By Rabbi Ben Kamin
SAN DIEGO — As George Zimmerman disappears now into the legal wilderness of white complicity and police reticence, and good people in Tulsa lay down their dead into the crypt of black marginality, this white man wonders how frightful it must still be to a black male in America.
Friends of mine, from Memphis to Cleveland to San Diego, parents of not only adult men but teenagers as well, have fretted about the vulnerability and helplessness they feel regarding the safety of their children or grandchildren. The revealing travesty of Trayvon Martin has not been resolved lawfully. But it is more than resolved in the minds and hearts of African American families that know better, that have bled through a 400-year legacy of American racism, and that have no illusions that the election of the first black president has hardly neutralized the inherent prejudice—and violence—of traditional American supremacists.
In fact, the historic ascent of Barack Obama into the White House may have exacerbated the twisted moral biases of those who were never going to transfer their own social insecurities into a new level of cultural awareness. Ask the parents and relatives of Bobby Clark in West Tulsa: did he and two other young black men have to suddenly be blown away on Good Friday by a crazed white derelict just because that man had lost his father “at the hands of a f–king n—-r” some time ago in a totally unrelated incident? [Let’s credit Facebook, our new community forum, for the description posted by the shooter.]
Bobby Clark was a promising young citizen, a descendant of West Tulsa generations terribly familiar with wanton invasions and beatings and murders at the hands of white thugs and losers. Nobody who isn’t black can possibly even imagine what it feels like to have black skin in a civilization still given to socio-economic apartheid, still bailing out bankers while marginalizing school kids, still allowing black men to be fair game while we invoke politically correct platitudes.
It’s hard not to consider the wisdom of Sanford, Fla. police chief, Bill Lee, who suggested that if Trayvon Martin,17, “had done things differently,” he’d still be living. Kudos also to Geraldo Rivera of FOX News: this pundit declared if Trayvon hadn’t been wearing a hoodie, Zimmerman wouldn’t have followed him. Are these people kidding? Or they just racist?
George Zimmerman may have gone into hiding (and his attorneys have quit on him), but Trayvon Martin cannot be hidden from the national conscience. And we must not quit on Trayvon, and Bobby, and every single black boy and man in this deeply troubled land that can’t unravel its conflicted soul. This new wave of Klan-style, random, “Stand Your Ground” kind of vigilantism is not only dangerous for African Americans. Not a single one of us is safe until every mother of every color can lay down her head at night and sleep peacefully.
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Rabbi Kamin is a freelance writer based in SAn Diego. He may be contacted at ben.kamin@sdjewishworld.com