It seems I have become a rebel rouser in my late 40s. I don't know if the phenomenon of social media has emboldened me, or if the realization that it is more important to speak my own truth than worry about how other people react that has become more freeing. The day after the verdict, I spent most of my time completely distracted by a Facebook debate. I should have been enjoying my day with my family, but instead I found myself glued to my News Feed waiting for notifications of the next posting. Truth be told, I have been consumed for weeks by the social networking storm surrounding both the Zimmerman Trial and Paula Dean's fall from grace. I have engaged in multiple facebook debates, spent many an hour in discussions at social events (I think my friends have started tossing out statements for the fun of seeing what ensues) and found myself yelling like a crazy woman at the TV. My husband and children have patiently listened each time a status, statement from some pundit or article inflamed my senses. I have found my soapbox, and I can't seem to step away from it.
The verdict this weekend did not surprise me. I did not believe that Zimmerman's actions could support a Murder 2 charge. I had followed the prosecution's less than stellar performance in arguing for a charge they couldn't make, and hoped that the jury could somehow get past reasonable doubt to get to a Manslaughter charge, and of course they could not. A young man had lost his life, and no one would be held accountable. A person had made an assumption about a this young man's character, not based on the observation of a criminal act, but based solely on his appearance. That bad assumption drove multiple other bad decisions which led to his death. I am not writing to revisit the trial and my feelings about the verdict, because I'm sure most of you already know exactly where I stand from my previous postings, but my heart is heavy, my mind is racing and I know somewhere in this needless death there has to lie a lesson.
We have come a very long way in our race relations over my lifetime, but clearly we have not come far enough when a trial can divide a country and the perception by too many is the scales of justice are still weighted by the color of your skin. We have integrated schools, promoted equality in the workplace and created more opportunities than ever before for advancement of minorities. We have broken the barriers in support of interacial marriages and families. Blended families are more and more common, and our youth of today are becoming increasingly more color blind, but as the lines have blurred it has fostered a false perception that the playing field has been leveled and racism can no longer harm an individual in the way it once did.
Since the verdict was released, there has been a continuing debate about the role that race played in the events surrounding the Zimmerman trial. I have had numerous discussions with people I respect, people I know to judge individuals based on character and not color, who believe that this case should never have been made about race, and have been appalled and angered at the media and politicians who have seemed to promote this. These same individuals seem evenly divided on whether they shared the belief that Zimmerman was guilty of manslaughter or instead believed Zimmerman was justified in using lethal force as a means of self defense. I, on the other hand, believe that you can't separate the racial undercurrent that is attached to this case. I need only ask myself the questions, "If Trayvon had been white, would the DA have viewed Zimmerman's injuries as evidence supporting a claim of self-defense or would he have viewed them as evidence that Trayvon was fighting for his life? If Trayvon had been white, would he have supported the arrest for manslaughter as lead detective had originally recommended? If Trayvon had been white would, Zimmerman have had a defense fund fueled by strangers and a high powered attorney willing to take his case on?," and finally, "Would Zimmerman have been as suspicious of a white boy in a Hoodie as he was of Trayvon in a hoodie? " This may surprise you, but the only question I feel ambivalent about is the last question. I am not convinced that Trayvon's race was the primary driver in that first bad assumption. I am not convinced that Zimmerman wouldn't have pursued any young man in that age group he deemed out of place because he fit some stereotypical profile whether that was a hispanic boy wearing colors or a white boy sporting piercings and tattoos. Either way, whether race was the deciding factor or his age group was the deciding factor, this case is a clear illustration of everything that is wrong about profiling.
Moving on to Paul Dean. There seems to be as much, if not more debate on her fall from grace. There is a camp of supporters who feel she has been unfairly targeted by both the media and her sponsors, and believe that she shouldn't be held responsible for something she said years before. There is a camp of supporters, who acknowledge that her actions are more egregious than
simply using an inappropriate word in her past, but they still empathize with her inability to shed her southern roots and the prejudices that she learned as a child when open displays of racism were the norm. They see their parents or their grandparents in her, and believe she should be held accountable on some level, but believe that the consequences of her actions have been too harsh. Finally, there is the camp that believes she is a racist through and through, and deserves everything she gets. I fall somewhere between the last two camps. I see Paula as the last vestiges of a generation of people that grew up when prejudice wasn't questioned. It was simply a thread in the fabric of every day life. She has learned to adjust to a changing world, and probably is far more progressive in her views than she was twenty years ago, but even so, she will never understand the nuances of why a Southern themed plantation party sporting Black servants might be perceived as offensive or how the use of the "N" word to describe a criminal says more about her than the person she was referring to. But I can't seem to label her a racist. Racist is one of the ugliest words in our vocabulary. To use the word racist, I have to believe that you are first and foremost driven by hatred, and I have so far only seen that she is driven by a bias so ingrained that she can't see the fallacies within it. As a business owner, she let her employees down by either ignoring an environment that promoted discrimination and harassment or participating it. She is currently being held to task for those actions, and it is understandable that a business would be uncomfortable with her as a spokesperson for their product.
Where ever you land on both of these cases, they clearly illustrate that there is still a real divide in how Americans view race and racism in this country. Within that divide is an undercurrent of suspicion that continues to separate us. This suspicion colors our perceptions of each other and our reactions to these kinds of events. If we are to be honest, we have to acknowledge that the seeds of racism lie within all of us. They are those unconscious thoughts that creep in when we stand out in a crowd or are in unfamiliar territory. It is what we do with those seeds, how we allow ourselves to be driven by them that ultimately separates the racists, the people who allow hate to feed those seeds, and everyone else who is just trying to navigate in a complex world filled with racial undercurrents. In our vigilance in stamping out discrimination, we have to be careful not to confuse differing opinions as prejudice, because if we truly want to find a way to level the playing fields, we have to learn to respect in each other what we are often most suspicious of.
