The Black American Male Nightmare.

When the feminist poet Adrienne Rich died this week, the obituary of one of the most influential female writers of the last half-century described the goal of her life and her work as “the creation of a society without domination.”

The rest of the week’s news illustrated how far we have to go in achieving such a dream.   In Florida, when newly-released video showed that George Zimmerman was apparently unscathed after shooting Trayvon Martin despite his claim of being injured while defending himself against attack, the message was clear: whether their authority derives from a gun or the color of their skin, men will defend their right to control people they have traditionally dominated, even if they have to kill them in cold blood.

On the video, Zimmerman’s casual ease with the police who failed to arrest him conveyed an equally brutal message: when the effort to maintain domination ends in the murder of a youth armed only with a bag of Skittles, those in power will protect their own kind instead of holding them accountable

In New York, when a jury proved unable to reach a guilty verdict on rape charges against a drunken cop who committed a brutal sexual attack on a young woman while threatening to shoot her in the face if she cried out or opened her eyes, a comparable message was clear: men with badges and guns have the right to take what they want from women, no matter what the circumstances.

Read More http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/29/male-domination-persists-as-a-pervasive-reality-in-the-u-s-and-abroad.html?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pulsenews