(ThyBlackMan.com) Trayvon Martin will forever remain seventeen and George Zimmerman will remain a free man. The blunt impact of these emotionally-charged finalities on the American soul has elicited discordant sighs of both grief and relief—dependent upon the one doing the sighing.
A well-known proverb among prize fighters is, “every fighter has a game plan until they get hit in the face.” In our nation’s nearly fifty year struggle for racial harmony, we had a game plan. The plan was “a colorblind society.” Then the face of our nation was unceremoniously hit by Martin’s premature death and Zimmerman’s controversial trial. Our game plan was derailed. Suddenly we see color! Or perhaps many of us saw color all along and this woeful affair shocked us into a state of unpleasant introspection and brutal honesty.
Who would’ve ever thought that a self-appointed neighborhood watchman
pointing a flashlight at a Skittle-toting teenage pedestrian would ultimately shine an ugly and annoying light on the festering reality of racial tension in America? The reactionary tribalism that developed in the wake of that night’s fatal altercation has forced all of us to temper our feel-good “we’ve come so far statements” with a sober-minded “we have quite a ways to go” realization. It seems that the miles traveled between 1964 and 2013 on America’s racial harmony odometer were either misread or overstated.
The nuance of a Hispanic man killing a young black male was replaced by the perceived narrative of a white man killing a black man. The notion that “perception is reality” rivals the law of gravity in terms of stubbornness. The moment that altercation between Martin and Zimmerman became colorized was the moment their situation became pressurized by the lingering and latent force of America’s not-so-distant racist past.
Our country is a nation of people and a nation of laws. And alas, the intersection of humanity and legality in America has indeed proven to be prone to collision. As the Zimmerman Case heated to a boiling point, it was disillusioning to see our nation splinter like opposing medieval cavalries fleeing to their respective trenches of “due justice for Trayvon’s death” on the one hand, and of “due process of law for George’s acquittal” on the other.
Furthermore, skin color suddenly became the jerseys as many members of the dueling teams proportionately (and predictably) broke down along the lines of black and white hue. And on top of that there was the political ideological warfare too. The Left blamed the legal system. The Right blamed the media.
Arguments have been impassioned on both sides. But it’s impossible to declare a winner in a blame game resulting from the tragic loss of a young life. Only the balm of time will soothe our nation’s soul. But as healing as time may be, that prescription will not suffice to soothe the souls of Martin’s loving parents. Their prescription can only be our heartfelt prayers.
As socially microcosmic as this episode has become, the reality is that none of us could have controlled the decisions made by two men on a sidewalk that fateful night in Florida. But even so, we exercise control over the decisions we make on the sidewalks we travel every day and every night. If we emerge from this sad chapter less willing to demonize and quarrel and more inclined to communicate and love, we will at least have wrested a morsel of positivity from the jaws of this senseless tragedy.
Staff Writer; Marvin D. Rogers
Also connect with this brother via Twitter; M. Drogers.