Some thoughts on Trayvon Martin

I’ve been trying to figure out what to write about the Trayvon Martin situation ever since the Zimmerman verdict. I haven’t written much because it’s so utterly terrible that words, at least MY words, could never do it justice. My pain is most definitely palpable. My anger is righteous. Neither of those translate into a vocabulary to adequately explain how I, and just about all people who look like me, viscerally feel. This is not academic for us. People of color in the U.S. frequently feel what the government would call a “credible threat.” I’m about to be responsible for an online women’s mag that has ethnic/racial, orientational and ability diversity at its heart. At the same time, I know, even as a black WOMAN, that I damn well better make sure my hands are where a cop who stops me for any or no reason can see them and tell that cop everything I’m about to do when I reach for my wallet and driver’s license if I don’t want to end up injured or dead. Ironically, I’ve got a slew of cops–both active and retired–in my family.

Trayvon Martin. Killed at 17 years old.

There is an article on the Counterpunch website that comes closer to my feelings than anything else I’ve read. The only other person who’s been so spot on for me is President Obama when he said that Trayvon could have been him 35 years ago. He’s right. Any cop in Hawaii could have shot and killed him for virtually no reason at all and gotten away with it then and now.

I’m going to be brutally honest about something and it’s going to piss off my white friends. Non-white people are sick and tired of having to explain ourselves and our cultures to you. We learn who whites are and what it means to be white from the time we pop out of our mothers’ wombs. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t survive. For thousands and thousands of us, the lessons weren’t enough. There are too many black, brown and red males who have ended up in cemeteries or hospitals beaten within an inch of their lives. Certainly, there are far, far too many in prison after being convicted by juries terrified by the demonization of the accused by prosecutors who validated the fear many whites had already. Even though we are weary, we have no choice but to keep explaining because maybe one person will figure out that killing some kid coming back from the local convenience store because he wore clothing the white person did not approve of and whose skin was the “wrong” color IS NOT THE RIGHT THING TO DO! Damn! Is that lesson so freakin’ hard?! It would seem so because Trayvon isn’t the only black person killed or maimed within an inch of their lives by blue (aka police officers) and white people with guns, ropes, dogs, horses, batons and cars. (Sorry, but Zimmerman’s I.D. as Latino is a convenience in my opinion so that the jury saw him as another minority and, thereby, discounted the racial aspects of the case.) It happens in this country far, far more than most people know, but ask a criminal defense attorney and you’ll get a very different picture, Zimmerman attorney Mark O’Mara’s idiocy notwithstanding.

As I said, non-white people get tired as hell of explaining ourselves. Yet, this is what has to happen until the light bulb goes on in the collective white consciousness, assuming there is such a thing, and they discover what we’ve known for nearly 400 years now: there is a race problem in this country that has never been honestly addressed. I am amazed that whites are amazed that non-whites and in some parts of the country, Asians, have to walk a fine line between teaching our children how to be strong and teaching them to damn near say, “Yessa, Massa” and “Nossa, Massa” when confronted by people who are supposed to protect us, too. Why did white people not know this? How could white people not know this? It makes me Want. To. Fucking. Screeeeeeeeeam!!

Another thing that President Obama said in his surprise appearance in the White House press room eight days ago is that our society is evolving into a “more perfect union.” His daughters, 15-year-old Malia and 12-year-old Sasha, have no understanding of the bigotry in generations before. They have friends with same-sex parents and who are part of the wonderful patchwork quilt of races and ethnicities that make this country wonderful when seen from afar. On one hand, I am so very glad they have no personal basis for understanding. On the other hand, not having that personal basis means that, were they not part of the president’s family, they would likely face serious racism at some point in their lives. I wonder if they know about the enormous spike in death threats against the First Family which, by the way, includes them. Why? Because there is a lot of racial hatred here in this supposed “land of the free” and “home of the brave.”

According to an ABC News report that appears on their Chicago affiliate’s website, there were over 40,000 threats against the president and those around him between 2008 and the beginning of 2012. I cannot find the original sources for this number as many of the links from the Daily Kos article are suspiciously non-functional, particularly those to Talking Points Memo. However, a 2009 article that appeared in The Telegraph, a British newspaper, states:

Since Mr Obama took office, the rate of threats against the president has increased 400 per cent from the 3,000 a year or so under President George W. Bush, according to Ronald Kessler, author of In the President’s Secret Service.

Some threats to Mr Obama, whose Secret Service codename is Renegade, have been publicised, including an alleged plot by white supremacists in Tennessee late last year to rob a gun store, shoot 88 black people, decapitate another 14 and then assassinate the first black president in American history.

The idea that we are in a “post racial” United States is a complete fallacy and always will be as long as there are people of any race/ethnicity unwilling to leave someone of another race/ethnicity to go about his or her business without having to worry that some bigot wants them dead for having been born the “wrong” color. Obama is half white, an inconvenient truth for many race-baiting Republicans, Tea Partiers, conspiracy theorists, birthers and members of various militia groups in this gun-crazed country. The rest of us have had to learn a whole new vocabulary to navigate the muddy waters of the Obama era. The one that just slays me every time I hear it uttered by some late middle-aged or elderly white woman is, “This isn’t the America I know.” Yeah, the America you knew would never have had a black man stride confidently into the White House, family, (including his mother-in-law), in tow and set up housekeeping for eight years. Sad.

If the president of the United States faces such racism, believe me, the rest of us are feeling it as well. Granted, we usually aren’t targeted by potential assassins, but we do have the George Zimmermans and Archie Bunker-wannabes to deal with. We have to be afraid that our sons, husbands, brothers and uncles will get stopped on a day when some cop thinks he’s driving the wrong car in the wrong neighborhood and “reasons” that the nigger must have stolen it, thereby making him primed to draw his weapon to face a perceived hostile car thief. If the driver protests his innocence, even if he can prove it, he risks serious injury or death simply because of the color of his skin and how much money he has in the bank. A rich, educated nigger gets under the skin of many a white male who can’t manage to hold down a job or makes less money at the job he has. All of my male relatives have been through scenarios not unlike the one I’ve described above, including the cops, the judge and the lawyers in the family. I cannot name a black man in my general age range who hasn’t been pulled over without probable cause. There is something supremely wrong with that fact.

As President Obama said, Trayvon could have been him 35 years or so ago. Trayvon could be a kid in my extended family. It would not matter one wit that his father, uncle, brother or grandfather was a cop–assuming he even got a chance to say so. Indeed, there’s no guarantee that the relative isn’t receiving harassment on the job as many black officers do in smaller departments, especially those in predominantly white suburbs. If they can’t count on their fellow police officers, why should any non-white person think s/he is immune from a cop having a bad day? If the president is threatened over 30 times a day, stretching the Secret Service beyond its limits, (something they deny, by the way), why should we expect justice for a 17-year-old kid going back to his father’s house in a gated community wearing a completely innocuous type of outerwear who was shot and killed by a vigilante who will not go to prison because a six-member, all female and mostly white jury decided that Zimmerman was reasonable in his belief that his life was in danger from the unarmed teen?

Trying to persuade another person to walk in your shoes for a while when they already have pre-conceived ideas is difficult at best. There have been times when I’ve simply thrown up my hands and said, “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t try to teach someone with no context at all how I feel.” It is at those times when I barricade myself in my house and/or my bedroom and cry. That’s the only thing I can do because I get so tired and so angry. However, in the end, I go through the same shit again, but maybe with a different person. Occasionally, I’ll make progress. It is for those times that I keep trying. Like Obama sees hope in his daughters, making even a small dent in the preconceived notions held by others about what it means to be black in America is a major victory in my eyes. I just wish more whites would take on the burden of learning and stop putting the burden on non-whites to teach them because, really, it isn’t our job. We do it, nevertheless, because there is no other viable choice. It is a tragedy that a boy died because no one taught his killer to have an open mind and open heart instead of a closed mind and a gun. This article would not have been written and a boy might have grown into a wonderful, proud young man and had a family of his own. Instead, he was taken from the world by someone not fit to shine his shoes. I pray that Trayvon Martin’s death will not have been in vain.

A message to (white, gay) men

A version of this post originally appeared July 2, 2013 on my Facebook page after the Supreme Court of the United States handed down the Prop 8 and so-called “Defense of Marriage Act” decisions in Hollingsworth, et al. v. Perry, et al. (Prop 8) and U.S. v. Windsor (the DOMA case) on June 26, 2013 and the same Court virtually stripped the teeth out of the Civil Rights Voting Act of 1965 in Shelby County v. Holder the day before. 

This summer has been lousy for people like me. That is to say, those who are black, queer* and female. In this country, that means I’m going to have more difficulty voting; I’ve got all kinds of strangers up in my uterus without my consent; if I did decide to carry a fetus to term and it’s a boy, I’d better be prepared to tell him that he has to kiss some cop’s ass even if that cop deserves no respect at all, BUT; I can marry anyone I love and who will have me as long as I do so in a foreign country or in one of the 13 states and the District of Columbia, (Minnesota and Rhode Island began offering same-sex marriages on August 1, 2013), where same-sex marriage is legal should my love happen to be another woman and, live in the two out of the remaining 36 states where there is no state DOMA. Two of three facets of my being is horrible, but it’s not catastrophic–yet. Still, this is bad business that calls for all hands on deck.

Yo, all you het AND homo AND bi AND trans men out there, especially those not in “ethnic” (read “racial”) minorities, your sisters need your help! Remember, if one of us is pregnant, it means one of YOU knocked us up. Women, especially queer women, have stood with you shoulder-to-shoulder time and again since 1969’s Stonewall riot and, before that, all through what is generally considered the “Civil Rights Era,” (as if we aren’t still in it) and any other time there was any unfairness in this country that effected men. It’s your turn to stand with us.

The female spirit is awesomely formidable, but we cannot do it alone. It’s your turn to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with us against invasion of the womb snatchers like Oho Governor John Kasich and his cronies around Ohio and the country. Who can forget Texas State Senator Wendy Davis’s heroic last-ditch filibuster in the state’s upper house against a putrid anti-choice bill? She made history and became a political rock star. Yes, the bill did finally pass. Nevertheless, I’m sure there are a few state legislators and potential Republican candidates for governor watching their backs thanks to the attention Davis brought to the anti-choice, anti-woman legislation and silently praying to whatever God to whom Republicans mumble that she, or someone like her, doesn’t decide to run against them.

While you ponder the above call for reciprocity, think about something else, too. The Leadership Conference on Civil & Human Rights (LCCR), a coalition of over 200 civil rights organizations that includes LGBT groups; labor unions, and; some mainstream religious groups, has been mobilizing and lobbying with us in support of LGBT rights. Few know that LCCR exists, even though it has been quietly watching our backs for decades. Yes, it is most definitely an “inside the Beltway” group, but that is one of its strengths in this instance. The group has built consensus among its members, quietly whispered in very powerful ears when intervention was needed while we outside the the Beltway  became more polarized in many instances. If LCCR didn’t exist, we’d have to convene and form a group like it today. Issues we thought had been settled, like voting rights, are in play again. I very strongly suspect that anti-profiling measures and “stand your ground” state laws will be next at the top of the agenda after the George Zimmerman acquittal.

When I was working on Barack Obama’s first presidential run in ’08, I had occasion to meet a lovely young, white male field rep from one of this country’s largest LGBT rights organizations. We began talking and he volunteered that gay, white men are some of the most racist individuals he’s ever met. Well, unfortunately, in too many cases, he wasn’t far off. The reality is that the racism expressed in some bastions of white, gay male supremacy, even (often) accidentally, has made many minorities of all hues and sexual orientations less than sympathetic to those who need their support. It is why so many natural allies have truly detested any comparison of the Civil Rights Era’s murders, beatings, maimings, bombings, jailings, general hardships and seeming victories to those experienced by people in LGBT communities. What most queer, white males don’t know is that civil rights organizations, most notably the NAACP, NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, National Urban League, the National Council of Negro Women, National Council of La Raza and some Asian civil rights organizations have been among our strongest, most discretely vocal, supporters. Just because something doesn’t make the five stories endlessly repeated on all networks’ 24/7 news broadcasts doesn’t mean there’s nothing happening.

Add to LCCR’s involvement that of the Congressional Black Caucus and its steadfast, unwavering support of LGBT rights and maybe it is possible for queer, white men to figure out that it’s time to pay their moral obligations. Write checks, work on campaigns, open your minds and your hearts enough to have the backs of your sisters and your loyal compatriots when we need you. Will it take a woman or an ethnic minority walking up to you sometime in the next 10 years and asking in an accusatory tone, “What were you doing when that m*****f***** was robbing me of my rights? I was with you during [insert political/human rights movement]. Were you with me when I needed you?” If you have to hang your head in shame, you’re going to remember this post and what you could have done to make things better. Believe me, you will not feel so “gay” then. You will feel crappy and rightly so.

It isn’t up to someone else to do the work alone. It is incumbent upon all of us who have shared in hard-fought victories to help others win on the same scale. When one person falls, it is the others’ duty to pick them up and carry them until we can all walk together. La Raza, the NAACP and the National Urban League didn’t have to support LGBT rights, especially marriage equality. It was support that many of their constituents did not like at all. However, the leaders of these organizations threw their considerable weight behind us because they knew their constituents, with some education and time, would most likely come around. They were right. It’s time for the overall LGBT community to do the same. Our leaders are already on-board. I’m not worried about them faltering at all. It’s time for individual men in gay communities, and also in straight communities, to do their part for women’s rights and civil rights for everyone. All the usual excuses don’t hold water this time. The situation is too grave.

I want Kasich and his ilk’s grubby paws off my uterus and those of my sisters in spirit. I want Planned Parenthood given the funding to create and execute new initiatives so that women–and their men–don’t have to go through the heartache of unwanted pregnancy. I want Congress to fix the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and its regulations to meet the requirements set by SCOTUS because without new rules, voting is going to be very difficult for people who are poor and/or racial minorities.

Last, and in no way least, I want justice for Trayvon Martin who was killed because he was a black kid who committed the “crime” of wearing a hoodie when someone else didn’t think he belonged where he was walking.

It is time for all men, regardless of self-identification and sexual orientation, to step up! We need you. Now!

^*I have used the word “queer,” but it is still very loaded for many people within the LGBT spectrum. I use it primarily because sexuality does not always fall into nice, neat categories and “queer” is a way to refer to all who don’t necessarily fit where someone else thinks they should. For example, I count myself within the LGBT spectrum, but about the only thing I can say I’m not is transgender. Such is sexuality.