WHEN WE CALL OUT THE RACISTS THEY SAY WE ARE RACIST.

George Zimmerman is in cus­tody. Not because law enforce­ment in Sanford Florida thought that his killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin war­rant­ed an arrest. He is in cus­tody because of the right­eous indig­na­tion of mil­lions of peo­ple who decid­ed we are not going to take being ignored anymore.

Through the trou­bles and tra­vails of the civ­il rights strug­gle , broth­ers and sis­ters, black and white, jews and gen­tiles, yel­low and brown man has marched with us , in our quest for respect and recog­ni­tion. So too today peo­ple of all col­or came togeth­er to say this is unac­cept­able , we want answers why Trayvon Martin was killed and just ignored..

Decent peo­ple were out­raged when a hum­ble seam­stress was arrest­ed on a bus just because she chose to sit down. Decent peo­ple were out­raged about Trayvon today as they did back then. This came to light because a young white man knew about the case and felt out­rage, not because Trayvon was black and he is white but because a human being was killed under ques­tion­able cir­cum­stances and no one was being held accountable.

This was nev­er about black and white, it still isn’t, it’s about wrong and right, . Blacks and whites , Latinos and Asians , Jews and oth­ers marched , blogged , signed peti­tions and did what they could, and as Sabrina and Tracey said all they want­ed was an arrest. An arrest that would see the sys­tem play out, they want­ed their day in court.

The par­ents of Trayvon Martin nev­er sought vengeance, they nev­er sought a lynch­ing , all they asked for is that the fun­da­men­tal decen­cy afford­ed oth­ers be afford­ed their mur­dered son. That is not racism, that is not racial hatred that is called justice.

I don’t know whether George Zimmerman is a racist or not , see­ing him in court today , I could­n’t help feel­ing sym­pa­thy for him. Trayvon Martin is gone nev­er to return , but here is this young man going through life chang­ing , life alter­ing cir­cum­stances that will leave him scarred for life, what­ev­er that life has in store for him.

Yet one can­not ignore the lan­guage of sup­port­ers of George Zimmerman, the lan­guage and the strat­e­gy they chose has left a bit­ter taste in the mouths of well-mean­ing peo­ple the world over. The Race bait­ing, hate mon­gers at FOX mis­in­for­ma­tion nev­er grasped the con­cept that despite all of the noise, what real­ly hap­pened is that some­one died.

How much hate do these peo­ple have for African-Americans that they would unan­i­mous­ly back some­one blind­ly even though we are the aggriev­ed par­ty. From that twirp Sean Hannity , to the bul­ly Bill O’reilly to the loud mouth wind­bag Rush Limbaugh these mis­cre­ants jumped on the case blast­ing every­one from the pres­i­dent of the United States to the vic­tim with­out the com­mon human decen­cy to show empa­thy to the fam­i­ly of the deceased.

What kind of hate pos­sess­es these freaks of nature that they would devote their time in defense of some­one who chased down and mur­dered some­one in cold blood? As we strug­gle with try­ing to under­stand with­out pars­ing and ratio­nal­iz­ing , bot­tom feed­ing crus­taceans like Hannity , Limbaugh, O’Reilly and the oth­er gifts to human­i­ty at FOX make a racial spec­ta­cle out of this tragedy.

Bill O’reilly and Sean Hannity

Polls con­duced after this tragedy became pub­lic revealed a wide chasm between the way blacks and whites viewed what hap­pened , over­whelm­ing­ly African-Americans thought that Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin with­out jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, con­verse­ly white Americans over­whelm­ing­ly stat­ed that they did not know enough to form an opin­ion. To some this may seem like a rea­soned and sober way to look at things , but when you are a part of the pop­u­la­tion that has been the vic­tim for cen­turies you don’t need any­more infor­ma­tion to con­clude that once again wrong has been done to us.

Like Ostriches many chose to bury their heads in the sand pre­tend­ing that there is no prob­lem of race in America. Some even ask “what more could you want we gave you your black pres­i­dent”? What nerve? Even some that share the same skin col­or as Trayvon, yet pur­port to share the same human­i­ty with the rest of us fail to get the pic­ture. One New England law pro­fes­sor assailed Reverend Sharpton and Jackson for the work they did bring­ing Trayvon’s case to the fore.

She cas­ti­gat­ed both gen­tle­men for dar­ing to sug­gest that oth­er black peo­ple wear hood­ies, argu­ing that the hood­ie feeds the stereo­type of black men as hood­lums. She went on to say that she lives in a pre­dom­i­nant­ly white neigh­bour­hood and her two sons have been tar­get­ed and trailed by the police who want­ed to know what they were doing in the neigh­bor­hood. The pro­fes­sor told how she raised her sons not to dress or act in cer­tain ways that would feed the stereo­type oth­ers have of them.

Bob Marley famous­ly said he was glad he was not edu­cat­ed or he would have been a total idiot. This pro­fes­sor is the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of that quote from Marley. On that sub­ject I rest my case. My wife believes that slav­ery has done such a ter­ri­ble job on us , to the point that we believe we have to com­port our­selves in a man­ner con­sis­tent with the fear dri­ven norms oth­ers have imposed on us.

Irrespective of the out­come of this case Trayvon Martin will nev­er return to his par­ents, nei­ther will George Zimmerman be the same again. George Zimmerman a 28-year-old guy who seem to hate crime, so much so he want­ed to be a cop, when that did not work out he opt­ed to be a self-appoint­ed neigh­bor­hood watch cap­tain. He chose to pro­file and appre­hend Trayvon Martin even though he was warned to back off. We are left to won­der what drove this young man who hat­ed crime and want­ed to be a cop, to him­self run afoul of the laws when he com­mit­ted a case of domes­tic vio­lence, what caused him to com­mit two sep­a­rate cas­es of assault on police offi­cers , one with violence?

Are we to beleive that because he was not made to account in these cas­es we know about that he felt above the laws? Did he feel untouch­able because he was the son of a for­mer judge ? We don’t know the answers to these ques­tions, what­ev­er the truths. George Zimmerman felt enti­tled , he felt autho­rised, some­one made him feel that way.

What drove him to ignore the 911 oper­a­tor who told him we don’t need you to fol­low him?These are the ques­tions we must ask our­selves if we are to begin to under­stand what hap­pened that night which destroyed two lives one way or the oth­er and caused rip­ple effects through this coun­try and the world the likes of which we haven’t seen in a long time.

The reac­tion of mis­ter Zimmerman’s peo­ple was dis­re­spect­ful and wor­thy of a hard push­back. Sending a let­ter to the NAACP telling them that if any­thing hap­pened to Zimmerman blood would be on their hands and demand­ing they call off the dogs. The caus­tic nature of this let­ter as well as state­ments made by his father and broth­er does noth­ing to help heal the wounds of the Martin fam­i­ly, or the sim­mer­ing caul­dron of racial ani­mus bub­bling just beneath the sur­face in the country.