Those that want to “hang” George Zimmerman rest their hopes
on the prosecution’s success in showing that he profiled Trayvon Martin—singled him out for
suspicion—because
he was black.
If the jury can be convinced of this, they reason, then
regardless of who jumped who, of who was in fear for their life during the
fight, the shooting of unarmed Trayvon constitutes murder in the 2nd
degree because of the racial animus implicit in the racial profiling, without
which there would have been no altercation.
“Profiling” is commonly thought of as using a person’s race,
sex, ethnicity, religion, or cultural background (the list continues to
grow...) as a primary predictor of their likelihood to commit some egregious
act. To get an operational definition of “profiling” we need to append the clause:
“when the target of the profiling belongs to an acceptable victim group.”
Profiling is inextricably linked with political correctness.
It turns out that there had been many recent break-ins at
the Twin Lakes gated housing development in Sanford, FL where Zimmerman lived
and Trayvon was visiting. The recession had decimated the property values of
the homes in the relatively young housing development. Units that originally
sold in the $250k range to owner-occupiers had since plummeted in value to the
$80k range—a
situation familiar to many throughout the US, and especially so to communities
in Florida which was particularly hard-hit by the housing bubble collapse.
Subsequently, many of the units at Twin Lakes were rented,
and a crime-wave of burglaries ensued. According to statements heard at the
trial and corroborated by crime reports, all of the most recent 7 break-ins
were committed by black men. Therefore, there is a likelihood that the next
break-in will also be committed by a black man, or put another way, it is
statistically more likely that a black male rather than a white male will
commit a burglary at the housing complex.
But under the prohibition against profiling, any
crime-prevention efforts must ignore the statistical likelihood that break-ins
at the development are caused, perhaps exclusively, by black males. This begs
the question: When does it become okay to acknowledge that the perpetrators of
the break-ins are black males, and act accordingly with that knowledge in any
preventive measures to address crime in the complex? What if there were 10 break-ins, all
perpetrated by black males? One hundred?
At what point does it become not only an absurdity but also,
and more importantly, does it actually undermine law enforcement efforts, when
the demographic profile of the people committing the crimes is deliberately
ignored?
Apparently no one questions that profiling is an evil
practice, the accusation of which will cause an alleged “profiler” to twist and
turn in linguistic contortions trying to explain how recognizing the racial
identity of past criminal behavior in a given community is not ... recognizing the racial identity of past
criminal behavior in the given community.
Yes, it’s an impossible task, and amusing to watch in the Zimmerman
trial, in a perverse sort of way.
This illogical, counterproductive obeisance to political
correctness is not restricted to the disproportional prevalence of black crime.
It also explains why TSA agents avoid profiling the group solely responsible
for all the acts of terrorism at our airports since 9/11—middle-eastern/northern-African Islamics—by also body-searching
white grandmothers in wheelchairs and 4-year-old children.
But as stated above, profiling is only profiling when the
target group is a legitimate “victim group” as established by the canons of
political correctness.
One particularly
virulent strain of profiling occurs each and every day throughout the nation,
but it is never acknowledged as such and hence it’s never in the news and never
the subject of a “study” by well-meaning, progressive social science academics.
Nor is it fodder for a Hollywood drama starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie,
screaming out for social justice and warmly rewarded with an Oscar on that
night when Hollywood celebrities revel in their circle-jerk of
self-righteousness.
The most pernicious, pervasive, unjust —and apparently
completely invisible!—form of profiling is visited upon men accused of “gender
crimes,” mired in everyday courtroom dramas that never make it to cable TV. Accusations of domestic abuse/violence that
coincidentally occur when a divorce is filed and custody of children is an
issue. Men accused of sexual assault or rape in so-called “date-rape” cases
after the “victim” has second thoughts the following morning. Men who seek
custody of their children, even when there are no allegations of abuse made by
the mother.
In the abstract, profiling is akin to the process of using
discrimination (in the textbook, i.e., good
sense of the word) to make decisions. That is, the process whereby we employ observation,
logic, perhaps supported by some probability and statistics analysis, all in
concert to make strategic decisions about a future action. To optimize a choice. An example might be in
industry whereby decisions are made in Quality Control on how to test a
production line of widgets in the most efficient and cost-effective
manner.
“Profiling” in the common, legal usage, i.e., circumscribed
by the parameters of identity politics, transmogrifies this process into something
evil.
Somehow, when it comes to matters of crime prevention and air-traffic
safety, to use two of the more familiar examples, we have all been brainwashed
to pretend that recognizing a profile of the criminal perpetrators is somehow wrong
and must be condemned and prohibited. George Zimmerman should be found guilty
of 2nd –degree murder because he profiled Trayvon Martin, regardless
of the facts of the actual altercation that are emerging in the trial.
If you lived in the Twin Lakes gated community and were
aware of the history of break-ins, would you be more suspicious of a strange black
man in a hoodie than you would of a white man you didn’t recognize? If no, then
you deserve the politically correct seal of approval for your bias-free powers
of observation; however you fail miserably in life skills and common sense, and
if it were your job to safeguard the security of the residents you would be woefully
derelict in your duties and should be fired.
Consider these crime statistics:
- Blacks commit 42% of all burglaries, a rate exceeding 3 times their proportion (13%) in the general population.[i]
- Blacks commit 55% of all robberies, 4 times their proportion in the general population.[ii]
- Blacks are 7 times as likely as whites to commit murder.[iii]
- The single biggest predictor of violent crime levels in an area is the percentage of the population that is black and Hispanic.[iv]
- 28% of people arrested for burglary are black.[v]
This is not an aberration. It turns out that, contrary to
what we are led to believe, blacks are not arrested “en masse” on suspicion of
criminality. In fact they are arrested at rates less than the actual rates at
which they statistically commit the crimes. With respect to arrest rates, blacks
are in fact, “reverse-profiled.” The explanation for this is that in response
to political pressure, police departments have adjusted policies to afford
especial leniency to blacks and minorities.
An example of this can actually be found in the Zimmerman trial.
Trayvon Martin had a criminal history—though the jury has been protected from
this knowledge. Trayvon benefitted from a policy of the Miami-Dade Sanford Police
Department geared to minimize school arrests of black males. Trayvon had been
apprehended with a burglary tool and also with pilfered jewelry. These offenses
should’ve been arrestable, but political pressure to show improvements in
juvenile delinquency in the school district fudged the reports, including one
for pot possession, such that Trayvon’s punishment was limited to two school
suspensions.
Unfortunately I suffer from an acute case of rationalism, so
to me it seems a no-brainer that rather than looking for ways to hide these politically
incorrect inconvenient truths by attacking “profiling” and “stop-and-frisk” policies, we should be using any and all legal means at our disposal to actually deal
with these crimes, including profiling.
And if you’re really interested in the ‘why’ of the appallingly
high rates of black crime, refer to the paragraph above regarding the
“invisible” profiling. The strategic correlation to be made is with children
raised without their fathers... but that
leads to a 3rd rail even hotter than racial profiling.
[i] NCVS incident-level data for the
years 2001 to 2003 were extracted from US, Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice
Statistics
[ii]
ibid
[iii]
Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2011, Nov. 16, http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/press/htus8008pr.cfm
[iv]
The Color of Crime: Race, Crime, and
Justice in America, 2005, New Century Foundation
[v] US, Dept. of Justice, Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Crime in the United States, 2002 [This is
the official title of document that is based on the Uniform Crime Reporting
Program (UCR).]
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