asking<\/em> to be raped as many conservatives argue.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWearing a head scarf doesn’t make you a terrorist. And sorry to the Juan Williams of the world, traditional Arab garb shouldn’t automatically make you suspicious of someone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I made the argument the other day that if every oppressed African-American teenage boy joined the Fruit of Islam and marched around in impeccable suits with equally impeccable manners, I *guarantee* that would make the Geraldo Rivera’s of the world feel a LOT less safe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, no, it isn’t the clothes, it is all about the cretin making a judgement based on the clothes. Or, more to the point, often projecting their own bias more easily because they think they can blame a piece of fabric.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let’s turn it around. Every cop who beat Rodney King was wearing a uniform and a badge and was white. Should that have resulted in open season on white LA cops? No, that would have been wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every Supreme Court justice who denied Florida their votes in 2000 was a white guy. Should every white federal judge been thrown against the wall and shot for treason? No. That, too, would have been a false judgement against a lot of innocent people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So why is rape justified over a hemline or dipping bodice? Why is a guy who killed a kid packing Skittles allowed to be both free and still carry the murder weapon?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This keeps happening, and the response continues to be muted. Outraged, yes, but we try to trust the system to make it right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, if it keeps occurring, someone is finally going to decide to hell with the system and use the same flawed logic that gets kids like Trayvon Martin killed. I don’t welcome it, I hope it does not ever happen, but people will not let this continue to happen to their communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Right now you’ve got the young wearing Guy Fawkes masks in parody, and some of the same folks wearing hoodied in solidarity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Right now they are just symbols. Let us hope they stay that way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I will be the first to admit this, having a national discussion about a piece of clothing is ridiculous. Except when it is taken as justification for targeting a kid for death. And that is the problem. Wearing a hoodie doesn’t make you a gangbanger. Women going out on the town in a short skirt aren’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comments-and-observations"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wallenfeldt.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wallenfeldt.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wallenfeldt.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wallenfeldt.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wallenfeldt.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1566"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wallenfeldt.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1567,"href":"https:\/\/wallenfeldt.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1566\/revisions\/1567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wallenfeldt.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wallenfeldt.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wallenfeldt.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}