#zimmerman

just thinking about these Zimmerman astrology dresses with cut-out of the signs…..

I am not Trayvon Martin.  Not even close.  I’m in my mid-twenties, white, female, Eastern European descent.  At 6'1", I sometimes am mistaken for a man, but being white, that only gives me further advantage.

No one thinks I am going to pull any crimes.  I forgot to take my phones out of my pockets for airport security, and only got a brief pat down, hands wiped for explosives, and my phones returned after scanning separately.  The TSA agents were polite if gruff, and I was barely delayed two minutes.  I do not pretend for a second that this same situation would happen to a Middle Eastern man, a black man, Trayvon Martin.  Being a skinny white woman makes me look harmless, something to protect, not suspect.

Oh sure, I have dealt with harassment from (white) men in the middle of the night.  And I am ashamed at the societal fear that makes me assume the worst of black strangers.  For it is a person who commits a crime, not a skin colour, not a stereotype.  Were I to walk home from a store in the middle of the night, wearing a hoodie and carrying some skittles, no one would attack me and shoot me.  I would get home alive.

The law and our prejudices set up Trayvon Martin’s death, and his murderer’s freedom.  The jury were left in a situation they could not win.  I do not fault them their job or decision.  The law and court were spun to let a paranoid white men be a hero.  A paranoid black man would never be a hero.  He would be in jail or dead.

I am not Trayvon Martin.  I do not know what it is like to be Trayvon Martin.  But I don’t need to be either to see through the veneer of prejudiced fear that cost a young man his life.

I am a 30-year-old, white male from the coast of Connecticut. When I tell people that, before even having met me, they usually peg me for a blonde-haired, blue-eyed lacrosse player decked out in polos and cargo shorts, spending my weekends on a boat and generally finding myself in the best possible position for acceptance and success in this country.

While most of that might be true (I neither owned a boat nor played lacrosse), those same people are then quickly surprised to learn that my wife is a black woman of Panamanian descent from Atlanta. Throughout our 10 year relationship, I’ve lost count of the harmless questions, sideways glances, head turns, double takes, muffled comments, and flat out rude, bigoted, and gross behavior. It runs the full spectrum, and has been directed at one or both of us at different times. 

Our children could be Trayvon Martin. And we both sadly know that the tone of our children’s skin and texture of their hair will go a long way towards determining just how they are looked at (and in some cases, down upon) by those around them. How they are treated. How they are talked about. How they are accepted.

What I have personally experienced in being half of an interracial couple pales in comparison to what people of color face in this country on a daily basis, and I’ll never fully comprehend many of the experiences my wife has endured in her life in that regard. One front-of-mind situation I found myself in was sitting in the backseat of a car with my wife, her cousin, and his fiancée and being pulled over and harassed for literally no reason whatsoever; the emotions in that car remain visceral to me). But I consider myself lucky to be in a healthy, beautiful relationship that allows me to understand and appreciate some of the things that others go through in a society that singles out those they deem “different” and “out of place” as if there is some real criteria to base those things on. 

I can’t wait to bring these future children into the world. But in that, I worry about what they will face, and I worry about it often. This verdict, this case, and these past 15 months have all provided yet another nationally televised (and sadly spun) reminder of the absolute worst of it, right down to posthumous assaults on the character of a child. Never mind the countless examples of hate and injustice happening in this country every day that we don’t hear about, for reasons other than the color of one’s skin.

I also consider myself to be very lucky to have been raised in a family that not only preached tolerance and respect for ALL people in life, but practiced it themselves. My older brother has three children with his first wife who happens to be black, and they are three of the most unique and wonderful souls in my life. I can’t help but think that we are doing our very small part in progressing towards a wholly tolerant society.

While I think about the sad and scary realities often, and my heart pours out for the Martin family, I wish it didn’t take circumstances such as Trayvon’s death to open and maintain a dialogue of this magnitude on race and basic human rights. Ironically, that it takes tragedy to start the conversation causes that hope to momentarily dim. What’s worse is that again, the conversation is already starting to fade.

I am not Trayvon Martin. I am a 30 years old. I am black. I am a woman. I am very much in love. My boyfriend is white and I am currently carrying our biracial child. My mother is angry at me for mixing races because ‘black is beautiful’ and “white supremacy dictates the world’. She is angry because she believes she is right. She believes she’s right because our legal system seemingly adheres to the same biased and prejudiced standards that we fought to eradicate so many years ago. She believes she’s right because even if we have a Black President in office it still doesn’t matter. She believes she’s right because she tells me I’m doing a disservice to my child. She believes I’m doing a disservice to my child, her unborn grandchild, because that child will have no identity. I am fearful, not because of my mother’s opinions, not because my child would struggle with identity issues in the future …… I am fearful because regardless of whether my child’s father is white, if my child is a boy, he could be Trayvon one day…..

I am not Trayvon Martin. 

I am a blonde, blue eyed, 25 year old private school educated lucky girl living a lucky life and I cried for his parents who were told that because he was not this, his life was not worth a dime. 

I, sitting here, am not worth a dime yet he is and will forever be worth an infinite amount of wealth.

I will never change anything.

I am not Travyon Martin but I hope that because he was, something will change. 

I am a 28 year old white male with blond hair and blue eyes. I earn slightly above the average household salary, and debt-free, and live in a good middle-class neighborhood in Seattle. I have had my youthful run-ins with the police; normal teenager stuff, but nothing serious, and with practically no consequences past a few fines and groundings. I walk the streets at night knowing that the police won’t find me suspicious. I do not fear getting in verbal confrontations with people of color, because I know that the police will believe whatever I say. 

I am not Trayvon Martin. I am glad that I am not Trayvon Martin. There should be no Trayvon Martin. I never should have heard his name, not unless he grew up to become newsworthy because of his own actions, rather than as an adolescent victim of a vigilante culture and a sick individual. I wish that none of us knew Trayvon’s name now; but now that we do, we can never forget it. 

I am a 18 year-old female freshman at Hamline University. I grew up in a small town of about 500 people in Northern Wisconsin. I am of average height, with dark hair and hazel eyes, and white skin. I am of German and English ancestry. I am from a predominantly white-republican community where rich people have cabins nicer than locals’ homes and bars are busier than the town’s churches. I am from a town where everyone knows me and stops to talk to me and no one would ever question what I do, who I hang out with or why I am out. I can freely drink without judgement. I can smoke a bowl without worrying about anything.

I am white. I have been sheltered. I am safe.

I am not Trayvon Martin. I come from a messed up family, alcoholism is effects my home life every day and I deal constantly with money problems; however, I don’t physically appear any different than other middle class white young-women. My skin color hides my problems beneath the surface.

I will never know what it’s like to be profiled because of my skin color, or because I walk with my hood up at night, or because I took a hit of pot because I am sheltered by the color of my skin.

I don’t think this is right or okay. I believe we need to stop being seen as White, African-American, Hispanics, Asian & etc., but instead, human beings. All individuals should know the feeling of safety. All people should be able to walk into a store and not be followed by suspicious employees. All people should be able to walk with their hood up, rain or shine, because they feel like it. All people should be able to walk to a gas station as night and pick up a snack because they feel like it, without being murdered because someone else feels unsafe in their own skin.

We are not Trayvon Martin.

We are a group of educated, middle-class, mostly middle-age white men and women who sit daily in a place of privilege based solely on our skin color.  We are advocates who work to end domestic violence and we work in a field where communities of color are often underserved.  We hold one another accountable to keeping ourselves open to discovering new ways in which we hold privilege besides our whiteness, which alone permits us entry into everyday turnstiles of power and ranking by race.  We collectively work together to find ways to bring awareness about and change to the societal institutions which are affected and infected by racism and oppression.

We are not Trayvon Martin’s family.

We empathize with the pain and terrible loss his family is suffering from and acknowledge that when our husbands, sons, nephews and grandsons walk home from the store that they will not be stopped, harassed, beaten or killed because of the color of their skin.  We send our children out into the world daily and never have to worry about giving them special instructions or safeguards based on their whiteness.  We do not have to have conversations with our children about what to wear so they are not seen as gang members nor do we have to warn them about where it’s not safe to drive or walk because of their race.  We do not have to tell them to keep their hands visible if they are approached by adults, especially if the adult is a law enforcement officer or a member of our Neighborhood Watch nor do we have to talk to them about how to handle the constant discrimination and profiling they will face due to the color of their skin.

We did not kill Trayvon Martin.

Even though we did not participate in the death of Trayvon Martin nor did we sit on the jury which found George Zimmerman Not Guilty,  we are a part of the institutional racism that perpetuates the fear of the young black man.  We are saturated in white privilege and benefit daily from the institutional racism that made his death and the not guilty verdict possible. We are part of the “system” that allowed a jury of 100% women and 0% African Americans to sit in judgment of a white man accused of killing a black man.

We are not Trayvon Martin.

But we are left behind to work diligently to understand how this kind of tragedy continues to happen in communities we share with our brothers and sisters of color.  We cannot know the experiences and trauma experienced by people of color in the US but we can talk to other white people about the racism that still exists and how our silence perpetuates it.  We can take action when we witness acts of racism and work to change the institutions that keep it in place.

We are not Trayvon Martin and we cannot change our whiteness but we can make a commitment to work towards stopping racially based violence in our communities.

I have seen multiple people make statements or posts on my FB page questioning why the Martin/Zimmerman case has had such high level of focus in the media and other criminal cases involving a white victim and black perpetrator have not garnered the same attention. And most of the “reverse examples” used have been in crimes where there was breaking and entering involved so not really an apt comparison, I don’t think.

It seems to me that the only people really questioning this are white. And already shows a lack of understanding and/or awareness of a common African American experience.  And I am not saying I fully understand or am aware of it because I know I do not or am not.  Still it seems we as white people should do our best to understand what we can.

Even if my analogy is not an adequate comparison, it seems an analogy might help seeing a viewpoint we might not normally see.

If you are willing, think of someone you have felt abused, betrayed, or otherwise hurt by once or (more aptly) repeatedly in your life.  How long did it take for you to not feel angry anymore? Were you able to forgive?  Were you able to forgive even without a formal apology from the person who made the transgressions?  Could you forgive even if he/she didn’t apologize? And if the person couldn’t see how they hurt you or refused to own up to it, would you ever trust him/her again?  Even if the person did make a heart felt apology how easy would it be to trust him/her again?

 How difficult would it be for you to forgive and not be somehow defined by someone beating you, saying degrading things to you on a daily basis or worse- killing or abusing your children or other family members.  If you felt worn down, full of grief, hopeless how long would it take for you to heal and be able to bring full positive energy back to your life again?  How long would it take you to heal if the wound was never allowed to close but instead the scab was irritated, continuously infected and/or rubbed off before it could ever completely close?

I can tell you that as a Jewish woman (even though I am non practicing now) that Jews will never “forget” being enslaved in Egypt and never “forget” more than 6 million exterminated in WWII, and that we hear derogatory disparaging comments regularly about Jews.  I have certainly heard my share not to my face but  maybe because I don’t “look” Jewish people might think it’s ok to say certain things around me without fear of being offensive.

When I was 25 years old I sat next to a young black man who was about my age.  We chatted for a couple of minutes about the usual stuff passengers sitting next to each other on a plane might; “Where are you headed?  Do you live there or are you just visiting,” and so on.  After only about 2 minutes of this, he said,” I can tell you have friends who are black?”  “How?” I asked.

“Because you look at me with an open expression on your face.”

His comment instantly stunned and saddened me.  To think that 70 percent of the population that surrounded him looked at him with something of resistance, negativity or worse -fear, disgust or hatred.

In my early years in High School I thought racism was already in the past and no longer active in this country.  How naïve I was.  It was very important to my parents to teach my brother and I that everyone is equal (not the same) but equal and deserved to be treated fairly, ethically and respectfully regardless of gender, skin color, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, financial status and so on.  Aren’t those some of the qualities that people uphold about what’s great about this country? If it is not the truth, not the reality of how all of the inhabitants of this country are treated but those characteristics are still upheld as vitally important wouldn’t you want to make it true?

How can we heal this deep wound if we don’t collectively recognize that the prosperity of this country was birthed out of the genocide of sovereign nations that were here first and through slave labor from the African slave trade? 

And some might respond that that was so long ago and we have come a long way from then and we have a black president now (or more accurately biracial). Why are we still talking about this? 

We are still talking about this because the original wounds have continued to be aggravated.  Certainly a victim should not rely on the perpetrator to complete a healing process.  However, it seems to me healing can occur much faster when and if a victim can confront a perpetrator and the perpetrator is able to do some soul searching and at least admit to the act, transgression or crime. If the pus of a deep infection is not allowed to drain, to be cleaned out daily, it can easily fester.  If a family member had an infection wouldn’t you want to tend to it regularly and gently?  I have heard some people say that some kinds of amends have been made: the right to vote, affirmative action and social welfare programs. To me these are not the same thing as an open apology and they certainly are not equivalent to making amends. Amends go beyond trying to make the playing field even, they return what was taken if possible and if not possible they give something back that could be considered equivalent.  The US government will never give the land of this country back to the remaining Tribal Nations, it can never return the torn apart and dead family members back to African families.  I have no idea what could be considered equivalent, but I do know that continued fearful attitudes that  promote paranoia and contribute to violent actions just seem to perpetuate the lack of trust and a holding pattern of unnecessary violence.

I read an essay on a different blog that also had what I thought was a great analogy.  It used a baseball game as an analogy.  That if at the beginning of the game the rules were different for each side such that the rules always benefited the yellow side and constantly put the green side at a disadvantage.  Then in the middle of the game the yellow side realized how unfair the rules were and made the rules the same for both sides but the score was still in favor of yellows how likely would it be for the greens to catch up or even win if they had been so weakened and put at a disadvantage for so long?  It has only been 50 years since the civil rights movement in this country and that is juxtaposed to the Atlantic slave trade that went on for nearly 500 years.

And I am not suggesting that crimes committed by black people are somehow excusable because of the painful history but that certain things should be looked at more deeply.  If you’ve ever had a bad habit that you’ve wanted to change, it usually requires some deeper awareness of the psychology involved and a willingness to do something different in order to become successful in changing the habit.

I have even heard a few of my friends who are involved with a spiritual community (mostly new age kind of spirituality) focused on the truth of our oneness as human beings and with all life make derogatory and/or prejudicial comments about African Americans or Latinos. In most instances I have called them out on it and asked questions so they might look more deeply into their negative stereotyping.

I believe the discussion of racism and how we are all impacted by it should and will continue until true healing occurs.  And those of us who see people as equal and are passionate about the importance of people being treated with basic equality and respect will continue to do our best to understand and bring understanding in the ways we are able.  If you say you care about humanity and care about making a better place for your children- for everyone’s children wouldn’t you want to do your best to understand. And that often requires a discussion.

If you have a fight with your spouse or partner and don’t discuss it, the feelings from the fight would have a hard time being cleared.  If you care about your country wouldn’t you want to be a part of the conversation to do what you can to help clear the pain?

Again, I am not saying that black people have no part in this healing process  and that it’s all on white people to mend, but white people were certainly the initial instigators of a certain way of thinking toward people with darker skin as “less than”, as “savages” and/or in some ways as not even human. And you might say, “Well African culture utilized slavery for much longer but from what I understand most of it was closer to an indentured servitude situation that ended after certain debts were paid than how slaves were largely treated in this country.

I do think we need to look much deeper and come to terms with the now often subtle unconscious ways these perceptions are perpetuated.

I am not Trayvon Martin.  I am the mother of five boys.  My sons range in age from 1 to 16 and any one of them could one day be Trayvon.  Any one of them could leave the house and never come back; any one of them could be snatched from me in one horrifying moment.  Any one of them could die on a rainy night, alone, on a sidewalk just minutes from our front door.  It could happen.  It has happened so many times before. 

I hope to never know the agony Trayvon’s parents know.  But, I am not naïve; I know all too well how easily one of my boys could be in a situation just like his; how, in one tragic moment, everything could change, forever.

When Trayvon’s story first became news, I sat my older boys down and gave them a talk.  It is a talk the parents of black sons have been giving for far too long – don’t run, show your hands, make it clear you don’t want any trouble; submit, submit, submit….  All this time I had told myself that I was raising men and here I am telling my sons to be afraid; teaching them to cower.  This is not what I intended.  And, yet, here we are.

When Barack Obama was elected in 2008 I woke my kids up the next morning and I told them, “The world is a better place than it was when you went to sleep last night.  Last night, we made history.  Today, I am proud of the country we live in and you should be too.”  Telling them about the Zimmerman verdict felt like a retraction.  How can I be proud of a country where the death of someone’s child goes unanswered; where but for the media scrutiny, his killer would never so much have seen the inside of a courtroom?  What is there to be proud of here?  How can this be the same country that not five years earlier elected its first black President?

That day, the day I had to tell my boys that Trayvon Martin’s killer was acquitted, I committed to doing what I can to make a difference; I will not cower, I will not submit; I will not accept that this is just the way things are.  I will not see racism and say nothing; I will not tell myself that it isn’t my job to cure the ignorance of others.  I can no longer avoid having those tough conversations; I will not.  I will not rest until my boys can leave the house without being afraid.

I have experienced racism. I am Chinese-American even though I am of mixed descent (35% white). I have joked about being a partial WASP to both my non-white and white friends. We have poked fun at racial stereotypes and used them on ourselves. I have simultaneously stood at the fringes of white privilege and also been enveloped into it to see how it works. But I know better than anyone that I am lucky. I will never experience the full force of racism because I am not black. 

I attended Cornell University for college, one of the eight Ivy League schools. People assume if you are either blackorLatino, you were accepted because of affirmative action. Then people also assume you are on heavy financial aid or you are illegal. And if you are in pre-med or engineering, people will make the snap judgement that if you will drop out or switch to an “easier” major because you do not deserve to be there and you are not smart enough.

During my final year at Cornell, one of the fraternities on campus started throwing glass bottles at a group of African-American students walking by, calling them the N-word, making racial slurs, and mocking them. Campus police became involved, I filed a police report because I was a witness, and I patiently waited to hear what the university would do.

But at the end, only a slap on the wrist and a warning was giving to the fraternity and the instigator (who was very conveniently not a student and also from Florida) was banned from campus. Despite outrage and anger, the fraternity’s charter was not revoked or disbanded. 

I marvelled at it all as I sat across the street with a friend watching this occur. How could this happen? I wondered. We often assume that being college educated means being intelligent and cognizant of what is right and wrong in this world. We assume that racism is close to eradication, especially on college campuses in this country. We assume that in the 21st century and especially at an Ivy League school, tolerance and compassion are important and race shouldn’t matter. We should be smart enough to realise we share the same genetic code and we are all the same species. Even though I knew fraternity culture was a cesspool of homophobia, racism, and misogyny, I thought that their inner consciences would stick up and someone in that group of people would say “stop, this isn’t right.”

I couldn’t be more wrong. 

To me, Trayvon Martin’s murder is the large scale equivalent of what happened at that fraternity on the cold May night of 2012. Acquitting George Zimmerman announces to the world black lives are irrelevant. Their hurt and pain is lesser than a white man’s. Being black in this country means second class citizenship even if you are moneyed and went to a great school. It doesn’t matter that Mark O'Mara congratulated Maddy, juror B29 for thinking with her head instead of with her heart. Because we all know in our hearts that George Zimmerman racially profiled Trayvon Martin and followed him because he was black.

It doesn’t matter that it was 8pm. It doesn’t matter the police dispatcher told Zimmerman not to follow Trayvon. It doesn’t matter that Trayvon Martin was like any other typical American teenager, eating Skittles and drinking iced tea. 

What does matter is that Trayvon Martin is dead, his life extinguished permanently, and his killer is celebrating somewhere, freed because racism is still kicking well and alive in 2013. 

I am not Trayvon Martin, but I know what it feels like to be. I am a 17 year old Hispanic girl in Chicago trying to give myself a better education. 

Now, growing up in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood all my life is really what made me what I am today. I strong sense of community and family resonate in both my brother and I. Our friends are like our family and I will always defend them. But when I transferred schools at 10 to a privileged white Catholic school, I got a rude awakening. Those people saw me and the few other Hispanic kids in the class as dumb and stupid. Why are they here? They don’t belong in this school. But au contrair mon ami. We were the kids who moved on to better schools with better educations while the others are wasting away in a tiny Indiana town. That was the first time I ever experienced racism and it fueled me to prove that I was just as good as the other kids.

But it was hard sometimes. As I continued to play softball and basketball, it was obvious that the refs and umpires favored the other girls. Though I had some friends in grade schools, I was never able to feel comfortable there. Only until I went to high school, I felt accepted for my own intelligence and personality, not my heritage.

The high school I attend is one that is known to be accepting for the differences of the students along with being a leading academic school in the state and in the nation. Here, I was able to succeed going into my senior year without any trouble or obstacles to stop me. But as college application time is drawing closer everyday, I am constantly reminded by not only my peers, but my teachers as well, that it is better for me to be Hispanic so that I can attend the college of my dreams.

Time Out

First of all, I am very proud of my culture and the values instilled within myself every since i was young. But now to hear that it is good to be Hispanic, I had to do a double take in a sense. I know that it is an “advantage” to be a minority on the Common Application, but to think that some people are spiteful of me being this was is confusing. To face what I have makes me special. It makes me unique. But that doesn’t mean I will automatically get into the college of my dreams. I will get in because of the hard work and determination I have put forward all my life. Just because you are a different race than mine doesn’t mean that you have any less a chance than I do.

Because of Zimmerman, Trayvon cannot succeed as I dream to do along with the vast majority of teenagers across the world. He will never finish being a teenager and never experience being an adult. He won’t go to college. He won’t find a job and live a happy life. Because he isn’t here anymore. That is the eyeopener that the nation needs to realize. He wasn’t able to be a kid because he did for his skin.

So at the end of this, think about how he never will have the chance to succeed like I do. Though he is not here anymore, we still have to experience things that he did. I will still face the challenge of being Hispanic everyday. But that doesn’t mean that I will back down. I am just as equal as every other teenager in the world. I am my own person. So don’t tell me anything different.

I was blown away by the Justice For Trayvon rally today in Northampton. Despite being called at last moment the turnout was huge. It was not only more than I expected but more than I had hoped for. I am incredibly proud of all the people who turned out and made some noise. I am honored that I was able to stand with such beautiful fighting spirited people and protest the horrible racist injustice committed all over this country which is supposedly the land of the free. This is not just about Trayvon Martin. This is about the endless number of people of color brutalized and killed everyday all over this country. This is about a criminal justice system that excuses murders done by police as long as the one murdered was a person of color. From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin it is the same shit and just a different decade. I want to thank all the people who came out this evening to show support and all those who got up and spoke. Solidarity! This is far from over! R.I.P.