Injustice in the Justice System

Trayvon Martin was a 17-year-old boy who was shot and killed by George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old man, in Florida on February 26, 2012. Trayvon Martin was African-American, George Zimmerman is Hispanic.  So far no arrests have been made.

Trayvon Martin

Trayvon Martin was described by his English teacher as "as an A and B student who majored in cheerfulness." He had no criminal record. George Zimmerman was a self-appointed neighborhood watchman and did not belong to any registered neighborhood watch groups. In 2005, Zimmerman was charged "with resisting arrest with violence and battery on an officer," but the charges were dropped. 

On Febuary 26, Trayvon was walking back from the store to his father's fiance's house in the gated community that Zimmerman lived in, according to ABC.  Zimmerman, who was in his truck, called police to report Trayvon's "suspicious" behavior, which he described as "just walking around looking about." He proceeded to follow Trayvon against the explicit directions of the 911 dispatcher. According to eyewitnesses, the two scuffled and shouts for help were heard before there was a gunshot. The police report states, "Zimmerman, who was armed with a handgun, was found bleeding from the nose and the back of the head, standing over Martin, who was unresponsive after being shot."

Zimmerman has claimed that the shooting was in self-defense. 
Zimmerman is a 250 pound adult. Trayvon was a 150 pound teenage boy. Zimmerman had a semi-automatic 9 millimeter handgun. Trayvon had a can of ice tea and a bag of skittles.


So, was it self defense? Normally, we might trust in the police to investigate this claim. But the investigation has been plagued by missteps. Zimmerman was not tested for drugs or alcohol at the scene, as is standard protocol - but Trayvon was. Most damningly, a key witness reported that police "corrected" her testimony when she reported she heard a teenager shout for help.


The case has brought up a lot of issues of race.  If Trayvon had been a white boy walking down the street in jeans and a hoodie with a can of ice tea, would Zimmerman have found him "suspicious"? If the victim was a white, unarmed teenager shot on his way home would have taken a month for the story to make headlines? If the victim was white and the shooter was black, would the police have arrested him by now (if not immediately)? Does the fact that Zimmerman is Hispanic make a difference?

Another subject of controversy has been Florida's "Stand Your Ground" Law, which allows "citizens to use deadly force without attempting to retreat when threatened outside the home." Many have previously criticized the law for giving people too much leeway in claiming self-defense, and Zimmerman's use of the law as justification for Trayvon's shooting has reignited the debate. The "Stand Your Ground" authors have stated that their law is not the problem, and that Zimmerman should have been arrested under the law because he pursued Trayvon. Others argue that it still presents a problem. Do you think the law is reasonable? Does it apply to this case? 

Return to Foxconn, Part 2

Last week I discussed my skepticism over some more optimistic reports on the conditions at Foxconn, the plant that produces many electronics, most notably many Apple products. I still have some questions about that, and am considering doing a third post looking at the original Nightline program, but for now I want to return to the article "What Camera's Inside Foxconn Found" and discuss another aspect of the article. Even if you believe that the conditions are far worse than those the article depicted, there is something that is difficult to ignore: that Nightline's footage included "3,000 young Chinese workers lining up at the gates for Foxconn’s Monday morning recruiting session." These people know about the salaries, the suicides, the hours, and the dorms. And yet they are clamoring to work at Foxconn. Why is this? Because, the article says, the alternative is "backbreaking rural farm work that doesn’t prepare them to move up the work force food chain." This is an important thing to note about factories in countries like China - many of those toiling away in Foxconn would previously have been working just as hard if not harder on farms. And farming provides little socio-economic mobility, even when compared to factory work.

Women working at Foxconn. Source

The article also prints a letter that the author received from a young man who was born in China and now attends a university in the United States. The article is mainly personal, talking about the circumstances of his aunt and how they were improved by Foxconn. Personal anecdotes are poor evidence for any wider trend, but he does bring up a more general point - that in rural areas like the one his aunt lived in, most jobs were agricultural and "most of the jobs were held by men." It is hard to think about a place like Foxconn being liberating or empowering, but factory work assembling electronics may provide an opportunity for a level of economic freedom for women that is impossible in an agricultural town.

Is Foxconn a positive force? I have trouble thinking so, but it is always important to remember how complex such issues are. Foxconn may be better than the alternative for many people. What do you think?

Return to Foxconn

Workers at Foxconn. Source

Some time ago in American Studies class we discussed the news about abuses in the Foxconn factory that produces many electronics, including Apple's iPads. I recently came across an article in the New York Times "What Cameras Inside Foxconn Found" that talks about what further investigation into the factory has found and what it all means.

I'll begin with the caveats that the article ended with. ABC's "Nightline" was allowed to visit Foxconn and talk to anyone they wanted and film the assembly lines. But the article notes that ABC "is owned by the Walt Disney Company; its chief executive serves on the Apple board, and the Steve Jobs Trust is Disney’s largest shareholder." ABC shared this conflict of interest on the program. I do not think that reporters would completely change a story based on such connections, but there could quite easily being pressure to soften their findings and phrase things in a more positive light. The fact "Nightline" alone was given the ability to tour Foxconn is perhaps an indication that Apple and Foxconn were looking for some favors. Also important to note is that Foxconn chose to allow Nightline in when they wanted to, so had plenty of time to polish up the factory for the cameras.

Now, no one found a factory full of happy workers, but the report is a little more optimistic.  The ABC report noted that "We looked hard for the kind of underage and maimed workers we’ve read so much about, but we mostly found people who face their days through soul-crushing boredom and deep fatigue." Now this is somewhat unfair. There were reports of underage workers that apparently these people couldn't find, but  I also remember that the "soul-crushing" work was pretty joint-crushing as well. The article admits that some people had to do the same task 6,000 times a day, but does not mention the kind of damage that this can do to a person's hands. It just states that "that’s the nature of assembly-line work" as if that somehow makes things okay. The original New York Times article on the subject also mentioned safety violations, workers dying from using poisonous chemicals, and explosions killing people. I doubt anyone would see these at the factory when it had time to prepare.

In response to the fact that the majority of the workers were very young, the article reports that
"a former Apple executive told me... Foxconn is not a career. You don’t see 30- and 40-year-old heads of households on the assembly lines. The young Chinese see it as 'something like a first summer job,'" It is nice to think that the low wages are not being used to support families and perhaps this is just a step on the way to a career, and it does make sense. If the majority of the workers are young, obviously they are going somewhere else once they get older. But the idea of it being "something like a first summer job" is a ridiculous disguise of the truth. That makes it sound as if these teenagers are working as camp counselors, and that the low wages are okay because all they're trying to do is get some experience, just get the idea of how a job works. That is not what is happening. They are working twelve hour days in assembly lines, not chasing after six year old for five hours a day.

I could go on, but in short, I think that the majority of "optimistic" finds that the article talks about seem to be just more positive ways of saying what was originally found. Now, I have no doubt that the initial report phrased things in a negative fashion whenever possible, so the truth is probably somewhere in between - but I think it probably leans towards the negative.