If I had not already come to this realization, the death of Trayvon Martin certainly made it clear: Today our nation is full of hate. As full of hate, one could posit, as ever it has been since the anti-Civil Rights atrocities of the 1960s. Or the unspeakable crimes of years earlier, coincidentally enough committed by the REAL EVIL IN THE HOODIES.
So many among us grasp for reasons to explain this horrific murder, not to salve the pain of the parents' grief nor in any attempt to help us get our minds around the tragedy, but to find a way to excuse the shooter. Re-read that last sentence. Geraldo Rivera said George Zimmerman didn't kill Trayvon, the child's own hoodie killed him. (He tried inartfully to tie this to his own son who later tweeted him a disapproval.) And Geraldo wasn't alone in this claim and each time I hear it proposed I think: Blame the victim. Well honey, if you go out dressed like that you're just asking to be raped. Do we want any child's parents to have to say to them; "Looks like rain, baby. Make sure you don't put up your hoodie. I want you back alive!"
Most of me is white and all of me is shocked, and not. I was of course aware that our society looks at people of color differently, you have only to check incarceration and arrest rates to prove that. But I hadn't taken it to the assimilation point: What does this mean our neighbors of color have to adjust in their lives to deal with that "different treatment". Can any of us who are not of obvious color imagine having "the talk" with our kids about how to speak to the police, to never run from danger without forethought, to not go to a "safe place" like a house or store to get assistance, to let your head get wet from rain rather than your own blood?
I'm prejudiced. We all are. Just last week, two people were walking down my street. The first thing I noticed was that they were both men. They were white men, but that wasn't what I was looking at. I wanted one of them to be a woman. I'm used to seeing couples walk together. I only harbored the concern for a fraction of a moment, but in that fraction I unknowingly and irrationally offended men and didn't even consider that they might have been a gay couple. In some reverse/perverse version of Sharia Law, I wanted a woman to go out of the house with the men. I wanted this non-present woman to keep me safe.
From what? Too many Y-chromosomes? Facial hair? Shlongism? How utterly stupid of me--Me, who prides myself in my twitter activism to help right social injustices. I stood there a beat and stared out my windows at two friends enjoying a warm morning. (Maybe if they'd had a dog with them...)
Which is EXACTLY why we do not need these trigger-happy gun laws. We all pre-judge. Psychologists say that first we see gender--I proved that point--then we go on to make a thousand little assessments and assumptions of everyone we see. We can't help it. Imagine those thousand little assessments now as BULLETS. You cannot put those killer genies back in their bottles. We shouldn't be afraid of each other, we should be afraid of the guns and the damned gun lobby. The old "If you outlaw guns..." argument is bullshit. The outlaws DO have the guns, and the laws on their side.
Newt Gingrich showed his prejudice when he chimed in on President Obama's comments about the Trayvon Martin shooting. Newt said the President took an appalling attitude by making the story about race. Newt said it should be about all Americans. So all Americans aren't moved by issues of race? And Newt is uncomfortable that the President cites a similarity in his appearance (as it would occur in a son if he had one) and that of Trayvon? What do these insecurities tell us about Newt's mental meanderings?
If that's not enough for you, how about Glen Beck? He makes the illogical and false argument that Trayvon was the aggressor. Based on what? We've all heard the 9-1-1 recordings. We know what was in Zimmerman's "heart". We know who was hunting whom. Beck goes on to assert that Trayvon must've been the bad guy because he was suspended from school for 10 days. When confronted with the fact that the suspension was over some slight like tardiness, an unsatisfied Beck looked up school rules in the Miami area, not Orlando. Among the infractions that could get you a 10-day suspension in Miami are: sexual offenses and violent acts. So in a state of frenzied bad logic, Beck assumes that Trayvon must be guilty of such wrongs. He decides Zimmerman, the only one in the incident with a troubling past or a police relationship, is the victim.
How much do you have to hate to go looking for lies to support what you WANT to believe? How much do you have to hate to not be willing to let the unarmed black child be the victim? Let's not even try to get inside the demented minds of the Sanford, Florida police department nor the coroner's office: Would they let a white child lay in a morgue for three days without contacting the parents? Without using the child's cell phone to call his home? They had plenty of time to run tox screens of the corpse, but no time to tell his daddy he was dead.
There are many guilty parties here. ALEC, the NRA, the Florida legislature, and Jeb Bush for the law; Glen Beck, Newt Gingrich, and George Zimmerman for the hate. We can educate ourselves and put the heat on those who push and pass dangerous legislation. We can demand justice and repercussions. But the thing we must to do is look inside ourselves. We have to sweep the world clean of hate one doorstep at a time, starting with our own.
As for me, I'll work on that whole jaundiced eye illness of mine. Do I hate? I don't think so. Did I question? Yes, and that's bad enough. I "came up against myself" and failed my own test. Like all of us, I have work to do.
And I'll start by letting two men walk down my street without risk of tripping over my cast aspersions.
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