Just when you
think the left can’t possibly get more unhinged about the shooting of black Trayvon Martin, the
next step in his beatification is getting underway: the hoodie he died in may
be acquired for the Smithsonian Institution. This not only will imbue it with
an historical civil rights significance which it has not earned, but will
practically accord it the status of a religious relic.
The Washington Post reported last week that Lonnie Bunch, director of the
Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC, now
under construction and expected to open in 2015), wants to add the hoodie to a
collection that includes a guard tower from Louisiana’s Angola State Penitentiary
and the handcuffs used to restrain President Obama’s buddy, radical academic Henry Louis Gates Jr., in a 2009 incident which Obama himself blew up into a racial
flashpoint. You may recall that, like with the Martin shooting, Obama chose to weigh
in officially on this incident that should have been far below the concerns of
a President of the United States. He needlessly inflamed racial tensions when
he stated incorrectly that the police acted “stupidly” in arresting Gates, who
also milked the incident for all the racial mileage he could get.
Bunch told the Post that the hoodie “became the
symbolic way to talk about the Trayvon Martin case. It’s rare that you get one
artifact that really becomes the symbol… Because it’s such a symbol, it would
allow you to talk about race in the age of Obama.”
“I get goose
bumps just thinking about it,” says Michael Skolnik, the political director for
hip-hop mogul and demagogue Russell Simmons (if you’re wondering why a hip hop
mogul needs a political director, it’s because in “the age of Obama,” the
unprecedented White House access given to such wealthy pop culture blacks like
Simmons and Jay-Z also gives them enormously swollen egos). Skolnick is also a board
member of the Trayvon Martin Foundation. “It’s like this mythical garment,” he says
about the hoodie. Mythical? The myth is that Trayvon was an innocent child victimized
in a modern-day lynching at the hands of (according to the left) half-white
vigilante gun nut George Zimmerman.
Like Bunch and Skolnick, shameless race-baiter Al Sharpton , who has tirelessly exploited the
Zimmerman-Martin case, would like to elevate Martin to “this generation’s
Emmett Till” – a disgusting comparison –and the hoodie is central to that goal.
“The hoodie now represents an image of an urban street kid that either embraces
or engages in street thug life,” said Sharpton. “I think it’s unfair.”
It’s not unfair,
it’s understandable. The utopian fantasists of the left refuse to acknowledge
this, but judging strangers based on their appearance is a reasonable and
natural act of self-preservation. Considering that hoodies are the uniform of
choice for gangsta-wannabes, Occupy Wall Street vandals, and others who need a
reason to partially conceal their identity, that article of clothing cannot
escape its association with thugs. If you don’t want to be viewed with
suspicion, don’t dress or act suspiciously. Dress like a prospect, not a
suspect, as the saying goes.
A hoodie, of
course, is only as suspicious as the person wearing it. My three-year-old
daughter wears one herself when it suits the weather, and no one gives it a
second thought because no one has anything to fear from a three-year-old girl.
However, when a young man, regardless of color, wears a hoodie in such a way
that his identity is partially or completely obscured, it is natural and right that people view him
with some measure of caution.
The hoodie has
already served as an important symbol for the left, who Photoshopped Martin Luther King, Jr. into photos of Martin’s
hoodie, making a false equivalence between the two. Protesters wear hoodies in
solidarity with Martin, as do scowling celebrities like another rap mogul, Sean Combs, and Hollywood’s
most blatant racist Jamie Foxx.
“Are we in a
post-racial age?” museum director Bunch pondered. “[The Zimmerman] trial says,
‘No.’” True, America is definitely not in a post-racial age, thanks to Obama,
but the trial is not evidence of that. In fact, the trial was a perfect example
of a post-racial legal system in action, in that the jurors came to their “not
guilty” judgment based on the evidence, and did not succumb to tremendous media
and public pressure to convict Zimmerman for racial reasons. Even an FBI
investigation into Zimmerman’s possible racial motivation came up empty. The
verdict was the correct one but not the one the left wanted to hear, so evidence
be damned – they wanted Zimmerman to pay for historical racial grievances for
which he is not responsible.
The NMAAHC’s
mission statement claims that “this institution will stimulate a dialogue about race and
help to foster a spirit of reconciliation and healing.” But Trayvon Martin’s hoodie will not foster
that spirit; it will only divide us in the future as it has thus far. If it deserves
a spot in the Smithsonian at all, it should not be as an emblem of white America’s
ingrained racism toward blacks, but as a symbol of the left’s ingrained
grievance-mongering and their refusal to embrace responsibility and
reconciliation.
(This article originally appeared here on FrontPage Mag, 8/7/13)
