I Am George Zimmerman

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'It could have been me.' 'It could have been my son.' 'Am I next?'

These are the rallying cries for justice for Trayvon Martin (background here). We recognize that any one of our black or brown brothers could have been walking home that night, only to find themselves the target of racial profiling and prejudice. Any number of them could have  been killed with no murderer brought to justice.

And so we say 'I am Trayvon Martin.'

But how many of us are willing to do the soul-searching necessary to say 'I am George Zimmerman'?
It could have been me. It could have been my son. Am I next? 

Suspicious? Be honest,
is your answer is still 'yes'?

I didn't pull the trigger that night, but I helped load the gun. I've breathed the racial smog and know what it means to see someone's skin and to be afraid.

That February night, I saw you walking down the street, and so I dead-bolted my front door. I heard the gunshot, and pictured you behind the trigger. And I didn't question it when the cop told me it had been white guy, not you, that was screaming.

You there, in your hoodie...I'll answer your question. Yes, you do look suspicious to us. We've seen too many TV shows,  too many newscasts and we've lost the empathy to see you any other way.

We've watched the movies, and we know who's the bad guy. It's never someone that looks like me. I'm always the hero...or at least the victim. We see the nightly news. We know not to walk alone in certain parts of town. We know who they arrest. And we've seen who's dealing the drugs, what they wear, and how they're dressed. The city didn't used to be like this, and we know who's to blame. Ever since they moved into town, the neighborhood just hasn't been the same.

So, we lock the doors on our cars as we drive downtown. We cross to the opposite side of the street and we clutch our purses. We vote for 'Stand Your Ground' because we've got the right to defend ourselves in this dangerous world.

We cringe at the loud base from the car in the next lane, and though we've never actually listened to any, we know rap is from the devil. We yawn through the diversity training we are forced to attend. We flip past the pages of the local newspaper that report the deaths last night in the 'bad' part of town.

We ignore the stats that say that black folk are disproportionately harassed by police, and instead believe that our society is better off having locked away almost a million black men (See post: Incarceration). We ignore the evidence that teachers discourage and hold back students of color, and instead believe that if they've failed out, it was their own darn fault. We ignore our inter-generational accumulation of wealth, and believe anyone unable to 'pull themselves up by their bootstraps,' must be lazy, stupid, or both. 

Zimmerman believed these things. He grew up in this environment, with this mindset.
He's not a rare monster. He's not a lunatic. He's a product of our society. And he's not the only one.

It could have been me. It could have been my son. Am I next?  


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