http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-april-4-2012/racist-time-out

In this video clip, Jon Stewart and Larry Wilmore talk about the ways in which the Travon Martin case became an argument of ideologies, which took away from looking at the actual events of the case.  The clips from the media show how this created a binary of the right versus the left and created a space where both were so stuck in their ideologies that they were unable to communicate without anything but outrage.  In doing so, the real problem gets confused.  Larry Wilmore, in talking about the ‘Stand Your Ground’ law says, “You don’t even have to go in front of a jury. You tell the cops at the scene of the crime you were standing your ground and they will give you the benefit of the doubt” (4:13).  The difference, he points out, is getting that benefit of the doubt.  Not just with the police officers on scene, but also with judges, juries, and the general public.  In The Condemnation of Blackness, Khalil Gibran Muhammad details how criminalization is racialized.  Whitmore speaks to that in pointing out the case of Plaxico Burress accidentally shooting himself and getting two years in prison, where as when Dick Cheney had his ‘hunting incident’ it was mostly made a joke.  “It was just two white guys having fun with guns!” (5:12). It is this benefit of the doubt that shows how the country looks at the link between race and crime.  The white person is generally seen as someone who did something that was a crime, whereas the black person is labeled as a criminal.  In the case of Trayvon Martin, he hadn’t done anything criminal at all, but because of the criminalization based on his race, it made sense to people that George Zimmerman had reason to call upon Stand Your Ground.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-april-4-2012/racist-time-out