Not Okay, Players: George Zimmerman x DMX Fight Cancelled [!]

UPDATE:Celebrity boxing promoter Damon Feldman has cancelled The Zimmerman v. DMX fight originally scheduled for March 15th, tweeting out his cancellation in these words:

"More to life then money...I walked away from a million dollar payday with this fight but to be honest, I'd rather be happy and make people happy."

Shortly afterward Feldman expounded to Rolling Stone:

"I looked into the eyes of my son and daughter today and couldn't imagine someone killing them and getting off scot-free. It just really hurt. It was a tough decision because I could have made two million dollars here, but at least I have my dignity. I'm happy. Thank you."

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UPDATE: ABC News radio reports that DMX has said he is "not confirmed" to fight George Zimmerman, saying through his representative Domenick Nati:

"The boxing match between George Zimmerman and DMX is not officially confirmed,"

Which may simply indicate that DMX is holding out for the right amount of money. It also means, however, that he can still be swayed into walking away from this travesty. With that in mind, ColorOfChange.org has officially launched a campaign to stop the match before it's officially announced, asking right-thinking people of all races to:

"Please join us in urging DMX to do the right thing and pull out of this shameful stunt now."

--adding:

Feldman, who lost his promoter’s license — and was banned from promoting fights in his native Pennsylvania after admitting to court investigators that 95 percent of his matches were rigged^4,5 — stands to profit handsomely from a fake fight designed to make money off anti-Black sentiment as much as from those of us outraged by Zimmerman's murder acquittal.

And Zimmerman’s bizarre eagerness to fight a Black man, the more high-profile the better — in a fit of dissociation, Zimmerman announced on Monday he’d like to fight Kanye West because he "attack[s] defenseless people”⁶ — makes a mockery of his criminal defense claim that he feared for his life in a struggle with an unarmed 17-year-old boy. Indulging Zimmerman in his monstrous fantasy recreation of that night — at 5’11", DMX is ironically Trayvon’s exact height, of which Zimmerman’s defense team made significant issue at trial⁷ — serves no actual purpose beyond driving money and attention to a violent sociopath and his bottom-feeder promoter.

Rather than giving Zimmerman and his legions of racist supporters what they want, let’s honor Trayvon’s memory — and prevent future tragedies like his — by demanding a justice system that values and protects Black lives. Let’s rid this nation of anti-Black policies like Shoot First and Stop-and-Frisk, and demand better of a media industry that demonizes Black men and boys, perpetuating the dangerous perception by people like George Zimmerman that violence against us is acceptable and necessary.⁸

Okayplayer fully supports this campaign and we are happy to stand with ColorOfChange in their efforts. Please take a moment to let DMX — and anyone else who might consider stepping in to fill his shoes — know that we're looking to him to do the right thing for all the other Trayvons in our lives that we can't bear to lose. Click below to find out more and...

>>>Urge DMX to cancel the fight now.

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You may be aware--assuming your delete-George-Zimmerman-from-the-internet filter is not turned on--that the shooter in the Trayvon Martin tragedy put out a call recently to face off with "anybody who wants to fight him" in a celebrity boxing match. Names floated include Bahamian-born mixed martial artist Kimbo Slice, as well as rapper, Belly-star and professional trainwreck DMX, who put his name in by declaring:

"I am going to beat the living fuck out him … I am breaking every rule in boxing to make sure I fuck him right up...Once I am done with him, I am going to whip my dick out and piss on him ... right in his muthafuckin face."

Indications were that Zimmerman was holding out for Kanye West. However late yesterday evening Tuesday, February 4th, Celebrity Boxing owner and promoter Damon Feldman released the news that DMX was indeed confirmed, having been selected out of 15,000 willing contenders.

Announcing February 4th all but ensured that other outlets would pick up the story and circulate the news today, February 5th--which is Trayvon Martin's birthday.

There is so much wrong with this situation that it's hard to know where to start identifying the Not Okay--or whether to comment at all. But this unfolding travesty is so emblematic of the whole fuckery of America and our dysfunctional way of processing injustice that it seems necessary to say something.

First of all this confirms--if there was any doubt left--that Zimmerman is a pathological attention seeker who will do anything to make sure somebody is looking at him, a megalomania that drove him to play the hero in his own imaginary cop drama that fateful day in Florida, even after the actual police had told him to stand down--a fantasy so vivid and a need so deep that it was not satisfied even at the cost of an innocent teenager's life.

But what is perhaps even more soul-crushing is the way America has reacted; not only acquitting the shooter but even in our protests and debates around the tragedy approaching that acquittal as an episode in an ongoing racial grudge match. We really should not need Questlove or Barack Obama to explain the pyschological impact of such and event--or unpack the whole history of racial terror in these United States--to see that pursuing, attacking and shooting an innocent minor after specifically being warned off by the authorities is a crime. That if the law on the books does not allow for the prosecution of that crime, then we should recognize that as a failure of justice and spend our time addressing where, exactly, it broke down, in order to fix it. In fact, a juror or an observer should, in my opinion, be able to come to that conclusion without knowing the race of the shooter or the victim. Much less the centuries of bloody history that formed those racial categories or the percentage of DNA you could assign to one or another.

This celebrity boxing match is simply the WWF-level continuation of that narrative; that Zimmerman; half-hispanic and more than half crazy--somehow scored one for the white team. That what's needed now is to put some numbers up on the racial boards. If intelligent discussion achieves nothing, the next step is to switch on the internet-and-Reality-TV outrage machine that constantly transforms the most degrading moments of human inhumanity into fuel for the spectacle machine. All of which ensures that rather than demanding equal protection under the law, responsive government and reasonable gun control, we will address our problems the way The Simpsons handled shock aversion therapy.

After all this moralizing I have to be real and ask myself: am I any different? Didn't I click on this story? Don't I secretly in my most vengeful heart of hearts want to see DMX make his lyrics reality by stomping a mudhole in Zimmerman's face, lashing out for--in his own words--""every black person who has been done wrong in the system" ?

A: No.

In my most vengeful heart of hearts what I really want is for Ms. Fulton to have her Trayvon back, you son of a bitch. Confining my most hearfelt impulses to the real world, I want for her to remember her son on his birthday without the additional mental anguish this fuckery surely creates. What I really want is justice for the Martin family in a court of law. I really want a government that can strike down Stand Your Ground and enact common sense gun laws that prevent future tragedies without being so clotted up by lobbyist money that the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms has literally had no one at the controls for a decade.

What I really want is a media that can report facts and focus attentions on an event like this to create clear consensus and action, instead of endless trolling for ratings and clicks (hell, as I write this the local NY press is trying to make a partisan issue out of ice on the sidewalks--and in case you think that is too trivial to be mentioned in the same breath as Trayvon Martin's murder, consider that the mayor being trolled ran on the promise--and seems to be keeping it--of ending Stop & Frisk, that other institutionalized form of racial terror, in NYC).

What I really want is to live in a country that recognizes that your basic human right to walk down the street unmolested cannot be forfeited by wearing a hoodie, looking suspicious or fitting the description. That, if they can be so forfeited, they were not human rights after all--just white skin privilege extended to non-whites as a sort of conditional loan; conditional on acting white.

That's what we really want from a player, DMX. And you are not in a position to deliver.