My
wife pointed it out; whenever they talk about this case it's always Trayvon and
Zimmerman. We know the victim, affectionately, by his first name, the killer by
his last. Why? Because we take this case personally. Otherwise the
wall-to-wall coverage wouldn't be there.
Even
among hate crimes, this one is special. When some homophobes kill a gay man,
it's news, it's an outrage, we hear about it. But the coverage and concern
don't reach Martin/Zimmerman heights. The history is entirely different. Gay
people have been harassed and killed for years in America but, as horrid as
that history is, cities did not burn. A civil war wasn't fought over that
issue, six hundred thousand Americans didn't die because of it.
Race
has unique, terrible power over America's moral conscience and with good
reason. When a white man kills a black man it's something more than a crime in
our eyes, it's something unspeakably worse. Which is why we must speak
about it.
White
people may not want to see it that way. In our hearts we may think, we are not
racist, we elected a black president, we hate not. And all that is probably
true for most white Americans.
It
doesn't matter. Some lessons must be relearned whenever something terrible
happens that reminds us all of our nation's original sin.
I
hope justice is done to Mr. Zimmerman. If his version of that tragedy is the
truth, I hope he doesn't suffer for it any more than he has already. If he's
lying and killed that kid on purpose I hope they throw the book at him.
But
either way, I know that justice is being served by all the saturating, 24/7
coverage and conversation. I know we need to work this out slowly, one painful
step at a time.
Because,
to white America, this is a case, a killing, a mystery, maybe even an
annoyance. But to black America it's one six-millionth of a genocide.
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