The race line has always been fairly ambiguous.

Check out these photos of freed slaves.

Good work, Mr. President.

Obama does for race relations what he has done for the economy and foreign policy:

Nearly 2/3 of all voters say that race relations have improved over the last 50 years.

But just one-in-10 say that race relations have improved since President Obama took office in 2008. Blacks are even less convinced than whites and other minority voters that things have gotten better.

In January 2009, just before Obama’s first inauguration, almost half of Americans said his election signaled the start of a new era in race relations. Three-quarters of blacks felt that way.

Those who were in their mid-teens or older at the time of  King's speech are less likely to say that relations have improved over the last 50 years.

Women believe more strongly than men that race relations have improved over the last 50 years and since Obama was elected president.

Cool Stuff.

Every person in America plotted by race.

The country is a lot whiter and a lot emptier than you might think.

Racism in the 21st Century.

Glenn Reynolds writes:

YES, ALMOST CERTAINLY. NEXT QUESTION? Is Oprah Pushing Racism Story to Promote New Movie?

My favorite bit is this, though: “We have to come to grips in this country that we have unconscious bias.” In this country.Oprah’s story was about Switzerland. Maybe the unconscious bias is in assuming that everyone’s as racist as Democratic media folks.

Plus, from the comments: “A story about personal experience with racism probably shouldn’t be set in a Swiss boutique for rich tourists. For future reference.””

Progress on Race.

Fewer Blacks in U.S. See Bias in Jobs, Income, and Housing - Older blacks are more likely to say differences are due to discrimination

Which is why the race-baiters have become unhinged on the Zimmerman case.

They need to keep their constituency in fear of "crackers."

Well, there's another theme that that race-baiters are wrong on.

Blacks benefit from Florida "Stand Your Ground" law at a disproportionate rate.

That idea about holding a trial to get the facts out is really working...

..as Hollywood liberals play the race card and stoke up up racial anger by repeating things that were proven not to be true.

David Simon - involved with The Wire - pontificates:

You can stand your ground if you’re white, and you can use a gun to do it. But if you stand your ground with your fists and you’re black, you’re dead.

In the state of Florida, the season on African-Americans now runs year round. Come one, come all.  And bring a handgun. The legislators are fine with this blood on their hands. The governor, too. One man accosted another and when it became a fist fight, one man — and one man only — had a firearm. The rest is racial rationalization and dishonorable commentary.

If I were a person of color in Florida, I would pick up a brick and start walking toward that courthouse in Sanford. Those that do not, those that hold the pain and betrayal inside and somehow manage to resist violence — these citizens are testament to a stoic tolerance that is more than the rest of us deserve.  I confess, their patience and patriotism is well beyond my own.

Behold, the lewd, pornographic embrace of two great American pathologies:  Race and guns, both of which have conspired not only to take the life of a teenager, but to make that killing entirely permissible.  I can’t look an African-American parent in the eye for thinking about what they must tell their sons about what can happen to them on the streets of their country.  Tonight, anyone who truly understands what justice is and what it requires of a society is ashamed to call himself an American.//

If this is right, then the American criminal justice system is corrupt and no one is safe...

...but, hey, it sure did gin up the turn-out for the 2012 election.

George Zimmerman trial analysis.

Ethnic Cleansing in America.

From the LA Times:

Attack on family in Compton latest incident in wave of anti-black violence

A Latino gang is intimidating blacks into leaving the city that was once an African American enclave. It's part of a violent trend seen in other parts of the L.A. area.

The trouble began soon after they arrived. 

The black family—a mother, three teenage children and a 10-year-old boy—moved into a little yellow home in Compton over Christmas vacation. 

When a friend came to visit, four men in a black SUV pulled up and called him a "nigger," saying black people were barred from the neighborhood, according to Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies. They jumped out, drew a gun on him and beat him with metal pipes. 

It was just the beginning of what detectives said was a campaign by a Latino street gang to force an African American family to leave. 

The attacks on the family are the latest in a series of violent incidents in which Latino gangs targeted blacks in parts of greater Los Angeles over the last decade. 

Compton, with a population of about 97,000, was predominantly black for many years. It is now 65% Latino and 33% black, according to the 2010 U.S. census. But it's not only historically black areas that have been targeted.

Federal authorities have alleged in several indictments in the last decade that the Mexican Mafia prison gang has ordered street gangs under its control to attack African Americans. Leaders of the Azusa 13 gang were sentenced to lengthy prison terms earlier this month for leading a policy of attacking African American residents and expelling them from the town. 

Holding Paper - Race-baiting.

Physician's report shows that George Zimmerman was injured in altercation with Trayvon Martin:

The big news in the Trayvon Martin case, ABC News Exclusive: Zimmerman Medical Report Shows Broken Nose, Lacerations After Trayvon Martin Shooting:

A medical report compiled by the family physician of accused Trayvon Martin murderer George Zimmerman and obtained exclusively by ABC News found that Zimmerman was diagnosed with a “closed fracture” of his nose, a pair of black eyes, two lacerations to the back of his head and a minor back injury the day after he fatally shot Martin during an alleged altercation.

And autopsy reveals that Martin had bloody knuckles.

None of it makes Zimmerman innocent, but it ought have taken the steam out of the race-baiters who called for Zimmerman's lynching.

The wages of race-baiting.

The wages of race-baiting.

"Justice for Trayvon" has led to 15 whites beaten by black gang thugs so far.

More "Justice for Trayvon."

Two whites beat up by black youths while stopped at light.

Silence on Left Wing Lynch Mobs.

"Occupy DOJ" activists calls for "Occupiers" to "start killing motherfuckers."

Mob of African-Americans "lynch" white guy as "payback" for Trayvon Martin. As Treacher observes:

Hey, that’s what he gets for having a similar skin color to someone we’ve all been instructed to hate.

Well done, Spike Lee. Nice job, NBC. Keep up the good work, ABC. And to everyone else who’s been using a shooting in Florida to foment hate and divide people by the color of their skin, kudos. Don’t let this attack, and similar attacks across America, bother you. If you had a conscience, we never would’ve heard of you in the first place.

And, of course, the Justice Department has no comment when the New Black Panthers put a bounty on George Zimmerman.

So, when there is actual violence by the left stirred up in large part by a race-baiting media, there is no call for "civility," no furrowed brows under well-sytled news media talking hair pieces about "what it all means" and the "tendency of leftists to violence."

It doesn't fit the narrative.

It doesn't fit the need of the president to stir up his base.

And then again perhaps there ought to be some concern for those who might think that George Zimmerman is being railroaded for political reasons.

Another VDH observation:

The liberal narrative about the case is now destroyed; it had nothing to do with finding out the truth, whether a trigger-happy vigilante murdered Trayvon Martin, or a desperate neighborhood watchman saved his head from being pounded to smithereens by pulling out a gun and shooting his assailant, or something in between. The narrative instead was solely concerned with taking a tragic shooting case and turning it into more fuel for a fossilized civil rights industry (since the case broke, dozens of violent crime cases of blacks against whites and Asians are splashed over the news, enraging readers and escaping liberal commentary). All we know now is that the “narrative”—a preteen shot “like a dog” while eating candy by a white “assassin” who uttered racial epithets and was never even touched by the victim, only to be let go by a wink-and-nod police force—is false.

I think it will be very hard to get a second-degree murder conviction, given the absence of racial malice on the tape (the narrative’s “coons” and NBC’s version of Zimmerman on his own volunteering “he’s black” are now inoperative), eyewitness accounts of the fray, and the clear injuries to Zimmerman. Instead, the authorities will hope that by inflating the indictment, by airing the facts, and by making Zimmerman testify, tensions will ease–and so when he is acquitted or a judge throws out the case, or a lesser count is pressed, riots will fizzle.

This is sort of the criminal version of the Scooter Libby case: after it was learned that Plame was probably not a covert agent, that her status was disclosed to Robert Novak not by Libby but by Richard Armitage, that Colin Powell knew the entire time that his deputy–not Libby–had made the initial disclosure, that there were areas of conflict of interest between Plame and Wilson in his selection for his yellow-cake mission, then Libby was sort of seen as a sacrificial lamb who had to be guilty of something to save the narrative of a fascistic effort to sabotage the Constitution.

Perhaps before the second-degree-murder charge is thrown out, the prosecution can so entangle Zimmerman in testimony that they can recharge him with perjury or conspiracy and then plea bargain him down to a year or two. The case is now not concerned with justice, but with politics, defusing threats of violence, and salvaging the careers of so many who so foolishly rushed to judgment.

Keeping social order is laudible, but so is justice.

There is only one thing that I would fear short of losing my liberty, and that is being forced into a trial unjustly. Trials are expensive, disruptive and risky. I've been amazed at the cavalier way that some talking heads have said that there ought to be a trial in the George Zimmerman case just to get to the facts.

Uh-uh, not unless there is a belief on the part of the prosecutor that Zimmerman is guilty of what he's charged with. I'd like to think that the special prosecutor is doing more than engaging in a "willful suspension of disbelief for political reasons" but I don't have any moral certainty to that effect. Particularly after the release of the picture showing Zimmerman's bloody head, it sure seems like he was beat up, which means that Second Degree Murder ought to be off the table, and manslaughter might be a possibility, if there were solid evidence to dispute his version of events, which seem to have largely held up, assuming the pro-Zimmerman stuff hasn't been fabricated like the anti-Zimmerman stuff.

And, moreover, how much of this - i.e., the fabrication of evidence of racial malice on the part of Zimmerman - is in the interest of ginning up votes for Obama? If that is true, then the requirement that Zimmerman having to pay a nickle for bail or an attorney or to spend a single night in jail is truly an epic instance of injustice.

All we can do is hope that justice is being done for everyone.

Black mob beat up white tourist...

...but it's not a "hate crime."

So the terror and injury the man suffered are quantifiably not as bad as more ungood instances when people get attacked by mobs bent on "drunken opportunistic criminality."

And, of course, we can always trust the ever-precise telepathy-from-a-distance powers of the police, who can distinguish between "hate crimes" and "drunken opportunistic criminality" of mobs targeting a person who isn't part of their community.

Well, there goes another angle on the "Accepted Narrative"...

...if it's true, obviously.

Via The Truth about Guns.

“You will recall the incident of the beating of the black homeless man Sherman Ware on December 4, 2010 by the son of a Sanford police officer. The beating sparked outrage in the community but there were very few that stepped up to do anything about it. I would presume the inaction was because of the fact that he was homeless not because he was black. Do you know the individual who stepped up when no one else in the black community would? Do you know who spent tireless hours putting flyers on the cars of persons parked in the churches of the black community? Do you know who waited for the church-goers to get out of church so that he could hand them flyers in an attempt to organize the black community against this horrible miscarriage of justice? Do you know who helped organize the City Hall meeting on January 8, 2011 at Sanford City Hall?? That person was GEORGE ZIMMERMAN.” – from a letter to Turner Clayton of the Seminole County NAACP written by “a concerned Zimmerman family member.”

Here is the Scribd site where this anonymous letter is posted. The letter claims anonymity out of fear of reprisal, which is not unreasonable in the light of certain extremely silly yet threatening things that have been said by extreme yet silly people.

I guess one take away is that we don't know, it could be true, so let us...I don't know...presume Zimerman's fargin' innocence until proven guilty by a court of law!

More Great Moments in Journalism.

I don't have to have an opinion on George Zimmerman - that's a matter potentially for a jury. But I am fascinated by how bad the reporting is on the story, and, to be sure, how the errors all point in the direction of the "preferred narrative."

Here is a post by Just One Minute pointing out that the press has shaped public attitudes by misreporting the frequency at which Zimmerman called 911:

As a launch point, let me pick up on this throw-away comment made by Rod Dreher in his own comments section:

I do think Zimmerman was a paranoid guy — I make this judgment based on his frequent 911 calls over the past year — but that doesn’t make him a murderer.

I can't establish the full context for that remark, but on March 20 Mr. Dreher wrote this:

The Orlando Sentinel reports that in the 13 months prior to the shooting, Zimmerman called 911 an astonishing 46 times.

And I have no doubt they did. But that was a widely circulated typo - per the City of Sanford website, Zimmerman nade those 46 calls from January 2004 to the present, not January 2011. Even NPR got this right, eventually, and I have seen appropriate updates by Ta Nehesi Coates at the Atlantic, and elsewhere.

But one could easily blink and miss it, so Mr. Dreher might well be continuing to pin the 'paranoid' label onto Zimmerman based on misreported and widely uncorrected information.

And:

However! The Times did a big calm-down walk-back today where they painstakingly reviewed the evidence. Zimmerman's life back to grade school was reprised. Surely they quietly fixed the error there, as they did with Zimmerman's weight (now reported as 170 lbs, down from the widely cited 240)?

If they did, I can't find it. Which is to say, neither "46" nor "forty-six" is showing up in a search. The closest they come is this subtle allusion:

Police records over the last several years suggest a man who was quite familiar with 911 dispatchers; who seemed, somehow, to be always in the middle of things. In October 2003, for example, on perhaps his greatest day in civic vigilance, Mr. Zimmerman chased after and assisted in the capture of a man who had stolen two 13-inch TV/DVD players from an Albertsons.

Pretty subtle! Would Mr. Dreher, or any other previously misinformed Times reader, realize that this meant the 46 calls were over eight years, not the previously reported fourteen months? Or would they grin knowingly and say "Familiar indeed - 46 calls in fourteen months familiar. Paranoid much?".

To be fair, I am not even sure the Times editors themselves are aware of the level of BS they have been propagating. If their goal is to correct the record and report a bit more responsibly going forward, maybe we will see those corrections appended in the next few days. I should provide a link to the NY Times Public Apologist for anyone who wants to waste their breath.

Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman - the mainstream media has become an advocate in the public discussion.

I think that what disturbs people who didn't have any particular axe to grind is the sense that the media was ginning up a lynch mob against George Zimmerman. This sense was supported by weird narrative hooks such as calling Zimmerman a "white Hispanic" - according to Steven Saylor, the word should be "mestizo," but that's never going to fly.

It seems that claim after claim made by the media in setting up the typical "racist outrage scenario" was getting batted away - Zimmerman has black friends, he's not white, he lives in a mixed race community, he was subjected to a beating, Trayvon Martin may have had an association with burglary, etc.

This morning it seemed that the media has gone from reporting the news to explicit advocacy in the interest of putting Zimmerman - who is presumed innocent - behind bars. ABC showed a video that it claimed demonstrated that Zimmerman had not been assaulted. The problem, according to the Daily Caller,is that the video shows what may actually be a laceration or scar:

“A police surveillance video taken the night that Trayvon Martin was shot dead shows no blood or bruises on George Zimmerman,” ABC News reporter Matt Gutman wrote, noting that Zimmerman told police “he shot Martin after he was punched in the nose, knocked down and had his head slammed into the ground.”

ABC News reported that Zimmerman appears uninjured in the video. But a still image from the video indicates what appears to be a vertical laceration or scar several inches long.

The other thing is that we've seen this kind of rush to judgment based on narratives of racism play out badly in the past:

In this country of 300,000,000+, it shouldn't be too hard for the national media to come up with actual news stories to illustrate its favorite themes of White Racism, the Invalidity of Stereotypes, and so forth. And yet, when the prestige press decides to go all in on a story to Push the Narrative, like Duke Lacrosse case or Jena Six, they usually seem to wind up with another travesty, playing Walter Sobchak with poor Donnie's ashes at the end of The Big Lebowski (video).

The Trayvon Martin story was supposed to demonstrate how white people invidiously stereotype young black males and get away with murder because they are white. First, though, it turned out that George Zimmerman wasn't what most people are told to think of as white.

Perhaps, with a Black President and all, people are thinking that things were supposed to be more, well, post-racial.

Neal Boortz does a good job of sourcing different issues...

...in the Trayvon Martin case.

It seems that he uses a trait that is sorely missing in the discussion - empathy, such as when he addresses the issue of Trayvon's mother getting a trade-mark for his name:

Many people seem to be upset that Treyvon Martin’s mother has filed for trademark protection for her son’s name. I can’t help but think that if people knew the real story here, they wouldn’t be outraged at all.

As soon as the Treyvon case gained national attention opportunists across the country started printing t-shirts, signs and other little goodies with Treyvon’s name on them. Some simply said “I am Treyvon.” Some t-shirts were vile – with pictures of Treyvon over printed racial insults. One “entrepreneur” announced plans for a collection of Treyvon hoodies.

Now put yourself in the place of Treyvon’s mother. She sees people across the country using her dead child’s name to make money and deliver messages, some of which she may not necessarily agree with. What does she do? She says something about it to her lawyer. Her lawyer tells her that she can protect her son’s name by filing for trademark protection. So she does. How can a rational person have a problem with this? If I had been her lawyer I would have given her the same advice.

Oh! You say that she also trademarked “I am Treyvon” and “Justice for Treyvon?” So? It was her son. Now she feels she has a cause. Perfectly understandable. Are you going to tell her that she cannot use her son’s name in promoting her cause?

Boortz says things that aren't going to make either "side" happy, but maybe the answer is that there shouldn't be sides.

Another dispatch from Obama's post-racial America.

According to the Orlando Times, there's a bounty on the guy who shot and killed the minority kid after the minority kid began beating him up:

With a single punch, Trayvon Martin decked the Neighborhood Watch volunteer who eventually shot and killed the unarmed 17-year-old, then Trayvon climbed on top of George Zimmerman and slammed his head into the sidewalk several times, leaving him bloody and battered, authorities have revealed to the Orlando Sentinel.

That is the account Zimmerman gave police, and much of it has been corroborated by witnesses, authorities say.

Zimmerman has not spoken publicly about what happened, but that night, Feb. 26, and in later meetings he described and re-enacted for police what he says happened.

In his version of events, he had turned around and was walking back to his SUV when Trayvon approached him from behind, the two exchanged words then Trayvon punched him in the nose, sending him to the ground, and began beating him.

Zimmerman told police he shot the teenager in self-defense.

Civil rights leaders and thousands of others have demanded Zimmerman's arrest, calling Trayvon a victim of racial profiling and Zimmerman a vigilante.

Trayvon was an unarmed black teenager who had committed no crime, they say, who was gunned down while walking back from a 7-Eleven with nothing more sinister than a package of Skittles and can of Arizona iced tea.

Supporters have held rallies in Sanford, Miami, New York and Tallahassee, calling the case a tragic miscarriage of injustice.

Activist Al Sharpton headlined a rally in Sanford Thursday that drew an estimated 8,000 people. The Rev. Jesse Jackson yesterday spoke at an Eatonville church, where he called Trayvon a martyr.

Another rally is scheduled for 4 p.m. today in Sanford.

Zimmerman has gone into hiding. A fringe group, the New Black Panthers, have offered a $10,000 reward for his capture.

Police have been reluctant to provided details about all their evidence, but this is what they've disclosed to the Sentinel:

Zimmerman was on his way to the grocery store when he spotted Trayvon walking through his gated community.

Trayvon was visiting his father's fiancée, who lived there. He had been suspended from school in Miami after being found with an empty marijuana baggie. Miami schools have a zero-tolerance policy for drug possession.

Zimmerman called police and reported a suspicious person, describing Trayvon as black, acting strangely and perhaps on drugs.

Zimmerman got out of his SUV to follow Trayvon on foot. When a dispatch employee asked Zimmerman if he was following the 17-year-old, Zimmerman said yes. The dispatcher told Zimmerman he did not need to do that.

There is about a one-minute gap during which police say they're not sure what happened.

Zimmerman told them he lost sight of Trayvon and was walking back to his SUV when Trayvon approached him from the left rear, and they exchanged words.

Trayvon asked Zimmerman if he had a problem. Zimmerman said no and reached for his cell phone, he told police.

Trayvon then said, "Well, you do now" or something similar and punched Zimmerman in the nose.

Zimmerman fell to the ground and Trayvon got on top of him and began slamming his head into the sidewalk, he told police.

Zimmerman began yelling for help.

Several witnesses heard those cries, and there's been a dispute about from whom they came: Zimmerman or Trayvon.

Lawyers for Trayvon's family say it was Trayvon, but police say their evidence indicates it was Zimmerman.

One witnesses, who has since talked to local television news reporters, told police he saw Zimmerman on the ground with Trayvon on top, pounding him and was unequivocal that it was Zimmerman who was crying for help.

Zimmerman then shot Trayvon once in the chest from very close range, according to authorities.

When police arrived less than two minutes later, Zimmerman was bleeding from the nose, had a swollen lip and had bloody lacerations to the back of his head.

Paramedics gave him first aid, but he said no to going to the hospital. He got medical care the next day.

The Department of Justice last week opened a civil rights investigation into what happened, and Gov. Rick Scott appointed a special prosecutor.

It's not clear whether the special prosecutor, Angela Corey, the state attorney for Duval, Clay and Nassau counties, will have Zimmerman arrested, announce that there's not enough evidence to file a manslaughter charge or present evidence to a grand jury.

You are getting the feeling that race-baiters are going to see push-back on this one.

However, all that said, this is a tragedy all around. The kid shouldn't have attacked the guy with the gun, and death shouldn't be the consequence of a fist-fight.