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July 17, 2013 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

19:19

2433 The Truth About Racial Profiling: George Zimmerman vs. Trayvon Martin

Stefan Molyneux breaks down the fundamental truth about racial profiling by looking at the George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin situation.

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	Hello, hello, my rainbow coalition of like-minded thinking people.
	I hope you're doing very well.
	That's Stefan Molyneux, of course, from Freedom Aid Radio.
	Thank you so much to everyone who's been sharing my recent videos on the George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin tragedy.
	I really appreciate that.
	I hope you found it to be helpful, and thank you to at least some of the people who've responded.
	Now, there is...
	A kind of trinity of arguments that's put forward by the people who are, say, pro-Trayvon or who believe that Trayvon suffered evil that night, which is that George Zimmerman racially profiled, stalked and murdered him.
	Now, the murder thing has been dealt with by the jury in a wide variety of arguments, some of which I've put forward.
	The stalking thing is pretty easy to dispose of because stalking is like a repetitive frightening and cornering of people dealt with through a restraining order, which is not, of course, I have no time for any of that here.
	The racial profiling thing is interesting, and I hope you'll be patient with me as I put forward a few ideas that I think are very important around this.
	So if somebody's going to make the argument that Trayvon Martin or anyone who was racially profiled, then what they're basically saying is the only reason that George Zimmerman called the police and reported a suspicious person was because Trayvon Martin was black.
	And that's it.
	It is only the blackness of Trayvon Martin that caused this behavior.
	Now, for this argument to be credible, we have to believe...
	That if an 89-year-old black grandmother was wandering along the street, clutching at her purse and looking nervously around, that George Zimmerman would have from his car said, Aha!
	This...
	Is a potential criminal, a potential bad person, because she's 89 and trottering along through the rain, clutching at her purse, but she's black, you see, and therefore I'm going to call the cops and report a suspicious person.
	I'm going to call the cops and say, there's a suspicious person, and they're going to say, what does he or she look like?
	Say, well, it's an 89-year-old grandmother who looks lost in the rain.
	I mean, you can't believe that, right?
	You want to take it further?
	Maybe it's a 90-year-old black guy in a wheelchair who is crying and holding a kitten.
	Is he going to call up the cops and say, suspicious person on the loose, blah-de-blah-de-blah?
	Of course he's not.
	So, therefore, it can't possibly be the blackness of Traven Martin alone that caused the call to the police.
	Oh, and by the by, generally if you're going to go and murder someone, you don't call the cops and say, come meet me.
	Anyway.
	So it can't just be about race.
	If you can't believe that an 89-year-old grandmother or a 90-year-old black guy is going to get the same call to the police from George Zimmerman about a suspicious person, then you have to understand it's not racial profiling, fundamentally, that is occurring.
	So let's just do a thought experiment here.
	So imagine it's late at night and there's a bus stop.
	You've got to go take a bus.
	And sitting at the bus stop is, you know, a 45-year-old black man in a nice suit with a laptop bag strung over his shoulder who's reading a computer magazine through his glasses.
	Do you feel that this is going to be particularly a dangerous situation for you to be in?
	Well, I mean, unless you get really bored with Unix talk, probably not, right?
	On the other hand, if there is some, you know, twitchy, mohawked, fifth of vodka drinking, swastika tattooed, crazy ass looking white guy, are you going to feel that that is a potential threat?
	Well, of course you are.
	I mean, relative to the nice young or the nice middle-aged black gentleman reading the computer magazine, you're going to feel that the young skinhead white guy is more dangerous.
	So is that racial profiling?
	Well, of course not.
	Do you understand race?
	Like the skin color has almost nothing to do.
	I mean, if you're at a party and Bill Cosby walks into the room, does everyone dive under the table and say, Dear God, it's a black man!
	He must have a grenade!
	He's gonna take Jell-O pops and insert them someplace unholy!
	Of course you don't.
	You're like, hell, that's great, I love Bill Cosby.
	He's a funny guy and a real gentleman and so on.
	So, the color of his skin is irrelevant.
	It is not racial profiling that is occurring.
	I mean, otherwise, you have to sustain the argument that he would have called on the 90-year-old guy in a wheelchair or the 89-year-old black woman.
	So, the color of the skin is not.
	It is the presentation of threat that is important.
	And that is what is common between, you know, guys, whether they're black or white, who are walking the pimp role with the hoodie on, who are slouching their way through the rain, who are fitting the profile of a lot of other people who've committed crimes.
	So let me read you something from Thomas Sowell.
	He's an economist.
	Happens to be black.
	I've read so many of his books.
	He's an incredible guy.
	You've got to read this guy.
	I mean, particularly his arguments about where sort of low-rent thug culture comes from in black America.
	It's really fascinating.
	Fascinating.
	Anyway, you'll find it on Amazon.
	But look, Thomas Sowell.
	So he wrote recently, he said, There was a warning to all the students to avoid a nearby tough Irish neighborhood where Harvard students had been attacked.
	It so happened that there was a black neighborhood on the other side of the Irish neighborhood that I had to pass through when I went to get my hair cut.
	I never went through that Irish neighborhood dressed in the style of most Harvard students back then.
	I walked through that Irish neighborhood dressed like a black working man would have dressed, and I never had the slightest trouble the whole three years when I was at Harvard.
	Well, I had a right to walk through that tough neighborhood dressed in a Brooks Brothers suit if I wanted to, and if I could have afforded one, which I couldn't, it made no sense for me to court needless dangers.
	I mean, so let's say that there was some section of town where middle-aged bald white guys who were all part of the middle-aged bald white guy gang were stealing and beating people up, and this was the local gang.
	And I had to walk through I knew about this ahead of time.
	Well, I'll wear a hat.
	I'll put on a wig.
	I just, I don't want to appear like somebody, a group of people who's been threatening and disturbing the neighborhood.
	I mean, this is stuff I learned about years ago.
	When I was in college, I attended presentations where they basically said, look, if a woman is walking home, she's walking down the street and it's, you know, one o'clock in the morning, don't walk, you know, four feet behind her, particularly if you have some, you know, creepy-ass version of asthma.
	Do not walk that close.
	Cross the street, wait a little bit, and so on, you know.
	It doesn't mean that you're a rapist.
	It doesn't mean that you're a predator.
	Just give the woman some space so she doesn't feel particularly scared.
	And that seemed like reasonable.
	And I've sort of made that a policy.
	I think that's a reasonable thing to do.
	So I think that's kind of an important thing to understand.
	So let's say that I just decided to put a particular insignia on my forehead.
	Maybe a little something like this.
	And then some of my Jewish friends found this rather offensive.
	Or maybe they were only sent that few seconds and said, would you like to watch the rest of the clip?
	And they'd say, hell to the no, because he looks like a crazy-ass and slightly wrinkly Nazi guy.
	Well, would I then say, you see?
	They're turning away from my video because I'm white!
	No, it's not because I'm white.
	It's because by putting a swastika on my forehead, I'm actually demonstrating my sympathy with a violent subculture within the white community called Nazis, right?
	And if I am publicly portraying my sympathy with a violent subculture in the white community called Nazis, then it's not going to be that shocking if I have a kind of negative reaction from people around me.
	Now, I can say that's entirely because of my race.
	Um...
	I'm wrong.
	I'm sorry.
	I'm wrong.
	Now, people say, well, you know, black kids should be able to dress however they want.
	Well, yeah, I guess that's true.
	And I should be able to have a swastika tattooed on my forehead and experience no negative consequences.
	Sure.
	You know, maybe I can get that, you know, flat, brittle cream, little Nazi thing and wander through Jerusalem and then wonder why I might get some funny looks.
	I can do anything I want.
	You know, maybe I should be able to wander through Harlem dressed as a Grand Wizard of the KKK and say this is just a fashion choice.
	Maybe I should be able to leave my wallet for two weeks on a bench in Central Park, come back and expect it to be there, but this is not how the world works.
	We transmit our values through our appearance.
	Whether we like it or not, whether we agree with it or not, this is the way...
	That the world works.
	And if I'm a black youth and I am going to dress in a manner that indicates my sympathy for a violent subculture within the black community called the gangs or called the prison culture or so on, right?
	I mean, you know the do-rag and the low hanging pants, right?
	You know where that comes from?
	That comes from prison.
	In prison, you're not allowed to wear A cap or a hat, so you use the do-rag, and in prison you're not allowed to have a belt, so you can be used as a weapon, I guess, to hang yourself, and therefore your pants.
	A lot of people lose weight in prison, right?
	And so your pants are going to hang low in prison.
	So if I'm going to be doing the pimp roll, walking around, you know, with the do-rag and the low-hanging pants and the muscle tee and all that kind of stuff and tattoos and stuff, I'm clearly transmitting my sympathy with a violent criminal subculture within the black community, and not just within the black community or whatever.
	So if I'm going to do that, if I'm going to say I'm really, really keen on and a big fan of the criminal prison culture, is it then completely shocking to me when people assume that I may not be a huge fan of law, of property, of respect for personhood, and so on?
	I mean, the fact that this even needs to be said is kind of ridiculous, and I'm sorry that there aren't more people around that are saying this kind of stuff, but it really is...
	It's kind of important to understand how you present yourself is important.
	And if you present yourself as somebody who may be in a gang or is keen on prison or is a big fan of gang culture or prison culture, then don't be surprised if people think that you might not be up to that much good.
	I mean, you can say that you wish the world were otherwise, but life is short.
	We all have to make decisions pretty quickly.
	Now, the other thing that's interesting as well, you know, for those who don't know the backstory, it really is a truly tragic backstory with Trayvon Martin that, you know, he was caught tagging WTF, what the fuck, on a school property on a locker, I think, and the security guard who searched his backpack found, you know, rings, earrings, women's jewelry, and a screwdriver that was described as a lockpicking instrument and so on.
	Now, because his local police wished to improve these statistics, you know, hey, youth crime is down 40%, they simply didn't categorize this as a crime.
	They didn't report it as a crime.
	In fact, all of the stolen goods just sat in the police station.
	They made no effort to get them back to their original owners, which is, of course, ridiculous and tragically inevitable when you start working these kinds of numbers.
	So, what's not really talked about is, of course, if the police had intervened, if they had pressed charges or if they had done something like that, then Trayvon Martin's family, his parents, would have got the kind of alert that they needed that the kid was really heading down a bad path and may have intervened more forcefully, may have done something or anything, may have, who knows what, got him in some sort of wilderness program.
	I don't know.
	What do I know, right?
	But got him on Dr.
	Phil.
	Who knows?
	But they might have done something.
	But, of course, the police just brushed it under because they wanted to improve their numbers to show what great police they were.
	And this meant that a potential for significant intervention from social services or something was missed.
	And this, of course, was really tragic to me.
	There's a good possibility that something might have changed if that had been alerted.
	Now, is it 100% proof that he was carrying basically a lockpick and a whole bunch of stolen women's jewelry?
	Is that proof positive that he's a thief?
	I don't know.
	It seems pretty likely.
	I mean, I don't know.
	Is it 100% proof?
	I don't even know what that means.
	But it seems kind of likely.
	He was either in possession of stolen merchandise and a lockpick, basically, or, you know, he'd used it and stolen stuff.
	When George Zimmerman said that Trayvon Martin was acting in a suspicious manner, what he basically meant was, I don't think he meant that he thought he was a rapist or a killer, because that wasn't the problems that were plaguing the gated community, it was repeated thefts by young black men.
	So, he was saying, I'm concerned that Martin might be a break-and-enter thief, that Trayvon Martin might be a break-and-enter thief.
	I don't think it's really been pointed out anywhere, to my knowledge, But according to what Martin was caught with before, stolen women's jewelry and a lockpick, basically, I mean, Zimmerman was right.
	He tagged him as a thief.
	It seems pretty likely that he was a thief.
	But you can't say any of that kind of stuff because we can't...
	I mean, there's a weird kind of patriarchy that's going on.
	I don't know why we can't talk to black people like they're just normal human beings.
	That's what I mean.
	If this was a white guy, I'd say all this stuff too.
	So, you know, I want to treat black people with exactly the same respect as I treat white people, as I treat women, as I treat the elderly, whatever it is.
	I mean, we're all people and we can all handle some truth.
	We can all handle some evidence and some reality, some reasoning and so on.
	So the fact that he's, oh, he profiled Trayvon Martin as a potential thief.
	Well, he was a thief in all likelihood.
	I mean, he'd been caught with stolen goods and he had a lockpick on him basically.
	And so he was right.
	But he wasn't right because Trayvon Martin was black.
	He was right because Trayvon Martin fit a profile and was dressed in a manner that indicated, to some degree at least, that indicated some level of sympathy with the kind of subculture.
	Or, you know, it's a basic level of sensitivity to the perception of others, right?
	So, I mean, you know, whites are likely to suffer violence at the hands of black youth 13 times more than vice versa, right?
	So, if I'm a black youth and I know that, you know, there's a lot of violent black youths out there, then it's kind of incumbent upon me to present myself as somebody who's not that way inclined.
	To relax people, to not get in trouble, to not, you know.
	Now, of course, one of the problems that occurs in the black culture is if you start dressing nicely, what are you accused of?
	Oh, you know, you're an Oreo, you're white on the inside, black on the outside.
	You're dressing white, you're conforming to whitey.
	What are you, some kind of Brooks Brothers commercial, whatever it is, right?
	Well, that's not coming from white people.
	I think white people are quite happy when they see a nicely dressed young black man, you know, walking down the street.
	Maybe feel a little more nervous when it's, you know, five of them.
	And I think, was it Jesse Jackson who said the same thing?
	He said, after 20 years of working in civil rights and equality, you know, when I hear footsteps behind me and I turn around and it's not a black person, I'm kind of relieved.
	I mean, it's tragic.
	That there is this problem in society, dressing counter to it is kind of nice, you know, it's kind of sensitive, it's kind of empathetic to the concerns of people around you, and I'm sorry that it has to be this way, but it is this way.
	You know, I happen to be bald as a result of going through chemotherapy, and I have a lot of hair to begin with, but as a result of going through chemotherapy, so it's incumbent upon me not to wear anything that also looks...
	You know, a skinhead kind of thing, right?
	Because there could be that perception kind of thing.
	I mean, I was called a Nazi and so on.
	You know, it's fine.
	I understand that, right?
	In the comment sections and so on, right?
	Who's this skinhead to tell me?
	Well, fair enough, right?
	But the reality is that if there are these elements in the black community that if a black kid starts dressing nicely and not doing the pimp roll and stuff, if other blacks kind of get down on them and start harassing them or whatever for dressing white, well, that's not the white man keeping you down, right?
	I mean, that's the tall poppy syndrome.
	And the hammer that sticks up gets nailed down and so on.
	That's black-on-black repression.
	And it's not really something I think that a lot of white people can dip in, can sort of bungee in and fix.
	So anyway, I just wanted to share these thoughts.
	The last thought I wanted to share about was that when people say, you know, was Zimmerman racially profiled Trayvon Martin?
	That's a complicated question, right?
	Because a lot of blacks and whites are very keen on...
	Racial profiling, right?
	I mean, it's the positive discrimination called affirmative action.
	That's racial profiling, right?
	It's like, well, we're going to have to have a certain number of black youths come into these colleges or to these jobs or to these government agencies or whatever.
	There's quotas and all this kind of stuff.
	So that's racial profiling, which is to make a decision someone may...
	So, NAACP, I believe, is behind this.
	Lots of black organizations are behind this.
	And, of course, anybody who questions this is called a racist and so on.
	So...
	So when people, you know, maybe even blacks in particular, talk about racial profiling as if it's just automatically a bad thing, you know, like lynching?
	Bad thing all around.
	Terrible thing all around.
	But racial profiling is, I mean, a lot of people are pretty ambivalent about it, right?
	Because a lot of people really want it when it comes to getting into college.
	A lot of people really don't want it when it comes to being, you know, say, accurately guessed to be a criminal, right?
	So, in the case of Martin.
	So, it's really a tricky question, and people who just say, well, he racially profiled it like it's something bad, are just showing that they really don't understand the complexity around the essential question, which is hard to answer in America, as it is around the world, which is, do you want me to care if you're black or not?
	I'd love to live in a world where I don't have to care if you're black or not.
	I don't have to walk in eggshells.
	Oh, I can't talk about this.
	I just want to have honest communication.
	I don't want you to care that I'm white.
	I don't want you to care that I have blue eyes.
	I don't want you to care any of these things.
	I don't want to care that you're black.
	I don't want to care that you're Hispanic.
	I don't want to care.
	I just want to talk to you like a human being.
	Now, if we live in a world where I don't care if you're black, which is the world I want to live in, then, you know, there's things like affirmative action kind of go by the wayside.
	And I'm not the only one who thinks this.
	Thomas Sowell was really mad at affirmative action.
	And a lot of blacks who get educated should be and are mad because affirmative action devalues.
	The degrees of really skilled, talented, and intelligent black people.
	Because people who receive a resume from someone who is black and who comes from college or whatever, they don't actually know if the person got in on his or her own merits or whether the person got in on affirmative action merits.
	So they're automatically going to rationally have to downgrade the skills and abilities, which is incredibly unfair to the people who would have gotten in there on their own merits.
	So anyway...
	I just wanted to point these things out.
	Thank you again so much.
	It is a very powerful and vital conversation.
	I'm incredibly pleased that over 600,000 people also saw a very strong anti-spanking message.
	I'm incredibly happy about that.
	If only 5% or 10% of people end up not spanking their kids, that is not a bad weekend's work.
	So I'm hugely grateful for that.
	For those of you who don't know, there's no ads on my channel.
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	And so if you would like to help out this show, I would really, really appreciate it.
	You can go to FDRURL.com forward slash donate, which I use, of course, to travel and give speeches and write books and all that kind of stuff and buy all this fancy schmancy technical equipment to do the shows.
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