Dear B-37,
Sorry to start off on such a harsh note, but you’re everything that is wrong with America right now. Does that shock you? I’m sure it does. Don’t worry, you can fix it.
Let me explain where I’m coming from.
I’m white and from the South, and I feel safe saying I am familiar with your line of thinking. I’ve been hearing it all of my life. You see, I grew up in the polite South— not too Dixie, not too redneck, and allegedly not too racist. Everyone knew to give lip service to equality at the bare minimum and I’m sure most people in town — except for the most entrenched rednecks, natch —thought of themselves as non-racists.
Like how you think of yourself, I assume.
The rub was that, growing up where I did I was actually often an outsider, despite the fact that I have white skin. My parents were immigrants, had heavy accents, and were told more than once to “go home” by people who felt they were more American than my parents were. Maybe that’s how I learned to pay attention to the subtle and not-so-subtle injustices in our culture.
So tell me: How have you lived in America for the last 40-odd years and never learned to hear or see these things?
For one, how is it that you have lived in America all these years and still see your neighbors and your neighbors’ children as something other than you and yours? You spoke of Trayvon and Rachel Jeantel as if they were aliens: “the type of life that they live”… “the environment that they’re living in.”
Where are they from exactly?
I was under the impression that Trayvon and Rachel were Floridians just like you and yours, kids who listen to same music and watch the same crap reality tv and eat the same food and have the same President as your kids. In fact, I would expect you to relate to them before you might even relate to my own, foreign family. Do you not hear yourself stripping them of a shared identity with you? And what is the nature of this “environment” Trayvon and Rachel live in exactly? What I hear you intimating is that it’s one informed by… hate, resentment, ignorance?
What’s your “environment” defined by? Obliviousness to the outside world? No self-reflection? Or is it defined by no empathy? I don't want that to be the case, but I fear it might be so.
You see, what you’ve made clear over the last few days is that Trayvon, that “boy of color” as you put it, was not someone’s child. You’ve made clear that the defense’s attempts to paint him as a thug and a threat were moot… because you were already there, weren’t you? Did you see a bunch of Trayvons in your mind’s eye during your voir dire when you mentioned the “riots” that took place in your town after his murder? Did you see a bunch of young men that were threats, and coming for you and yours?
Do you now know that there weren’t actually any “riots”?
You cited what you perceived as Rachel Jeantel’s faulty “education and communication skills”… where are your communication skills? Are you familiar with the weight of “of color”? Or the weight of “they” or “riots”? Is any of this ringing true? Do you have any idea what I’m talking about?
When I said at the beginning that you were everything that’s wrong with America, it was because of these things. You think you’re polite, but you’re not. You think you’re rational, but you’re informed by fear. You think you’re educated, but you’re shut off from vital, shared experiences and truths in your culture.
You think you’re open-minded, but you're a racist.
My momentary instinct here is to actually apologize to you for calling you that. We're all so tired of all of this, aren't we? But I can't, and won't. And I'm done being polite. In the end, I'm more tired than anything of people who aren't paying attention. I'm tired of people pretending this isn't a problem. I'm tired of hearing about kids walking down the street and being painted as villains for no rational reason whatsoever. You thought Trayvon was "suspicious" because he was looking over his shoulder at the person who was following him?
Really? Do you hear that? Tell me you do.
It’s so deep in us, we don’t even realize it’s there. Guess what? Those things might have come out of my mouth at one point, too, and may still. The difference is I admit it's happening and try to remain aware.
How have you lived in this country all these years and not learned these things? How have you not learned to speak “American”?
Because you didn’t have to, did you.
Maybe now you should. You've had a shock coming back out here into the wide, wide world and seeing how incensed everyone is. Maybe now is the time for you to think on who you are, where you come from, and just how you perceive your neighbors and community. There's time to fix this thing, I promise.
Let me know what you come up with.
-eh