By Selwyn Duke

When Barack Obama said that if he had a son, “he’d look like
Trayvon,” it perhaps didn’t say much for him as a parent. And when the president
now says that Martin could have been him “35 years ago,” it doesn’t say much
for him as a youth. Of course, we know that Choom Gang Obama smoked marijuana
like Martin. I wonder, though, did he miss 53 out of 90 days of school and get
suspended 3 times during that period? Was he caught with ladies jewelry, a “burglary
tool” and drug paraphernalia in school? Did he enjoy fighting and, when a
girlfriend implored him to beat his sword into ploughshares, say that he was
going to fight another boy again because “he didn’t bleed enough for me”? Most
significantly, would Obama have attacked George Zimmerman, broken his nose and
pounded his head against the pavement? It seems the president is implying he
was a thug.

(Aside: on the other hand, if you truly believe Martin was a
good kid, Mr. Obama, would you have been okay with his dating one of your
daughters?)

In reality, I’m quite certain what young Obama would’ve done
if he had been profiled and was alarmed at being followed. Run. Ah, but should
a teenager minding his own business (supposedly) have to be profiled? The
president certainly doesn’t think so, as he recently said,
“There are very few African American men who haven't had the experience of
walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of
cars. That happens to me — at least before I was a senator. There are
very few African Americans who haven't had the experience of getting on an
elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until
she had a chance to get off.”

Yes, what injustice. What an imposition. What prejudice.

What nonsense.

Let me tell you a story. About 15 years ago I was walking on
a lonely street towards a friends’ apartment in a decent Bronx neighborhood
(there is such a thing). The only other person on the sidewalk was a woman about
25 paces in front of me. Well, aware of my presence, she nervously stopped, turned
hard left, moved in-between two parked cars and remained there anxiously till I
passed by, her eyes affixed on me the whole time. Why such a reaction? I can
assure you I wasn’t made up to perform in a minstrel show.

She judged that way me simply because I was a young man. Yet
she knew nothing about me!

And that’s the point.

Consider what she did know. Almost 90 percent of violent
crime is committed by men. If she was going to be raped, it would be by a man.
And being a man, I was a lot bigger and stronger than she was. So she was
making judgments based on the only information at her disposal: superficial
measures. And could I blame her? It’s not as if she sprayed me down with mace
as I walked by. She was just applying common sense.

What’s funny here, though, is that we don’t hear activists complain
about the “injustice” of sex profiling; they don’t even notice it. People fixate
on how Trayvon Martin was profiled because he was black, but it doesn’t even
occur to them that a Tawana Martin would have raised considerably less
suspicion.

This brings us to a question: if it’s okay for “male” to be
part of a criminal profile, shouldn’t all other characteristics associated with
a higher incidence of crime be fair game as well? And would “black” qualify?
Well, consider what Investor’s Business
Daily reports,
quoting statistics from Eric Holder’s DOJ:

[E]ven though black men between the
ages of 14 and 24 make up only 1% of the U.S. population, they represent 27% of
all the nation's murderers.

… [T]he administration study also
found that blacks of any age are eight times more likely to murder than whites
[and note that the DOJ included Hispanics in the “white” category].

While blacks make up just 13% of
the population, they're responsible for more than half — 53% — of the country's
murders.

So contrary to what Obama implies, the suspicion of blacks —
just like the suspicion of men — has nothing to do with prejudice. It has to do
with reality.

Now a bit more about profiling. Profiling is simply a method
by which one can determine the probability that a given individual has committed
a crime or has criminal intent. And many factors weigh in this assessment, such
as sex, age, dress, behavior and, yes, race. This is why complaints about
“racial profiling” are as silly as would be talk of “sex profiling.” Because
there are only two kinds of profiling: good profiling and bad profiling. The
good variety involves all relevant factors as identified by sound
criminological science (and the science of streetwise survival). Bad profiling arises
when you disallow relevant factors based on the tenets of political
correctness.

This brings us back to Martin. He wasn’t viewed suspiciously
simply because he was black any more than I was 15 years ago because I was
male. In my case, if I’d been 85 years old and/or wearing a business suit (I wore
my favorite leather jacket), the woman I encountered would’ve been far less
likely to consider me a threat. Likewise, if Martin had been dressed smartly
and carried himself with dignity, he would have raised fewer eyebrows.

Of course, having grown up in NYC, I understand that boys in
rough neighborhoods don’t want to dress like Little Lord Fauntleroy (the friend
I mentioned earlier, a brilliant man of faith, made cultivating the white-trash
look an art); appearing tough deters troublemakers. Then again, it’s also true that
many black youths think the bad-to-the-bone gangsta’ style is cool. Whatever
the motivation, know that the same thing making you seem formidable prey to
miscreants makes you seem a fearsome predator to the meek. “But, hey, don’t I
have the right to dress how I want?!” Sure, and a white teen may take on the
skinhead look— and then people will make their judgments. It’s fairly stupid to
don a hoodie and then wonder why you’re viewed as a hood.

In fact, the “do as I please without judgment” attitude — reflected
in Obama’s words — is also something else: offensive. After all, imagine I
demanded that women check their brains at the door in deference to men’s
feelings and not take whatever precautions are prudent when strange men are
present. I don’t even have the right to
ask such a thing.  Other people’s
safety takes precedence over your feelings, Mr. Obama.

And if the world’s Obamas and Sharptons are still angry,
they should consider the answer Alan Keyes gave in a presidential primary
debate when asked if he’d be upset at being profiled as a black man. He said
(I’m paraphrasing), “Yes, I’d be upset. I’d be upset at all the young black men
who committed crimes and caused others to view me more suspiciously.”

Of course, the reality is that just as the mouse flees from
the Garter snake or the cat from the dog, liberals instinctively profile just
like anyone else. Jesse Jackson said in 1993, “There is nothing more painful
for me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps
and start to think about robbery and then look around and see it's somebody
white and feel relieved.” Juan Williams admitted in 2010, “[W]hen I get on a
plane…if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think…they are identifying
themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.” In a
2008 speech, Obama called his grandmother a “typical white person.” And we know
now that even little Saint Trayvon, in all his cherubic, golden-toothed glory,
profiled George Zimmerman as a “creepy-**s cracka’” and perhaps even a
homosexual predator.

And the irony is that if Martin had actually known how to
profile as well as Zimmerman, he might still be alive today.

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