You’re a great writer, and I agree with most of what you say, but I think it’s high time a white person educated you about something very, very important in understanding your white neighbors.
You seem to be the sort who accepts and appreciates that the different “races” (and people who claim more than one) are all in the same American boat, and that America is good to its so-called “minorities”. Well and good.
However, for a lot of us white folks, feeling guilty about slavery and Jim Crow–even if our forebears cheered Justice Harlan’s dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson or Pres. Harding’s being the first president to entertain black people in the White House–is an important part of who we are. It’s a kind of perverse social climbing.
You see, 600,000+ casualties in the fight to end slavery meant that America needed replacement people from somewhere. Hence, a lot of us crossed over from Europe and Western Asia, got called “Greenhorn”, “Mick”, “Hebe”, and a number of other bad names by folks whose families had been here longer. Even when we got a little bit prosperous and educated, their was a lingering snootiness towards us.
However, by feeling guilty over slavery–which we were too late to prosper from–we got to pretend that we were the social peers of the old Tidewater Aristocracy of Virginia and the Carolinas, or the Boston Brahmins whose forebears may or may not have owned some of the slave ships. It’s a class thing; not a race thing.
But here’s another thing. Yes, the killing of Trayvon Martin was a tragedy. But, as a “white” teacher in a mostly “minority” school, I teach kids who look like the few hundred of their peers who got murdered in Chicago during the first half of 2013 alone. Where’s the outrage?
And, had I not married someone from the Far East, my sons might’ve looked like Dzhokhar Tsarnaev or the goons who dragged James Byrd to his death. How can that mean that I must first, last, and always feel a “solidarity” with such people that transcends respect for law and morality?
]]>Your 50:1 ratio is interesting. Assuming the color balance is now down to about 5:1, there should be about that ratio of attacks. Equal attacks would mean blacks are 5x as racist. The 50:1 ratio means they are 5×50=250 times as racist as whites.
]]>I have found this case, and the entire attitude, to be astonishing.
There are those who want to replace racism in America with… racism in America.
I’m sorry, folks, but you can’t get rid of racism without getting rid of racism.
You don’t just take it and turn it in a different direction. You GET RID of the damn thing.
In this case, if George Zimmerman really and truly hunted down and murdered an innocent 17-year-old boy, then I would’ve given him the death penalty.
On the other hand, if George Zimmerman was fighting for his life against a 17-year-old attacker, and his only option was to shoot in order to save his own life and health… THEN LEAVE THE MAN ALONE!
When are we going to stop judging people by the color of their skin, and start judging them by the content of their character and the evidence of their actions?
In this case, all the evidence was heard. And all the evidence was totally against those who wanted to get a rope and string up Mr. Zimmerman. There simply was no good evidence to support the lynch mob. An eyewitness saw Zimmerman on bottom, Trayvon Martin on top, with Martin’s fists flailing downward. All the physical evidence backs up that Trayvon Martin gave Zimmerman a beating that could have given him brain damage or taken his life. Martin, on the other hand, had not a scratch on him, except for an abrasion on one hand (wonder how he got that) and the fatal bullet wound.
It’s time we got rid of the damn lynch mobs, and rid of the judgments according to color of skin, and started living the words of Dr. King. Down with political correctness, up with GENUINE justice. For all Americans, black and white, equally.
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