Time for a pause.....

I think I need to step away from the television for a bit and just sink a bit deeper into my writing. I say this in deference to the verdict in the Trayvon Martin case. Hearing the news of George Zimmerman’s acquittal late Saturday night, I was a powder keg of emotion and emotion as we all know, tends to cloud one’s judgment. I was going to post something Saturday night but I resisted my originally impulse because I didn’t want to sound like every other raw nerved amateur DA who wanted George Zimmerman’s head on a collective stick. Having cleared my head for a day or two, I think I can see this particular case without the tunnel vision that I seemed to be suffering from when news of the not guilty verdict rang through the internet and all other forms of social media. This case is a tragedy, plain and simple. A young life was lost and somewhere, however vindicated he may feel, George Zimmerman will be haunted, on some levels, by the life he took. I say that not as a member of some lynching mob posse but as someone trying desperately to see through the clouds. Someone said that the Trayvon Martin tragedy should be looked upon with extra scrutiny so that it doesn’t ever happen again. I hate to be the bearing of pessimistic tidings, but it will probably happen again. It will happen again because we are a fractured nation. If we couldn’t admit it then, we can certainly admit it now. You see it everyday when families have to bury their children because they took a bullet in some senseless turf battle on the other side of the city. You see it every day when corporately funded charter schools pop up in white areas and kids on the south and west sides have to walk through gang territory to get some semblance of an education. You call it pandering, I call it truth. We are a fractured nation, a divided nation. The word equality is often tossed around, but what does equality mean? It’s a buzzword for the media, it’s a classic maguffin. To quote a line from David Mamet’s “The Spanish Prisoner” “I know what I’m looking at, even though I don’t think I know what it is. But I think I’ll know it when I see it.” Race relations in America are the ultimate David Mamet maguffin. Race relations are the “process” that young Joe (Campbell Scott) carries around with him. He knows not what power he carries or what the power represents, but he’s under the illusion that whatever he’s holding will give him all the answers to whatever he thinks he’s seeking. I guess what I’m saying is, the races are not going to sit around the camp fire and hold hands and sing kum ba yah like some hippie utopia. I think the best we can do is try to embrace our differences and find a common ground somewhere in the middle. In the end, I hope that we as a people can learn to heal in the wake of Trayvon Martins’ death. If anything good can come out of his life being lost, maybe it’s a round of self examination on all sides. Let’s all put down the torches. Let’s all stop throwing mud at Trayvon for what past he may have had. Let’s stop making leaps to paint George Zimmerman as some Bronson like outlaw with an urge to kill outside of his own race. People, let’s just a breath. People, let’s just take a pause.