This weekend I spoke to two of my friends about the Trayvon Martin verdict and I was surprised at the outrage that they had for President Obama's intervention on Friday. I was very impressed with his courage to come out and express his feelings on the verdict. I thought he showed real raw emotion and still kept himself very presidential. That has been his legacy throughout his term in office. He has been voted into office during a time of extreme polarization. I agreed with him expressing his experience as a young teen and the hurt he must of felt when being followed around at a department store or hearing the clicks of the locks on the car doors as he walked by.
32 years ago, I was a student in college and my friends and I got tickets to a Jimmy Buffet concert five hours away in Tallahassee, Florida. We stopped at a convenience store on the way and asked to use the bathroom. The clerk told us there wasn't a bathroom. After some customers left the store (guess what race they were), we were told that we could use the bathroom now. My friend didn't hesitate- she said- that is OK we would rather pee our pants and she grabbed my hand and we left. I will never forget the look on the clerk's face and I my deep pride in my friend. I always felt angry with myself, for not having the presence of mind to initiate such a response.
The sad thing is, here we are 32 years later and racism is still around, ugly as ever. When I was in 6th grade, my teacher did the "blue eye experiment" with my class. This was a famous exercise created by Jane Elliot and first done in 1968 after the murder of Martin Luther King. The idea was to teach children who had never experienced racism, what it felt like. Believe me, as the person that was subjected to the temporary torment-it was not any fun. I had the blue eyes, so I had to go to the end of the line. I was told that the blue eyed children were liars and sneaky and I went home for lunch that day and begged my mother not to make me go back to school. We were told after lunch what the purpose of the exercise was and I will never forget that feeling and I was only subjected to the evil for four hours.
When I was talking to my friend yesterday she expressed an outrage that President Obama had the audacity to speak out on a court case that was decided fairly and legally. I did express my opinion on the subject (wow-courage) and I hope I was able to convince her that what he did was necessary and admirable. I remember when we were teaching together during the O.J. Simpson verdict and her reaction to our students after the not guilty verdict. I definitely wasn't happy with the verdict then. I felt for the victims- Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman. I did understand our predominately African American student population's ecstatic response to the verdict. It was a dig at "the Man".
The truth is that all of us have a little racism inside. You can't help it. You are a product of your environment. I was raised in an all white community by the beach. I never really interacted with any brown people until I went to college in Atlanta. I then proceeded to spend most of my teaching career teaching in predominately African American schools. I had to work to make certain that I did not exhibit any undue unfairness in my classes. I will never understand what it feels like to be discriminated against or profiled. But if our country can not come together and try to understand other's feelings, we will not be able to overcome the emotional chains of racism.
When we were in Europe- the headline story for several days was Racism in America. Paula Deen and the Zimmerman Trial were the top story. Does this mean that America is the only place in the world that is Racist? No- we are the country to has the most diversity in the world. I felt weird in Europe because almost everyone was white. There were almost no black people on the cruise or anywhere we were in Europe. The truth is the diversity in America is what has made our nation so strong. We need to embrace our differences and try to learn from our mistakes in order to become the best society possible.
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