Some thoughts on Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman.

[yardwork]

3. The white kid in the black neighborhood is more likely to get hassled by the (white) police.

It's happened to me. Driving white in a black neighborhood, pulled over by white cops who were astounded to learn that I actually knew people in the neighborhood and had a reason to be there other than to buy drugs, which was what they thought.

The second time this happened to me the police officer had a particularly lame excuse - "you went through a red light when you made that left turn on a green back there." No duh. When you turn left on a green light you kind of have to go under the red light as you leave the intersection. After keeping me on the side of the road for 15 minutes while he was on the phone and his computer (clearly trying to find something, anything, to detain me) he mumbled something about "not sure about that red light thing and let me go with a stern warning to, um, something.

It was just a tiny taste of what it must be like to be black in the southern U.S.