Now that I am back it is time that we talk about a few things in the news. Since I have so much to say I have to make this evening's blog a two-parter. Sanford, Florida is our country's newest hot spot, all because of the senseless death of a young teenage boy.
My sympathy to the Martin family on their loss. It is a tragedy to lose a young man with so much of life still in front of him.
There are a few names that stick in my head when I heard the news. Emmett Till, Yusef Hawkins, Gavin Cato and now Trayvon Martin. These are the names not of martyrs but of victims of senseless deaths and the justice that was and is still an uphill climb. Forever the names of these young men will be another stone on the wall of racism that still exists in America.
On a Tuesday night in November 2008 this country took a step forward, and in the excitement of it all I heard what I referred to as "crazy talk". People were talking and acting as if racism had ended in that instant when we elected Barack Obama as President.
It was insane not to say it, but to believe it. If you don't agree with me it was made more evident when the Tea Party movement began. It was an immediate response to the new President. First protesting his legitimacy of his birth and the caricatures of his portrait depicting that of a monkey. If we truly had healed from racism we would debate and protest without the need to degrade one's heritage.
There was a movie that had one line, perhaps the only decent line Matthew McConaughey has ever given, and it was when his character was defending his client in a TIME TO KILL. After describing the heinous act committed to his client's child he asked the jury this; "Now imagine if that little girl was white".
I will never know what it is to be a Black man in America, but I can tell you as a Black woman who has been married to both a White man at one time and now a Black man, I see the differences. The difference in how women on an elevator will react, people on the street may behave at times and how I as their partner am viewed through the eyes of some of society.
We need to move on, it is not just a question of Florida's Law of Stand Your Ground, it had been established in the 9-1-1 call there was no stand when the police told George Zimmerman to sit still and he chased. It was a case of profiling done by one man of a young man with a bag of Skittles and an Arizona Ice Tea wearing a hooded sweatshirt. Time maybe for us to STAND OUR GROUND against racism and profiling. In support of the Martin family I am cancelling my vacation to Disney World and will NOT give the state of Florida my dollars in their tourism pockets until something is done to give Trayvon Martin JUSTICE.
Of course I will leave you with a quote;
"Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away, and that in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty"~Martin Luther King, Jr.
and one more
"There is no Black race or White race, there is only one, the HUMAN RACE and when the rest of the world realizes that, we will live in a better place."~C.C. Benjamin
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