Fear of the Other

President Obama startled the unsuspecting White House press corps, and much of the country, with his unscripted remarks about race on Friday. Following the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Florida, the President may have been feeling the pressure from the civil rights community to say something, and he delivered. But he made it clear that it really wasn’t about the verdict in the case. It was about profiling, saying that Trayvon Martin could easily have been he 35 years earlier.

That tragic incident in Florida was not about the state’s Stand Your Ground law. It was about much broader and deeper issues, starting with America’s love affair with guns, but even that’s too narrow a focus. It’s about the primal human fear of The Other.

I heard an NPR commentator – a white woman – say this morning that while she prided herself on her progressive views and her support of racial equality, the city she lives in, Washington D.C., is predominantly African-American, and that she was surprised to discover some lingering racial attitudes in her own heart.

As most of us know, prejudice is pre-judging – coming to a conclusion before all the facts are in. We do this all the time, about many things besides race, perhaps most often to ourselves. We say things like, “I’m no good at math,” and we do everything we can to avoid working with numbers, perhaps because of bad experiences with them in school. But then the day comes when our accountant is vacationing in Maui, and we have financial decisions to make on a deadline. We have to sit down at the kitchen table and figure it out. And we discover we’re not as bad at math as we thought. Numbers don’t scare us anymore, because we had no choice but to work with them.

What exactly does the expression, “Some of my best friends are Jews” mean, as an example? It doesn’t mean, “I like you in spite of the fact that you’re a Jew.” It means, “You’re my friend first, and your Jewishness is secondary” – or perhaps not an issue at all. What happens when people of different races fall in love and get married -- once a crime in many states? It means they love each other as complete human beings. It's why Mr. Obama is on this planet.

As an aside, I’ve often said that the quickest way to learn a foreign language is to fall in love with someone who doesn’t speak yours. Trust me, it leaves Rosetta Stone in the dust.

The trouble with prejudice is that there’s security in it. Everything and everybody are in their assigned places, fulfilling the roles expected of them. It’s all “sorted,” as the British like to say, so we don’t have to think about it. It goes even beyond the fear of The Other. It’s the fear of Chaos.

Some of us have a deeply ingrained resistance to having our world rocked. But the days of that kind of stability are over. Our world is being rocked almost daily now, and our preconceived notions are falling like dominoes in all kinds of fields. Perhaps that’s a good thing. Is the time coming when we will actually welcome such changes instead of fighting them?  And celebrate differences instead of fearing them?

I should live so long.

Hoodie Hysteria

So now a member of Congress was asked to leave the chamber for wearing a hoodie. At what point do we get to say ENOUGH already?

The Trayvon Martin case has brought some serious issues to light that we all need to discuss, but geez Louise, can’t we inject a little reason back into all this? I don’t care how many people walk around with hoodies; I don’t care what Geraldo said and has since apologized for. I only wish I had bought stock in companies that make hoodies.

I’m also tired of hearing about million-dollar bounties for the arrest of George Zimmerman, who shot Trayvon. And Anderson, I hope you’re finished playing that altered tape that has Zimmerman uttering a racial slur. All it takes is someone in real authority to agree with you, not all your various attorneys and ex-prosecutor-turned-pundits. Otherwise, it’s all speculation.

Of course, it’s going to take a thorough investigation to sort things out. Now we have witnesses who say that Trayvon attacked Zimmerman, not the other way around. We have reports that Zimmerman was a fine upstanding human being and that Trayvon was not a perfect teenager. Then there’s the part about the Sanford police wanting to arrest Zimmerman, but higher authorities turning them down.

Is this really about hoodies, or race? Or is it about Florida’s stand-your-ground law? Or is it about the proliferation of handguns and the vetting required for neighborhood watchers who may want to be cops? Is it about a flawed legal system? Or Is it about social media, and our seemingly desperate need to come up with nightly heroes and villains for the 24-hour news cycle?

I thought I knew, but I don’t know anymore. I’m beginning to wish everyone would just shut up until the investigation is completed. And even then, it’s going to be about who believes whom.

Do you blame me if I feel like spending more time on Turner Classic Movies than CNN et al?

Rabid Neighborhood Watchdogs

I don’t dispute the idea that Neighborhood Watch programs can be effective in preventing crime, as long as the watch-ers don’t have wannabe cop delusions.

We live in a nice neighborhood in a suburban area. A couple of years ago, I needed some exercise but didn’t want to stray too far from the house, so I started walking around the block (a fairly large one with some steep climbs). On about my third lap, a red sports car pulls up and a young man asked me if I lived in the area. His tone clearly had more than just curiosity – he wanted to know what business I had there. It seemed he had appointed himself a guardian of the neighborhood.

Of course, I had never seen him before either, and took a little umbrage at being confronted in my own neighborhood by a stranger, so I informed him that yes, I lived there, and so what was his name and where did he live? Fortunately, this encounter ended peacefully, but I could easily see how it might have escalated. I don’t think our town issues concealed-weapons permits, so neither of us was “packing.”

Suppose a police officer had pulled up in a marked car and asked me the same questions? While such encounters aren’t usually enjoyable, I would have answered them. It’s the officer’s job to do that, and I would have had no problem complying.

The cops in our town are pretty good about responding to “suspicious person” calls. There probably aren’t a lot of those, even though scores of people pass by daily, jogging, walking dogs, etc., including people of different colors. There are obviously times when we’re in a heightened state of alertness, say, if the police warn about a rash of burglaries in the area – but those instances are also relatively rare.

I don’t know why the case of Trayvon Martin should be legal brain surgery. The reputed Sanford neighborhood watch captain in this case, George Zimmerman, called the police and said he was following a suspicious person, and law enforcement told him specifically NOT TO DO IT. Is disobeying a directive from a police agency against the law? You would think so. He certainly is liable for every action beyond that point.

If folks want to be cops, what they should do is apply, go through the training, graduate from the academy, and get hired. If folks want to be neighborhood watchdogs, they should clearly understand their role (usually, they get training from police) and keep it in mind when confronting other civilians on the street.