The Color of Justice, Revisited

The blogger known as Nelson Abdullah or Oldironsides discusses two cases that might be considered hatecrimes, but for some reason or other have not received publicity comparable to the case of George Zimmerman:

http://noisyroom.net/blog/2013/07/16/black-on-white-crime-hardly-gets-anyone-protesting-in-the-streets-racial-bias-in-the-courts-also-a-problem/

Why don't White people howl and riot with outrage about this kind of thing? Maybe because we're brought up to think about unfairness differently.

My late husband had previously been married to a French West Indian woman who did a lot of bad things in order to cheat me out of his estate. How was that possible? Where was the enforcement of what Maryland has in the way of laws? Well...on several occasions, color was involved.

My husband's ex-wife's name had never appeared on the title to our house; she had no legal claim that my husband owed her money; she had never been in the house. Nevertheless, by displaying a blatantly forged "power of attorney" document no competent sixth grade teacher would have accepted, she was able to persuade someone to take out a loan to pay her four times what the house was worth, claim that she'd sold the house...and get a Maryland judge to uphold this person's "good-faith purchase." Is it really that easy to make money illegally in Maryland? Why, apart from personal conscience reasons, aren't more people forging documents that allow them to sell houses the insides of which they've never seen? Er, um...the "good-faith purchaser" and the judge who upheld the purchase happened, like the ex-wife, to be Black.

But I wasn't brought up to define myself primarily as a color. Few White people are. If I were called on to take sides in any kind of conflict between two other people, it's possible that something about one of the people or one side of the story might engage my sympathy in a more subtle way, but I would not automatically side with the White person against any non-White person. It's hard to be sure, but I don't think even "Pure Aryan" blue-eyed blondes whose grandparents actually lived in Europe think that way. As a mostly-White American I was specifically taught that that kind of thinking was wrong.

Americans of African descent apparently aren't receiving this message about justice being color-blind...though they should be. They should be the last ones to want a color war in which they would be outnumbered.

All Americans should be able to see the advantages of living in a country where the majority group have been taught that the rights and wrongs of a criminal case have nothing to do with the body type of the defendant. Nor should they have anything to do with the immoral behavior of interested parties--which is to say that, the more people blame rioting and violent crime on their sympathy for Trayvon Martin, the less sympathy any further prosecution of George Zimmerman should receive. In fact, my feeling is that the perpetrators of this kind of "protest"...

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/16/shock-kill-zimmerman-spray-painted-on-side-of-penn-business-before-its-set-on-fire/

...should be required to pay damages directly to the Zimmerman family. And they should serve hard time until they're old enough to understand why.

You want to protest against race-based injustice? Yesterday this web site posted a link to a discussion of a case Erica Ritz here presents in more detail:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/15/is-it-fair-that-a-florida-mom-received-a-20-year-sentence-for-firing-warning-shot/

Is this fair? Is this right? Get your signs, and let's protest! But let's do it right...protesting injustice has nothing to do with threats, riots, or violence of any kind.