I cannot believe the Zimmerman verdict. Except that I can.

[Blue_Roses]

14. I just don't get it.

I remember one of my African-American male friends talking about what it was like to walk down the street and see people start locking their car doors as you pass by. It was perhaps the first time in my life that I truly understood that there were basic things about this country that I, because I was white, did not understand. One of those things is how much fear is still mobilized against Black men. Another is that a Black man who has been beaten or--as the Amadu Diallo case later demonstrated--shot to death by the police generally does not, in this country, get justice, no matter how obvious or well-documented the evidence of police brutality might be.

Growing up in Louisiana during the 1960's, as a white child in an all-white neighborhood, I never had to worry about being profiled for my skin, nor did I even think about it. And I have to say, as much as it may not make sense, I feel guilty about that.

While my parents were not overtly racist, they just didn't talk about the plight of the black man, nor his struggles to be treated with the same fairness and respect with which we were treated.

But, in one night that all changed. While watching a little known movie, called "Roots," by Alex Haley.(little known after it was shown is an understatement!) It opened my eyes to things they were not teaching in our history classes at that time. It opened my eyes to things that were not talked about. But, most of all, it opened my eyes to something that just was not right and needed to be fixed.

Albert Einstein said:
"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."


and

Martin Luther King Jr. said:

"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it..."


My heart is breaking for the Martin family tonight. For the sake of Trayvon and many more countless lives shuffled to the wayside due to hate, we have got to do better than this.