This week, we have heard endless blatheration on what Trayvon Martin should have done, whether Zimmerman was legally culpable, whether he was morally culpable. I’ve been told by people who know the law that the case couldn’t have turned out any other way.
I can’t stop thinking about this case – as is true of so many of us. Not because I’m shocked by the outcome. Quite the contrary. But because I’m shocked by the reactions of people I know to the outcome. Not everyone, of course. but the litany of excuses from people whom I otherwise like or respect, I just find it amazing to hear them.
I’ve read up on the law, on the case. I’ve seen a recent study about Stand Your Ground laws and how they increase racism in the courtroom. I’ve read the responses from black men, who fear for themselves, or their children, or who merely speak with resignation. I’ve heard from friends whose children are black boys, who are worried about the risks they take whenever they walk out the door.
Over the last year, I’ve tried to be more open in my opinions; to listen more carefully and more openly to those who disagree with me about things I consider fundamentally important. It is difficult, sometimes, but I find myself able to do it. But this is different. I simply cannot hear one more person saying that Martin was a thug, or that he should have done something different: what could he have done?
I have written my pieces on Judaism and gun control. I’ve nothing to add. I realize this blog is supposed to be a repository of Jewish text or wisdom, but I’ve nothing to add here either. Today, I am only thinking of the children of color whom I have worked with in Barry Farms who, with their families, did the best they could with the almost nothing that they had, and whose chances of getting out are low, and further stymied by the recent upending of affirmative action programs in colleges, and the uprooting of voter rights protections, and who if they do get out, may simply face a violent death because someone is afraid of their skin, knowing nothing about them, and then, if they are gunned down, will be put on trial for their own murder.
We have just passed through Tisha B’Av, in which we mourn the destruction of the Temples, twice. First for idolatry, and again for sinat chinam, baseless hatred. This smacks of both. Our societal idolatry of the individual, the individual’s right to do whatever makes them feel good, even if in the aggregate, the lives of many others are damaged or destroyed; the hatred of those – sometimes even without our noticing- who frighten us, because of their skin color, or origin, or religion.
I excuse myself from none of this, because I live in this society, and I benefit from its institutionalized racisms and privileges and because I haven’t done enough to change it.
In my exile from the just and the true and the good, I sit and I weep. Perhaps at least I know I am in exile. Perhaps that is at least a start. That’s it; I have no other words for you.
