Critical Race Theory: Kyle Rittenhouse And Trayvon Martin
Before Rittenhouse’s case, he was being propped up as a patriot. In death, racists went to great lengths to portray Trayvon Martin as a thug.
Trial judge Bruce Schroeder recently ruled that the people Kyle Rittenhouse killed, who’d normally be called victims, cannot be called victims during Rittenhouse’s criminal trial.
Scroeder will, however, allow lawyers to refer to the deceased as “looters”, “rioters” or “arsonists”.
Other ground rules were previously laid out as well.
Back in September, defense attorney Corey Chirafisi said their side commissioned a phone analysis which indicated that their client [Rittenhouse] wasn’t affiliated with the Proud Boys, nor did he have any interests in joining. So despite Rittenhouse hanging out with the Proud Boys in person that fact cannot be used.
A lot of people have been getting Critical Race Theory wrong
A big problem with talking about Critical Race Theory (CRT) is the fact that Kimberlé Crenshaw, who coined the term, didn’t intend for the word to be thought of as a noun with a static meaning. She (unintentionally) described the words as more of a practice that can both be used as a noun and verb.
Practice is the key word.
For example, in the medical field, doctors call their private business a practice and they practice treatment and medicine in their respective speciality. Doctors can be sued for medical malpractice i.e. bad practice.
The practice is also an ever evolving field. There’s refined techniques, medicines, and therapies to treat a person’s ailment or disease.
If you define CRT in a similar manner; you can make better sense of it. Proponents of the idea are not, or at least should not be, opposed to CRT describing a world in which we actually get better at dealing with racism. Examining different aspects of society and asking what tools and treatments we can use to make things better shouldn’t be vexing, but it is for people because of the cultural war being waged.
For example, if you look at the cultural war in both the stories of Kyle Rittenhouse and Trayvon Marin: the critical race theory here provides a nuanced look into how our justice system and right-wing media portrayed Kyle Rittenhouse’s character and his actions compared to that of Trayvon Martin’s. The plague of misrepresentation is based on a longstanding stereotype of the default Black male in America. Critical Race Theory offers a valuable insight in how both instances actually help stigmatize Black men more than the default White male [Rittenhouse] who has received some pushback, but will continue to live on as a hero for most White Americans.
For the former, the judge seemingly presumed guilt of the victims, people who are not here to tell their side of the story.
And then there’s Fox News propping up Rittenhouse as a, “little boy trying to protect his community.”
For the latter, Trayvon Martin was not described by right-wingers as a little boy who was just on his way home from the market with some candy and a beverage.
Not only were Trayvon’s intentions questioned; and not only did right-wingers want to know why he chose to wore a hoodie that day — but racists and trolls scrambled to put together an image of Trayvon as a thug which right-wingers ate up.
CRT is tells us that there’s no biological difference between race but the social constructs and racism Black people endured isn’t a forgotten relic of the past and it persists until this day.
George Zimmerman was able to pursue a child merely on the suspicion that he may have committed a crime. Even after the dispatcher told him not to engage with Trayvon — Zimmerman was able to escalate the situation into a fight that he wasn’t prepared for. He was able to argue that he feared for his life and with no duty to retreat; he was able to gun down Trayvon.
Kyle Rittenhouse, traveled miles from his hometown Antioch, Illinois to Kenosha, Wisconsin to help police who welcomed his help. He ended up killing two people and wounding another.
In America, the patriotism that White American’s love are only reserved for them.
It’s a country where they would love to be able to say they don’t think a Black child has any right to wear a hoodie to a corner store and if he’s chased down by a grown man, then he should relax if he didn’t commit any crimes.
The malleable nature of CRT relies on people to acknowledge the inadequacies of how society perceives people of color.
If you can examine these two cases which, despite having major differences, and you don’t see a problem — then CRT will continue to exist without your acknowledgment.
Thousands of other cases across the country will also involve CRT.
There’s a strong feeling in my gut that Kyle Rittenhouse will walk-away from this case a free man.
The Critical Race Theory in all of this tells me that cases like this and Trayvon Martin’s is what the justice system in America was made for.
Justice will be served in cases like Ahmaud Arbery but just remember what lengths it took to even get the case to trial.
