Over on my partner’s blog, Indianaohindiana.com I had written a response to his post about the results of the George Zimmerman trial. We disagree, and I think the root cause of that disagreement is the wide gap in our understanding of American culture. I was raised in the deep south, and although my mother’s father was from Wisconsin, my dad, and my mom’s maternal side of the family was all very southern.
South Florida, in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s was the next best thing to Alabama or Mississippi. Right down to the signs “colored only” above certain water fountains in town, and the fact that all the black people in our little town lived over the railroad tracks behind the Royal’s department store.
What isn’t seen in his blog is the email discussion that involved another of his friends who lives in Washington D.C., who has yet another perspective on the story – with which I also heartily disagree. It seems she feels sympathy for Mr. Zimmerman because it is her experience, in her neighborhood, that all young black men are simply up to no good.
I tried to express to my northern born and bred partner that he is simply incapable of understanding that in many parts of the deep south, even today, people of color are treated differently, are thought of as inferior, although in public it may not be so obvious to an outsider.
I fear that recent Supreme Court decisions with regard to voting rights are simply going to allow parts of the South to slide back a few decades and undo much of the gains that were hard won in the early 1960’s.
In any case, this is all water under the bridge for the most part. You can’t change court verdicts, you can’t convince a frightened white woman in a mostly black city that being black doesn’t cause a person to be a criminal by nature, and you can’t change a culture that simply doesn’t want to change.
Yet, a video I saw brings it all home. If I were the parent of a young black man, I’d be scared to death every time the phone rang or I heard a siren. Young black men should not be made to feel this way. Parents of young black men should not live in fear, and it’s frustrating to know that there is damn little I can do about any of it except to vent about it in writing.