ANOTHER Trayvon Martin Shot Dead In Florida: Why isn’t the shooting of 17 year old Jordan Davis headline news? | Political Blind Spot →

African American, 17, and shot dead in Florida, by a Caucasian concealed carry permit holder. But why Isn’t Jordan Davis getting the attention that the Travyon Martin shooting has? In case you haven’t heard, this story begins last November, African American youth Jordan Davis, a 17-year-old Jacksonville resident, was shot dead after Michael Dunn, 46, shot repeatedly into the SUV Davis was riding in after an argument about the volume of hip hop music that was being played.

According to Dunn’s girlfriend, Rhonda Rouer, Dunn had three rum and cokes at a wedding reception. On the drive back to the hotel they were residing at, they made a pit stop at the convenience store where the shooting occurred. At the Gate Station, Rouer said Dunn told her that he hated “thug music.” Rouer then went inside the store to make purchases and heard several gunshots while she was still within the building.

Upon returning and seeing Dunn put his gun back into the glove compartment, Rouer asked why he had shot at the car playing music and Dunn claimed that he feared for his life and that “they threatened to kill me.” The couple drove back to their hotel, and claim they did not realize anyone had died until the story appeared on the news the next day.

Dunn is being charged with first-degree murder, as well as three counts of attempted murder. Rouer described Dunn as “easy-going” but passionate about politics. The latest news on the case concerns the decision of Circuit Judge Mallory Cooper removing herself from presiding over the case. She is the second judge to leave, after the first judge, Suzanne Bass, was asked to step down in order to ensure a fair trial. Judge Russell Healey is now the third judge to be appointed to the case. The state will not be paying for Dunn’s defense fees.

Without solid evidence from both sides and one surveillance video that only shows the story from the inside of the convenience store it’s more or less the same story all over again as the Zimmerman case: an African American teenager is shot dead by a Caucasian armed with a firearm in Florida. In both cases, the tragic dispute that perhaps could have been avoided. Yet, the Jacksonville trial of Michael Dunn and Jordan Davis is not receiving the same amount of media attention or criticism as the George Zimmerman vs. Trayvon Martin case. Why?

Do the airwaves, newspapers and Twitter feeds have enough room for the prominence of one type of vaguely race-charged crime? Whatever the reason, there is no one to blame but the national media for more or less skipping this one over. While it’s true that there was an element of outrage with the Zimmerman case, because there was no initial arrest, it is also true that the notion that Zimmerman would not be arrested was more of the impression that the media itself was leaving us with than what was going on behind the scenes. Now that the trial has been in effect, we find that the police were in fact very skeptical of Zimmerman from the start and were actively investigating him, but trying to compile more evidence before the arrest. This was due to the legal ambiguity since Zimmerman seemed to know the right things to say, being close friends with police officers who had undoubtedly advised him on what to say if he was in such a situation. The delay in arrest is probably the reason for the difference in treatment by the media, but nevertheless, the media seems to sense more traction with with Zimmerman-Martin case, and has thus overlooked this important story, aside from local reports.

Man Convicted for Shooting Teenager →

Ending a racially charged trial, John H. White, a black man, was found guilty of manslaughter in the fatal shooting of an unarmed white teenager. READ MORE

The Top 10 Most Startling Facts About People of Color and Criminal Justice in the United States →

sinidentidades:

1. While people of color make up about 30 percent of the United States’ population, they account for 60 percent of those imprisoned. The prison population grew by 700 percent from 1970 to 2005, a rate that is outpacing crime and population rates. The incarceration rates disproportionately impact men of color: 1 in every 15 African American men and 1 in every 36 Hispanic men are incarcerated in comparison to 1 in every 106 white men.

2. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, one in three black men can expect to go to prison in their lifetime. Individuals of color have a disproportionate number of encounters with law enforcement, indicating that racial profiling continues to be a problem. A report by the Department of Justice found that blacks and Hispanics were approximately three times more likely to be searched during a traffic stop than white motorists. African Americans were twice as likely to be arrested and almost four times as likely to experience the use of force during encounters with the police.

3. Students of color face harsher punishments in school than their white peers, leading to a higher number of youth of color incarcerated. Black and Hispanic students represent more than 70 percent of those involved in school-related arrests or referrals to law enforcement. Currently, African Americans make up two-fifths and Hispanics one-fifth of confined youth today.

4. According to recent data by the Department of Education, African American students are arrested far more often than their white classmates. The data showed that 96,000 students were arrested and 242,000 referred to law enforcement by schools during the 2009-10 school year. Of those students, black and Hispanic students made up more than 70 percent of arrested or referred students. Harsh school punishments, from suspensions to arrests, have led to high numbers of youth of color coming into contact with the juvenile-justice system and at an earlier age.

5. African American youth have higher rates of juvenile incarceration and are more likely to be sentenced to adult prison. According to the Sentencing Project, even though African American juvenile youth are about 16 percent of the youth population, 37 percent of their cases are moved to criminal court and 58 percent of African American youth are sent to adult prisons.

6. As the number of women incarcerated has increased by 800 percent over the last three decades, women of color have been disproportionately represented. While the number of women incarcerated is relatively low, the racial and ethnic disparities are startling. African American women are three times more likely than white women to be incarcerated, while Hispanic women are 69 percent more likely than white women to be incarcerated.

7. The war on drugs has been waged primarily in communities of color where people of color are more likely to receive higher offenses. According to the Human Rights Watch, people of color are no more likely to use or sell illegal drugs than whites, but they have higher rate of arrests. African Americans comprise 14 percent of regular drug users but are 37 percent of those arrested for drug offenses. From 1980 to 2007 about one in three of the 25.4 million adults arrested for drugs was African American.

8. Once convicted, black offenders receive longer sentences compared to white offenders. The U.S. Sentencing Commission stated that in the federal system black offenders receive sentences that are 10 percent longer than white offenders for the same crimes. The Sentencing Project reports that African Americans are 21 percent more likely to receive mandatory-minimum sentences than white defendants and are 20 percent more like to be sentenced to prison.

9. Voter laws that prohibit people with felony convictions to vote disproportionately impact men of color. An estimated 5.3 million Americans are denied the right to vote based on a past felony conviction. Felony disenfranchisement is exaggerated by racial disparities in the criminal-justice system, ultimately denying 13 percent of African American men the right to vote. Felony-disenfranchisement policies have led to 11 states denying the right to vote to more than 10 percent of their African American population.

10. Studies have shown that people of color face disparities in wage trajectory following release from prison. Evidence shows that spending time in prison affects wage trajectories with a disproportionate impact on black men and women. The results show no evidence of racial divergence in wages prior to incarceration; however, following release from prison, wages grow at a 21 percent slower rate for black former inmates compared to white ex-convicts. A number of states have bans on people with certain convictions working in domestic health-service industries such as nursing, child care, and home health care—areas in which many poor women and women of color are disproportionately concentrated.

flyandfamousblackgirls:

Birmingham, Alabama, and the Civil Rights Movement in 1963

The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham was used as a meeting-place for civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Ralph David Abernathy and Fred Shutterworth. Tensions became high when the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) became involved in a campaign to register African American to vote in Birmingham.

On Sunday, 15th September, 1963, a white man was seen getting out of a white and turquoise Chevrolet car and placing a box under the steps of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Soon afterwards, at 10.22 a.m., the bomb exploded killing Denise McNair (11), Addie Mae Collins (14), Carole Robertson (14) and Cynthia Wesley (14). The four girls had been attending Sunday school classes at the church. Twenty-three other people were also hurt by the blast.

Civil rights activists blamed George Wallace, the Governor of Alabama, for the killings. Only a week before the bombing he had told the New York Times that to stop integration Alabama needed a “few first-class funerals.”

A witness identified Robert Chambliss, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, as the man who placed the bomb under the steps of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. He was arrested and charged with murder and possessing a box of 122 sticks of dynamite without a permit. On 8th October, 1963, Chambliss was found not guilty of murder and received a hundred-dollar fine and a six-month jail sentence for having the dynamite.

The case was unsolved until Bill Baxley was elected attorney general of Alabama. He requested the original Federal Bureau of Investigation files on the case and discovered that the organization had accumulated a great deal of evidence against Chambliss that had not been used in the original trial.

In November, 1977 Chambliss was tried once again for the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing. Now aged 73, Chambliss was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. Chambliss died in an Alabama prison on 29th October, 1985.