There is a thing I love to use. It’s called reverse psychology.
“Reverse psychology is often used on children due to their high tendency to respond with reactance, a desire to restore threatened freedom of action. Some parents feel that the best strategy is sometimes “reverse psychology”: telling children to stay in the house when you really want them to choose to go outside and play’.” – Wikipedia
Now let start by saying that I haven’t had much to say about the murder of Trayvon Martin. People have asked me to blog about it and I’ve said no. I really think that this tragedy is not going to end well at all. I think that due to the Stand Your Ground law in Florida that George Zimmerman has a good chance of getting off Scott free. That really disturbs me. So much so that I really haven’t wanted to deal with the fact that the whole situation screams Pre-Civil Right era America. An America that I can’t stand.
For me, the solution is not simply justice for Trayvon and his family. The answer is that this law and others like it are changed so that they can’t be used as a defense for anyone (regardless of color or creed) who shoots and kills an unarmed person. Justice in this situation not going to resolve institutionalized racism in America, so I’m not looking for that. Yes, there was profiling…but our legal system makes that hard to prove without someone shouting “I’ll kill you, N-word” before they shoot into a crowd of witnesses.
That brings me to what I “kinda” agree with Ann Coulter on. Laws like Stand Your Ground should be repealed and I think that I know how that can happen. Black people may have to model the behavior that we want to see stopped.
In a recent interview on Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News program, Coulter said that, in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting, African-Americans should begin arming themselves. Here’s the full context of the conversation:
Coulter: We are going to have a trial, but I was just making the point that if what [MSNBC] is claiming happened — that George Zimmerman stalked this young black child just because he was black, shot him dead in cold blood — if that’s the case, well, the reaction isn’t the conclusion they’re coming to on the left which is oh, we need more gun control. Gun control laws have been used historically, they were — they were to keep guns out of the hands of blacks and it was the Republican Party and the NRA that has always supported arming blacks in order to protect themselves from the democratic Ku Klux Klan.
O’Reilly: All right so what you’re saying is if MSNBC and NBC News’s hypothesis is true that this was a racially biased driven murder, that all African-Americans should take that as a warning sign and arm themselves against that happening to them, therefore, they should support the NRA. They should support the law that gives, allows you to fight back if threatened, and they should arm themselves. That’s what you’re saying?
Coulter: Yes.
Source
Here’s what I think: Black people should educate themselves about gun ownership and join the NRA. I’m not saying that African Americans should buy a gun and arm themselves. You can if you want to and you are eligible in your state, of course, but really I’m against gun ownership in most cases. However, I do think that the simple act of thousands of African Americans joining the National Rifle Association would alarm a LOT of people. It would give the impression that Blacks are arming themselves in mass. I think that the ripple effect would be more strict gun laws across the country. Thus, laws like Stand Your Ground would not be acceptable because a Black guy who would normally be locked up for shooting someone could go free. Now, you know we can’t have that America. We’re just about to privatize the prisons and we don’t want criminals going free, right.
I’m not really serious, but you know I’m right. If you know anything about the Black Pathers and their use of guns, you know I’m right. They openly displayed shotguns and encouraged members to carry weapons to protect themselves. They were pioneers in the pro-gun movement. You think that didn’t have anything to do with their demise?
“Opposition to gun control was what drove the black militants to visit the California capitol with loaded weapons in hand. The Black Panther Party had been formed six months earlier, in Oakland, by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. Like many young African Americans, Newton and Seale were frustrated with the failed promise of the civil-rights movement. Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were legal landmarks, but they had yet to deliver equal opportunity. In Newton and Seale’s view, the only tangible outcome of the civil-rights movement had been more violence and oppression, much of it committed by the very entity meant to protect and serve the public: the police.
Inspired by the teachings of Malcolm X, Newton and Seale decided to fight back. Before he was assassinated in 1965, Malcolm X had preached against Martin Luther King Jr.’s brand of nonviolent resistance. Because the government was “either unable or unwilling to protect the lives and property” of blacks, he said, they had to defend themselves “by whatever means necessary.” Malcolm X illustrated the idea for Ebony magazine by posing for photographs in suit and tie, peering out a window with an M-1 carbine semiautomatic in hand. Malcolm X and the Panthers described their right to use guns in self-defense in constitutional terms. “Article number two of the constitutional amendments,” Malcolm X argued, “provides you and me the right to own a rifle or a shotgun.”
Guns became central to the Panthers’ identity, as they taught their early recruits that “the gun is the only thing that will free us—gain us our liberation.” They bought some of their first guns with earnings from selling copies of Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book to students at the University of California at Berkeley. In time, the Panther arsenal included machine guns; an assortment of rifles, handguns, explosives, and grenade launchers; and “boxes and boxes of ammunition,” recalled Elaine Brown, one of the party’s first female members, in her 1992 memoir. Some of this matériel came from the federal government: one member claimed he had connections at Camp Pendleton, in Southern California, who would sell the Panthers anything for the right price. One Panther bragged that, if they wanted, they could have bought an M48 tank and driven it right up the freeway. – Article in The Atlantic | Adam Winkler
Am I kidding? I’m not totally serious, but you see my point. Sometimes humor is good, because you have to laugh to keep from crying. Sometime you have to show people their actions by modeling them back before they truly see how much they are in error.
