In my last post, I wrote about how many conservatives used the H1N1 flu outbreak to launch xenophobic attacks on Hispanics. But if the right wing's reaction to the swine-flu outbreak was a depressing example of the disgust that many Americans hold for Latinos, what are we to make of the news out of Pennsylvania?
Just over a week ago, a jury in that state acquitted two teenagers of beating a man to death in a street brawl. The case apparently had too many contradictory versions of the truth, with multiple witnesses unable to clarify who did what to whom and why. The bottom line is that the teens were convicted of lesser charges and will more or less go on with their lives.
What has caught the eye of Hispanics and people interested in civil rights is that the town where the crime took place, Shenandoah, has a history of racial tension. The victim, Luis Ramirez, was a Mexican immigrant. The teens, as well as the other kids who earlier pled guilty to lesser charges, were white. They jury was all white.
It is impossible to escape the perception, therefore, that a mob of angry whites can beat a Latino to death right in the street without fear of being punished. Of course, those of us who weren't at the trial (like me) can't definitively say that this is a miscarriage of justice. But at the risk of getting all knee-jerky, I have to say that it appears highly suspicious.
Lawyers for the teens admitted that the kids were drunk and got into a fight with Ramirez, who was apparently walking down the street, minding his own business. Prosecutors said that the teens flung racial epithets at Ramirez, then followed up with kicks and punches.
The result was that Ramirez ended up with his brain leaking out of his head, and he died two days later. For no one to be seriously punished over such a crime can only mean one of two things:
1. A Latino man living in an economically depressed small town, where racial issues have flared in the past, inexplicably provoked a group of drunken white males to fight him. They had no choice but to defend themselves by kicking him in the head repeatedly. Or
2. It's ok to bludgeon an immigrant to death.
The verdict would actually make more sense if the teens had been acquitted of all charges. In that case, the implication is that the boys had nothing to do with the fight or Ramirez's death. Instead, by convicting them of a lesser charge (simple assault), the jury basically said, "Yeah, you walloped the guy, and he died, but we don't think you should do time. It's not like he was anybody important."
The Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund is pressuring the Department of Justice to file federal charges against the teens. This, as you may recall, was the route that civil-rights groups took after the cops were acquitted in the Rodney King case.
Regardless of how it turns out this time, there is one big difference between the cases. Rodney King is still alive, and Luis Ramirez is not.
As someone else ponted out - the headlines should read;
Drunk gang kills man = NOT guilty, American justice??
you did notice the I didn't bring up race, right??
It was a brutal crime. But I think it opened the eyes of many in the area to just how awful racial and ethnic resentment can be.
The girl was alone when the youths saw her late at night and one of the kids said: You shouldn't be out so late. It seems to me that this was a statement of concern, not racial.
The man then came out of the BUSHES to confront the kids. He was the one who started the argument with the kids, according to the transcripts. So, he wasn't "walking down the street" minding his own business.
He called his buddies BEFORE the first fight. He chased after the kids AFTER his backup showed up.
After the first fight, one of the kids said, "Ok, it's over" and they started to leave.
And, unlike what the comment made by "dizzypdx", the man wasn't walking the girl home to protect her from harrassment; she admitted he was having sex with her since she was 14 (which has nothing to do with the trial, but a corrction to his statement).
Since BOTH sides hurled racial comments and since the prosecutor could not prove who threw the first punch in the second confrontration, BUT both sides agreed that Ramirez and his buds did chase after the kids, I cannot understand, like you, why they were convicted of anything...except possibly underage intoxication.
If you write a blog on a major newspost, get your facts correct; don't "appear" to be impartial and actually make it one-sided.
it figures somebody from texas justifying a gang of white men stomping a hispanic man to death, I guess he had it coming is going to be the next thing you say. You say the prosecutor could't prove who threw the first punch, but he sure as hell can prove that a man was stomped and kicked to death and he can damn well prove that he didn't kick himself to death. Texas you can say what you want to say, the jury was all white and a Mexican Immigrant Man is dead, but you infer that it was all the victim's fault?
Pennsylvania is the Oklahoma of the Northeast. poor, provincial and simple. Obama's Justice department will lose credibility with the Hispanic American voters if they fail to act. We gave Obama the White House and we can take it away. As a Republican who voted for Obama, so far all I have seen is bailout of the bondholder and shareholders of the large financial institutions.
As to the criminals who murdered this young man, payback is a bitch. Hispanic American political and economic power increases every year. Within 10 years, 20% of all votes cast in the US will be by Hispanic Americans. That means that all involved in this crime will not be forgotten. Just think what the Jews did to the Nazis after war. They hunted them down throughout the world. So will we with these murderers.
Every day the LatAm Left becomes stronger (Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, El Salvador). There is a good chance that Mexico will go Leftist in 2012. Chinese and Russian nuclear naval visits to LatAm are going to become more common. Do we really want the LatAm Giant to wake up and hate us as much as the Islamic world, China and Russia.
Neither case can be realistically compared to the Rodney King beating. The only reason the King case was noticed at all was that it was caught on video. Beatings of this nature were practically SOP at the time. That case was more about the systematic abuse of citizens by the police than about that single beating. The acquittal was akin to public acceptence of police brutality.
I don't get the comparison at all.
1 He was 25 out after midnight with a 15 year old local girl
2 Those thugs were not police, so no RK analogy
3 He was an "illegal alien" he/they are not immigrants
The writer does himself and us a disservice by not writing all the facts that are readily available from the local papers as they have "so far" been ascertained.
Is it his age or his companion? Do those things make it OK for a group of teens to beat him to death?
Is it the fact that he was illegal? Does that make it OK?
The RK analogy stands. He was attacked and the people who did it got away with it.
There is no excuse for this verdict. Stop trying to make them.
"He was an "illegal alien" he/they are not immigrants"
Try looking up the definition of the word "immigrant" before you TRY to prove your point.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/immigrant
The FACT that Ramierez RETURNED to fight makes HIM partly guilty as well. The Feds will have a hard time convincing a jury that their intent was to kill him or violate his civil rights since he decided to take them up on their challenge. If you accept the fight, you get what comes with it.
J
J