Zimmerman Acquital Wrong in So Many Ways

Like many of us out here in the Real World, I am sick and heartbroken over the Zimmerman acquittal. Because I am the mom of two young men, I find the significance of this trial to be particularly troubling. Really smart folks have honed in and commented on the prominent issues of racial profiling or on prosecutorial mismanagement and already so much has been said about this horrible tragedy and the relentless miscarriage of justice that has followed. But the Angry White Mom sees this rather simply. This   Zimmerman acquittal basically upholds a lot of really scary ideas that touch all  moms as scorchingly as that bullet passed through Trayvon Martin’s hoodie on its way to his heart.  It is a clear warning shot over the heads of all young men between the ages of 16 and 25.

For years—well, centuries, really, American mothers of black and brown and any mixture thereof American children have had to caution them about being around White People.  Now, most white people don’t know this and don’t care but it is the Truth and there is a long and complex history that supports this Truth. With their willful disregard of prosecution witnesses, facts, and Zimmerman’s obvious manipulation of his story, this jury of white women has just condemned children of every walk of life to the possibility of their lives becoming forfeit to the neurotic fears of another pudgy Barney Fife Zimmerman.

The Truth of it is, now every young man between on his way home on foot is subject to being accosted and interrogated by anyone who has a notion of their own superiority.  Whether that sense of being better is because of ignorance and prejudice, religious intolerance, or because of the availability of firearms, or because laws everywhere are starting to support the shooter over the shot, the effect is the same. In reality, New York cops have been doing this “stop and frisk” profiling for years now.  Other police departments are considering it as a regular thing, not just a necessary evil in times of domestic crisis. It’s bad enough, to my way of thinking, that a uniformed official can exercise the legal right to stop anybody for anything at anytime for any reason, but now this Florida jury says its okay for anybody to stop anybody.  And if anybody wants to  pick a fight with you, they have the right to shoot you when it becomes clear they are losing the fight. Somehow this is now called “self-defense.”  We probably should now call it the Zimmerman Help Help I Have a Gun Defense and attorney Mark O”Mara should hang his head in shame.

We should all hang our heads in shame. Because we all accept it, all with reasons for accepting it as varied as our own selves. I am so reminded of the great author Robert Heinlein’s observation by the timeless character Lazarus Long, “You can have peace, or you can have freedom; don’t ever count on having the two at the same time.”

The Truth is that we have traded our freedom for security, and not even real security at that, just a thin veneer of temporary safety. Whipped into a frenzy of urban fears by rabid right-wing hatemongers, we so desperately want peace from the nonexistent threats in our streets, but we are determined to stay away from tacking the hard parts like revising laws and cleaning up law enforcement. Americans  prefer to rely instead on short-term chest pounding and tears that eventually bores the press and makes politicians fidget.

Sometimes the Truth Really Hurts. And no bandage can cover the pain.

Revisiting the Deen Issue

Truth be told, The Angry White Mom has to admit that I bit down a little hard on the Paula Deen thing,
before I had all the facts, and before I had considered much of the evidence not tainted  by social hysteria.
So I am stepping back a bit from my earlier conclusions, and would like to take another chew if  you don't mind. Since the additional information released by the plaintiff in the civil lawsuit pending against Deen and her brother, I have realized that I need to explain further.  What I was trying to say actually mirrors closely
the statement the plaintiff released in that the case -- and the social issues it exposes -- is soooo much
more than Paula Deen's casual racism.  What I was trying to stress is that all of us are casual racists
simply because we are products of a racist culture.  That does not mean we should stand down on
racial equality, but it does mean that we need to focus our awareness more on the institutionalized racism that still exists in our country.  We need to dismiss and ignore the older, entrenched remnants of  a generation that has seen its demise and turn our hot glares in the direction of those still in power who seek to dismantle any progress bloodily gained since the Emancipation Proclamation. We need to tackle the bigger, harder issues with as much vigor as we do the petty Paula Deens. Do I need to list these things here?  Nah.  Because we all know we can find racist elements at the core of our voting policies, our law enforcement practices, educational opportunities, you get the drift.  As I said in an earlier post -- the Supreme Court's decision to gut the Voter Rights Act reflects the same attitude as a father who thinks his child is potty trained simply because he has not personally changed a diaper in a whilte.

If they bothered to open the tidy little package, they would find a real mess.

But I have to push back against some ultra-liberals with whom I usually find comraderie. Words are just words.  As a writer, I can easily trace the evolution of our modern American parlance that has seen the very  meaning of the words themselves change.  The word "gay" comes to mind. Back in my day, calling a woman a "bitch" was seriously insulting. Calling her a "cunt" was unheard of.  The word "faggot" used to mean a match, or a small burning stick used to light a pipe or stove before it became a derogatory term for homosexual men.  Now I hear my sons and their friends, none of whom are gay, call each other that as a matter of common everyday banter. South Park did an entire episode on this, by the way, that was absolutely hysterically funny. I could go on. "Paddy" was an insulting term to mean the Irish. Now it means
a police vehicle.  Go figure.  But count on this. American English is always changing, adapting, and
not recognizing this, and understanding that this fact is incidental to our culture, not driving it, seems rather anti-progressive to my perspective.

I certainly do not think I am a bigot.  You are free to disagree.  But I will put up my life's work in contradiction to that characterization. I am quite positive I have used racial and sexist epithets, and if I have offended anyone, I am sorry but I would hope you would tell me, -- and tell me exactly -- how  a word can  cause you personal pain. I used to repeatedly tell my young sons that old saw "sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never harm me." They had this down pretty much by third grade. What happened to the rest of  you?

The truth hurts. Now go put a bandage on it. I did.