama weigh in on the matter? No.  Then, why?  That kept nagging me as the leaves flew.

Then, it dawned on me.  White on white killings, black on black killings, black on white killings are ignored by the media after the first news cycle.  But, let there be a white on black killing and the news media, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, et al, and even the president, are all over it with full racial implications for days and days.

Then, this evening I read the following news article from the Godfather blog which I subscribe to.  This makes it all very clear:

The killing of Trayvon Martin is tragic. I suspect, however, that few people know the whole story. This doesn’t matter to Democrats who are using the tragedy to fire up their liberal base, especially among those in the Black community. Even President Obama has gotten involved. “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” Obama said. Race has become the issue. Consider this description of the alleged killer by a Reuters news story:

Seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin, dressed in a “hoodie” sweatshirt, was shot dead a month ago in Sanford, Florida by a 28-year-old white Hispanic neighborhood watch volunteer who said he was acting in self-defense.

A “white Hispanic”? When have you ever heard of someone described as a “white Hispanic”?

Democrats and so-called Black leaders say little about black-on-black crime, drive-by shootings, and gang violence in the Black community. Why? There is no political capital to be gained. Have you ever heard about Derrion Albert, a black 16 year old honor student who was killed in Chicago In September of 2009? Albert was killed by other blacks when he attempted to help a victim in a fight between two rival black gangs.

Consider these comments by E.W. Jackson, Sr. in his article “Black Leaders Ignore Black-on-Black Crime” about the Derrion Albert killing:

Yet in this case and others like it, there is a deafening silence from some of the biggest mouths in America. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Julian Bond, Louis Farrakhan and the Congressional Black Caucus see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil. When Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested by a white police officer, President Barack Obama — without any facts — found it necessary to put in his two cents. Here in Chicago, the salient facts are abundantly clear and a heinous murder has been committed in his home town, but the president is silent. Malicious, homicidal maniacs brutally killed a decent young man on the streets Obama “organized,” but he has nothing to say. The self-appointed, media supported “black leaders” have not seen fit to hold a press conference or a rally supporting Derrion Albert and his family and condemning the perpetrators of this vicious crime. They have not called for witnesses to come forward.

Using the Trayvon Martin case to best advantage, Jesse Jackson said, “Blacks are under attack.” But by whom? Black-on-black crime is the leading cause of death among black males ages 18 to 24.

As usual, Al Sharpton has had something to say about the Trayvon Martin killing. Do you remember the Al Sharpton/Tawana Brawley incident? “In 1987, when she was 15 years old, Brawley received media attention when she accused six white men, some of whom were police officers, of raping her.” Sharpton got involved and hyped the story. “After hearing evidence, a grand jury concluded in October 1988 that Brawley had not been the victim of a forcible sexual assault and that she herself may have created the appearance of an attack. The New York prosecutor whom Brawley had accused as one of her alleged assailants successfully sued Brawley and her three advisers for defamation.”

One of those advisers was Sharpton. “The jury found Sharpton liable for making seven defamatory statements against one of the defendants.” In 2004, Sharpton was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president. He makes regular guest appearances on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC. He is the host of MSNBC’s “Politics Nation,” a nightly talk show.

Supporting false accusations and being sued for defamation has not stopped Sharpton’s career. In fact, it seems to have enhanced it. He’s still considered a spokesman for the Black community.

In the end, the death of Trayvon Martin will be used to widen the racial divide in America. It’s sad to think that this young man’s death is being used as a political prop to win the next election.