Here is what Jen Graves, art critic at The Stranger has to to say about the outcome of the criminal case against George Zimmerman:
"...George Zimmerman's "heart was in the right place," referring to the man who, when all is said and done, racially profiled, then without cause and against warnings approached, then shot and killed a black teenager—in his words from when he first saw the young man, just a "punk"—for being there in his gated community.
It is Graves who jumps to the conclusion that he killed Martin just for being in his gated community.
I seriously doubt that that happened or that Zimmerman killed Martin because he was wearing a hoodie, was in the gated community, and was black.
But Graves acts like she knows. For she was there the night of the killing, beaming down with the Eye of God on her side.
But maybe this sort of thing is what readers of Ms. Graves should have become used to. After all, someone, even as young as Ms. Graves, who mistakes the thousand-year -old Byzantine Empire for the Ottoman Empire in cross-cultural currents that influenced Venetian Art, cannot be bothered to wish to be constrained by logical inference and cogent (rather than emotional) argument.
And this is the same writer who boastfully and rather frighteningly believes as a competitive college swimmer she "literally swam across the United States."
What does she actually know of the Mardi Gras riots in Pioneer Square in 2001, much less of the '60's in this country?*
I am not sure if we are to take seriously, at any rate, someone in her late twenties who seems to believe that she understands the Civil Rights Movement of the '60's from books, rather than from actually having lived through that era and looked at it from more than one angle.
Why should she make any attempt to see an event through the eyes--and guts-- of someone else other than her own (for instance, George Zimmerman's, the jurors', Latinos', the residents' of the gated community, the police's, those of James Paroline, Manish Melwani, Tuba Man, Danny Vega, etc.) when she can a priori exclude these other viewpoints since she is omniscient?
Ms. Graves undoubtedly knew what had happened that fateful night even before the trial ever began. She didn't need to weigh the evidence or hear the testimony, least of all of Mr. Zimmerman's.
She knows exactly what it's like to be a heavy-set working-class middle-aged Latino man in Florida, even though she is a young, hip, ostensibly well-educated white woman in Seattle.
It makes no difference to her who George Zimmerman is, where he has been in life, how he has lived the past year, his mental state of mind. She is not in the least interested in him as an human being. He is a symbol, not a human being, for her. A symbol of white oppression, even though he is not white.
Just as, for Ms. Graves, Venetian art was the inheritor of Ottoman art traditions, even though it was not the art of the Turks and the Middle East but that of Byzantium (the Eastern Roman Empire).
* * * * *
Why bother trying to get into his head when Ms. Graves'--with respect to Travyon Martin's--is so much more compelling.
There is a victim and a perpetrator, and this was decided well in advance. Black and white, or rather, white-on-black. Nothing else exists or is important for her or for others of her mindset.
Ergo: Of all the benighted white people in this country, she must be the most enlightened.
She is not prejudiced. She thinks she is not racist.
Ms. Graves can't stomach or even entertain the thought that George Zimmerman on that night may have only been fighting for his own life.
In her wisdom and maturity, Ms. Graves knows that only some people and only some races deserve compassion.
But if she is truly interested in saving the lives of young black men, she and her cohorts ought to organize anti-violence workshops in the African-American community, since over 90% of the murders of black people each year are committed by other black people (rather than focus on a disproportionately small number committed by non-blacks).**
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Mardi_Gras_Riots
** Crime statistics from the U.S. government are not hard to be found on the Internet.
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