Why is America still so ignorant about racism? Read this quote from a neighbor of George Zimmerman. [View all]

[ProfessionalLeftist]

A tweet (twitlonger) I'd like to share with you:

Why is America still so ignorant about racism? Read this quote from a neighbor of George Zimmerman.

"I'm tired of hearing about this race thing," George Hall said. "It could be an element in it ... but I never would have thought of him as being a racist. His father was in the Army and was a white American and his mother was Peruvian. That makes him 50 percent Peruvian. A lot of stuff I hear, it irks me because people are drawing their own conclusions with very little evidence."

I've heard very similar expressions from media pundits and Republican politicians. It's not about race, they say. How could it be about race if Zimmerman is half-Latino?

My response: Zimmerman's race is largely irrelevant; the bottom line is that he PROFILED Trayvon because he was black. If Trayvon was a white kid walking home from the store in the suburbs there is a 99% chance he wouldn't have perceived him as "suspicious." Guess how many white kids where hoodies? Just as many as black kids. This has nothing to do with hoodies; it has everything to do with racial profiling.

How else is this about race? If an African-American man shot an unarmed 17-year-old white kid, he would be arrested within an hour. Does anyone doubt this?

But here's the important part: the Trayvon Martin case doesn't arise out of a vacuum. Hundreds of thousands of black men are unjustly profiled, unjustly arrested, unjustly convicted, unjustly imprisoned every year. Pundits want to deflect this reality by shifting the conversation to "black-on-black" violence, but these are different issues. This is a red herring that allows white America to push away its guilt and pretend that we live in a post-racist society. We don't.

The Trayvon Martin case is first and foremost about justice for a young man who was gunned down for no reason. He didn't deserve to die and the least that can be done for his grieving family is to arrest the man who killed him.

Secondarily, it should facilitate what President Obama called for: an honest, serious reflection on the context, the broader picture in which this case is but one example.

This issue IS about race. That may be uncomfortable to some, but it's better to be uncomfortable than dead.

LINK:
http://www.twitlonger.com/show/gmctd2