Okay, well, if you're talking about the Zimmerman trial, that's not quite in at this moment. I didn't watch 95% of it, so I don't feel fully qualified to render a verdict. It does seem pretty clear that Zimmerman way, way overstepped the bounds of crime watch observation. Both people involved were real human beings, and not perfect stereotypes for either side. Although not a trial watcher, I am not completely unfamiliar with the case, and lean towards the conclusion that although George Zimmerman may be guilty of second degree murder, the evidence may not be there to definitively support that, so manslaughter may be a more likely verdict. I in no way believe that George Zimmerman is without culpability.
But that is not the verdict I am talking about.
The verdict is in, America. Like it or not.
We still live in a racist, bigoted society.
Like the OJ trial, I see America viewing this trial through race-colored glasses. People of different backgrounds can look at this incident, look at the evidence, and come up with completely different judgments.
But just try this. Flip it. A white teenager is going through an urban neighborhood where he is the only one of his race around. He is not small, a football player, unarmed, has used marijuana at some point in his life, has a hood pulled over his head to protect him from the rain. An armed black man confronts him so the white teenager starts to run. The black man pursues him, finally catches him, and a tussle ensues. In the tussle, the black man shoots and kills the white teenager. Does anyone have any doubt as to how the verdict on that one would turn out?
Racism still abounds. Whatever the extent of Paula Deen's racism, the reaction to it falls on similar lines. Yes, there is a hidden impulse in the South, a nostalgia for an era where the races fell into more predictable camps and attitudes, a secret longing underneath the desire to return to an antebellum idealism, a covert message in the display of the confederate flag. It has not been eliminated, simply more cautious and coded in it's expression. And I don't mean to give the North a pass. Believe me, they have plenty of racial problems of their own.
The efforts to suppress the vote is race-based, to the extent that Republicans know they're going to get very little minority vote, and now that the Supreme Court has freed them, the voter suppression efforts should increase. It's already happening.
One of my favorite SNL skits from yesteryear involved the talented Eddie Murphy disguising himself as a white person and getting on a bus. The bus starts out with many white people and one black guy. The conversation is inane and light, about golf and other banal subjects. The black guy gets off the bus, and Eddie Murphy begins to watch the conversation instantly change. Racial stereotypes and slurs abound and everything Eddie Murphy feared about white people is confirmed - when minorities are not around, whites reveal their true racist nature.
Sounds ridiculous? Catch Big Brother this year. Hear about the boiler plate of racism and bigotry that is heating up the house. Wishing the Asian woman would just shut up and go make rice, that blacks stick together and can hide in the dark, jokes about queers and faggots, praising of Hitler, and asserting the concept that when women say no they don't really mean no. And that, my friends, is just the tip of the racist iceberg that Big Brother has hit.
It is true that overall our younger generations are more tolerant than our older generations. Things have been getting better in that regard. But don't kid yourself.
It ain't over.
Not by a long shot.
UPDATE: The Zimmerman verdict is in. He has been found not guilty by a jury of HIS peers. I guess what he did was okay in Florida, if not the whole country. And yet the reaction I hear most from conservative friends is their fear that wild out-of-control back people will riot and endanger white people and their property. I guess they feel that black people will react violently to injustice, instead of just accept that there is nothing they can do about it. The real fear should by that this will inspire and create other George Zimmermans in the future. That our young people of color should be even more afraid now to be in the wrong neighborhood at the wrong time. That they shouldn't ever try to defend themselves because the stand your ground and self-defense laws are not written for them.
Be careful out there.
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