Four days into the post-Zimmerman trial verdict era—which
many in the media have already dubbed the post-post racial
era of American history—a small but interesting thing
happened that tells us a lot about the way the narrative of
this event is being crafted by the media. Politico’s Dylan
Byers gets credit for noticing a curious detail about
President Obama’s much talked-about
interviews with Hispanic television networks. The
focus of the appearances was the discussion of immigration
reform. The main point was the White House’s not-so-subtle
hint to Republicans that though the president had taken a
low profile on the issue in order to not sabotage bipartisan
efforts to pass a Senate compromise, Democrats were poised
to use the failure of the House to pass a bill as a cudgel
to attack Republicans in the future. But the most
fascinating element of the president’s Hispanic outreach was
the question that he wasn’t asked. As Byers points out,
on a day when the country was transfixed by the debate over
the acquittal of George Zimmerman on a charge of murdering
Trayvon Martin, no one from Telemundo or Univision even
mentioned the case.
In and of itself it’s curious that any presidential
interview this week would not contain at least one question
about the case. But even Byers didn’t mention the irony
here. While the prevailing narrative of the case has been to
portray the tragic death of Martin as a symbol if not a
practical example of white racism against African-Americans,
Zimmerman isn’t white. He’s Hispanic. So it is telling that
not only have none of the leading lights of the Latino media
claimed him as a member of their community, but in doing so
have consciously abstained from dealing with the issue of
race relations in America that has become the primary topic
of political discussion since Saturday night. At least as
far as these interviews were concerned, the Hispanic media
seems determined to do nothing to alter the prevailing
narrative in which Zimmerman is stripped of his own identity
as a minority in order to make the point about racist
America in a way that allows the left to wave the bloody
banner of Jim Crow unimpeded by concern for the
sensitivities of Hispanics.
Let’s concede that the Hispanic journalists are entitled to
determine their own priorities and that immigration reform
and the status of illegals is not only the topic they are
most interested in but also the one their viewers care most
about. They are also within their rights to deplore
Zimmerman’s actions and to reject his acquittal if they
think it was unjust. But the complete absence of interest on
their part in bringing up the case this week in what was a
unique opportunity to get the president speak to the issue
provides us with a fascinating commentary on their frame of
reference.
Though race was not part of the actual trial that hinged on
the facts of the case and the details of the confrontation
between Zimmerman and Martin, since the verdict was handed
down the discussion in the country about it has focused
almost entirely on identity politics and race. Martin has
been transformed in much of this discussion from a youth
with a mixed record who got into a fight with an armed man
into a martyr who was murdered because he was black. But in
order to make that narrative persuasive, Zimmerman must be
viewed as a “creepy ass cracker”—Martin’s description of
Zimmerman according to Rachel Jeantel—and not the son of a
woman from South America whose Hispanic appearance doesn’t
exactly make him a likely recruit for the Ku Klux Klan. But
in order to really think of Zimmerman that way, we must
forget his origins and his looks and focus only on his
German-sounding last name.
One needn’t agree with the verdict in order to understand
that stripping Zimmerman of his Hispanic identity and making
him an honorary member of the white supremacist conspiracy
against minorities has been an integral element in the
process by which he has been demonized and the case has been
inflated into the new paradigm of American racism. Those who
only concentrated on the facts of the case rather than the
politicized agitation that accompanied it—a group that
includes the jurors that acquitted Zimmerman—found it to be
a complex and confusing incident that told us little, if
anything, about racism in America. But eliminating the
defendant’s background makes it easier to think of it as a
morality play about racism.
Perhaps it’s understandable that Hispanic journalists
wouldn’t want to risk upsetting their liberal colleagues by
disrupting this rhetorical formulation by pointing out
Zimmerman’s background or even raising questions about
assumptions about race. But their failure to do so is
playing a part in perpetuating a distorted discussion that
has done more to obscure the truth about race in America
than to shed light on it.
