Bocefish said:
This is what I found:
The Internet is forever. The Lookout reports a MySpace page formerly maintained by accused Trayvon Martin killer George Zimmerman has more elements of racism in his online angst from 2005. In the "About Me" section, he posted, "I don't miss driving around scared to hit mexicans walkin on the side of the street." Zimmerman had just moved away from his home in Manassas, Va.
Hard to judge anything by that one sentence and not knowing the overall context, situation... it seems quite a stretch to call him racist from that and far from a "diatribe."
Agreed, that certainly wasn't the only thing on there though. I don't want to make too much of his myspace remarks - I think they illustrate a point that he's certainly NOT above racist slurs and generalisations. You can say this stuff is all normal if you like - I dunno about you but my social media doesn't refer to ethnic groups as 'all' being thugs, vandals and attempted muggers.
http://www.latina.com/lifestyle/news/george-zimmerman-racist-comments-myspace
The rest of the statement, bolded after the section you included was:
"I dont miss driving around scared to hit mexicans walkin on the side of the street, soft ass wanna be thugs messin with peoples cars when they aint around (what are you provin, that you can dent a car when no ones watchin) dont make you a man in my book. Workin 96 hours to get a decent pay check, gettin knifes pulled on you by every mexican you run into!
No, we don't know the context - but frankly context would seem secondary considering he's just assumed that members of a certain race act the same way, are all thugs etc. You have to admit, though none of this has any bearing on his case, it's hard not to think that he MIGHT have applied the same logic to Trayvon. I mean GZ wrote that, his attorney confirmed it was his myspace.
If you want to subsitute 'Mexican' for 'Black', and then look at what happened with Trayvon...I find that chilling:
'I dont miss driving around scared to hit n*****s walkin on the side of the street, soft ass wanna be thugs messin with peoples cars when they aint around (what are you provin, that you can dent a car when no ones watchin) dont make you a man in my book. Workin 96 hours to get a decent pay check, gettin knifes pulled on you by every n***** you run into!'
Heh you know as well as I do if it had said that, he'd be crucified - now, it DIDN'T say that, and I'm NOT ready to say I believe this was entirely or significantly racially motivated but there is NO QUESTION that GZ has made racist public (myspace) rants.