Zimmerman Martin Case

I totally agree with his assessment, but I think it's an over-reaction. There have been some very questionable comments made during this thread, but the responsibility lies with the posters, not with MAP as a whole.

I'm a bit suprised that people didn't get called more for some of their comments at the time that they were posted, but I'm sure I didn't see anything which would have justified a ban. So it's not like the mods missed things that they should have dealt with. So I don't see how it is fair to hold MAP to blame for anything.

I could understand someone not wanting to remain a member if the overall consensus view on the site was inherently racist, but it isn't, not by a long chalk. Those who have expressed racist attitudes are in a very small minority.
 
That's the Good Ol' USA, even a juror can become a "celebrity" or make "profit"

Another look at "The Freedoms":

Freedom of Assembly which you have to use a Freedom of Petition to have a assembly

Freedom of Petition which you have to use a Freedom of Speech to get a petition

Freedom of Religion which you already have the Freedom of Speech, to have Freedom of Petition, which allowed you to have the Freedom of Assembly

Freedom of the Press to report misalignment all of the other Freedoms in order to keep up ratings...

Which leads us to the Final Freedom;

Freedom to Exploit and Profit
 
For the last thirty pages or so, this thread was basically a back-and-forth shouting match between a half-dozen people. Some ugly things were said by one or two people on BOTH sides of that fence. Someone's going to drop their financial support for the largest and best martial arts forum on the internet, with probably a hundred or so "regulars" and many more active users, because of a shouting match between a half-dozen people in a single thread in the off-topic section? I don't understand the reasoning behind that.
 
He disagreed with what he believed (emphasis on the subjectivity here) MAP had become home to and no longer wanted to support that en-devour.

To quote vegan friend of mine when I asked him what he thought his vegan-ism would accomplish in the face of things.

"At least I'm flipping trying."

...And yeah, I cleaned up the language a bit. :P
 
Before you start making jabs about me not making "intelligent conversation," let me explain something. I'm an attorney. I litigate tort cases for a living. And right now, you are throwing around buzzwords like an engineer on a Star Trek show, using technical terminology but stringing it together in a way that doesn't make sense. So let me explain.

There is no finding of "guilt" in a civil case. Nor is there inquiry into other "crimes." Those are concepts that only exist in criminal law.

There is no potential for civil rights liability. Zimmerman is not a government actor, so there's no claim under Section 1983. Zimmerman is neither an employer nor an operator of public accommodations, so there's no claim under Title VII.

As for liability for wrongful death, we've already seen the testimony and the physical evidence. The standard will be a preponderance of the evidence. If the jury thinks that more likely than not Zimmerman was acting in self-defense when he pulled that trigger, there will be a defense verdict.

And the evidence at trial (as opposed to the narrative the news media cobbled together to "sex up" the story) is going to allow Zimmerman to meet the preponderance standard. He was NOT instructed not to follow Martin; he was simply told he didn't need to. The physical evidence will show that Zimmerman had significant injuries to his face and the back of his head, and that Martin had bruised knuckles. The physical evidence doesn't show significant signs of Zimmerman beating on Martin. The physical evidence will show that the gun was only fired once, and it was fired when Martin was on top of Zimmerman (the muzzle was against the sweatshirt but 2-4 inches away from Martin's chest when it discharged). That physical evidence is more consistent with Zimmerman's narrative than it is with Zimmerman brandishing the gun or taking the first swing. And that's all you need for preponderance of the evidence.

The jury will also hear that Zimmerman had called police on people nearly fifty times before and never got involved in any physical altercations with any of them. This is more consistent with Martin throwing the first punch than Zimmerman. And once again, that's all you need with preponderance.
 
Who posted something so racially insensitive that people are quitting the thread? I haven't read a few peoples posts throughout the entire thing which may be my lack of understanding this issue being brought up, but what I have read hasn't screamed 'racist' at all? What posters are we talking about?

If I'm one of them let me know! That way I can either acknowledge my fault or defend myself.
 
From what I could follow it was Obewan (I think) saying black people are more likely to commit crime
 
You'd have to go back and read through the thread. In which case, we'll see you again in about three months!

For what it's worth, I don't think you said anything particularly racist, simply because I'd have been quite shocked if you had, on the basis that I hold you in higher regard than that. I hope I'm not mistaken in saying that. I don't think that I am.
 
As a bit of an aside, one thing that cropped up many pages ago was the fact that the area where the killing took place is very racially mixed.

Please excuse my ignorance, but is this quite unusual in the USA? I always get the impression that mixed areas are very rare, and people tend to live with their 'own'.

(Actually, I remember a thread from MAP several years ago where a US member was quite surprised to learn that in England, mixed is normal.)

I'm just curious.
 
Who on earth is threatening to leave MAP?

Reality Please said he won't respond on this thread any more and Ero wants to see my mankini shots (heck, you all do, I know it really).

Beyond that I don't see what the drama is?

Mitch
 
That'd be an erroneous impression, at least for much of the nation. Based on living in various parts of the US (Colorado, Boston metro area, Oregon) and visiting the UK, I'd say the two are pretty similar. I mean, look at our president:



If interracial neighborhoods were still controversial, do you really thing someone with that complex of a family history could be elected president? Twice?
 
Giovanni has that right of course and is absolutely free to exercise it.

I'm going to make a counter argument, and he, as a poster I respect and value the opinion of, is free to ignore it.

I was reading a post tonight that I hated. Everything from the premise to the phrasing to the morality. I thought it was vile and nothing to do with MAP.

The Mod team discussed it.

It didn't break ToS, it was in Off Topic so I ended up arguing for it staying on MAP because despite my personal feelings, I'm not the arbiter of MAP.

I feel the same with some of the posts here. I find several distasteful or even racist, but they don't break ToS, and more than that I think they need challenging and exposing for what they are, and we do that by persevering as a community.

Just my thoughts anyway.

Mitch
 
The only place I've ever lived that had "my own" (white) as an overwhelming majority was in the USMC infantry. The lack of variety in ethnicity was something I had never been exposed to. I would put it around 95% all white dudes, 5% everything else. Aside from the infantry it's a different story. It was a big culture shock for me!

Other than that I've never lived any place in the U.S. that was very ethnic specific. I've been to a lot of different countries and the lack of variety in people always seemed odd to me because I've never really seen that. There are plenty of parts in the U.S. with one kind of ethnicity though. I've always lived around a big university which is probably why I've always seen a lot of different culture/ethnicity. Location is key I suppose.
 
Obviously, this is a controversial subject. Yes, some racist comments have been made in this thread. Most were mild to insensitive or inappropriate. But those comments were made by a very small minority of users who have consistently said offensive things on a broad variety of subjects. That small, offensive minority doesn't represent MAP in any way. Most are probably fairly obtuse individuals who don't realize they are silently tolerated here for no reason other than their failure to sufficiently violate the ToS. But the communities unwillingness to call them out more vocally might have more to do with the individuals making those statements. Some people here might feel it's unproductive to follow those users through every off-topic discussion and vocalize every disagreement they have with them simply because that would be the majority of their posts and it might be seen as adversarial to the mods. So it becomes more of a, "oh, great, so-and-so said another stupid, insensitive thing today. I won't bother to reply to it. The attention only seems to encourage him/her anyway." That's not the same thing as a silently racist community who isn't offended by those comments.

Try to remember that most of MAP is pretty liberal, well-educated, traveled, and culturally diverse. I seriously doubt the vast majority of users here are remotely racist. Do they occasionally still have insensitive, bigoted thoughts? Yup. Pretty much everyone does. Most just do a good enough job at self-filtering so they don't vocalize those thoughts.

One of the primary reasons I enjoy being part of MAP is because the mods here vote on how behavior applies to the rules, not on their personal feelings about the subject. I think they do a pretty exceptional job at that. One drawback to that system is that people who only ever say borderline offensive statements without going too extreme become entrenched and ultimately semi-tolerated. They're here so long as they don't mess up big time, so most people just kinda ignore them and hope they go away. Considering what a small minority of MAP they represent, it's not usually a very big deal.

Now, some insensitive/racist comments aside, if you just examine the evidence in this case, I think there is nothing that supports that Zimmerman was racially motivated in his actions. You can't demand the public be outraged about a subject when the local police and FBI investigate and not only cannot find any evidence of Zimmerman being racist, but actually find ample evidence that suggests he wasn't racist and was very warm and welcoming with many black members of his community. Is it a tragedy that a young kid died over something this stupid? Yes. Was it racially motivated? No. That doesn't mean that institutionalized racism doesn't exist and needs to still be changed. It means it doesn't apply in this one case despite how much some people seem to want it to. So don't give up on people because they're not passionate about this one topic were no evidence of racism was found. Focus your energy on drawing attention to legitimate racism and try to ignore this media fabricated sort in the future I say.
 
KUDOS!

Nice post.

But if you take your post/position and place it likewise like a juror on the Zimmerman trial, you will realise how he was found not guilty and perhaps those jurors have a "similar feeling"
 
I feel I've put a lot of people off posting what I did earlier, and I hope Giovanni reconsiders his decision. FWIW I feel Travon was profiled for the way he looked and I still feel that is part the fault of a subculture of the young multi racial drug/gangsta stereotype. so my advise is if your going to walk around dressed in a hoodie in July then you should probably be mindful of someone perhaps being a bit suspicious and cautious of your intentions. It would serve everyone to act civil and introduce your self with some sort of positive greeting that would relieve any misunderstandings. Had this been accomplished I'm sure the outcome of Travon's and Zimmerman's encounter would have been much different.

As far as what's going on personally with the local thing, well it's going to be a long process, I still have some trust issues as you can imagine, but I'm working on that. Recently my business has been robbed and I'm pretty sure the person who did it is someone who was close and knew what they wanted, basically it was a couple barrels of copper wire I was going to scrap, they could have took a lot more so I suspect it was an inside job.

Anyway if anyone has a problem with what I've posted feel free to address it, I'm a big boy I can take it. One thing I'd like to point out is that the public discussion in the media has taken on the same tone as this one, so were not alone in how we are handling this situation. Some African American reporters were making similar points as was I, of course they were vilified as well.
 
That's interesting. Most of the places I've been to in the USA seemed to be overwhelmingly white areas, but it's difficult to know how typical a place is when you're just visiting.

In the UK, if you went to any rural area and most smalll towns, you'd hardly see a non-white face. Whereas parts of all the large cities and many large towns are a real melting-pot.I'm not saying that they are controversial, I was simply under the impression that they aren't very common. I would guess that things like restrictive covenants are a thing of the past, but it doesn't mean that you're suddenly going to get a flood of (say) black people wanting to move into a traditionally Italian neighbourhood, or vice-versa. People to stick with what is familiar and feels safe, and they tend to want to live close to friends and family. It doesn't necessarily mean that they feel coerced into living with people just like them.

I'm not sure what the election of Barack Obama has got to do with where people live. You've lost me on that one.
 
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