Ok, take a deep breath. I am about to wade into some pretty turbulent waters here.
I want to start out by saying I don't know what the outcome of this case will be or ought to be. I'm glad that I am not on the jury because I don't think this is going to be a cut-and-dried situation. I probably wouldn't be "allowed" on the jury anyway. But I do know that no matter what decision is reached, someone is not going to be happy.
Whatever the truth of what happened that night--and I don't think we are ever going to know the truth in the full sense of the word, I do not think this is a racial matter. I think it is a cultural/behavioral issue that we are dealing with it and by focusing solely on the skin color of the participants we are missing the point.
I say this because this situation could have happened where I live and may yet happen. And when it does race will have very little to do with it. But it is time we take a good hard look at what creates these types of situations from both sides.
Now before people start flinging the "prejudice" label at me I want to make very clear that I do not live in a gated community. I live in the kind of neighborhood people move to gated communities to get away from. It happens my particular neighborhood is about 75% white. The people who I have had problems with are mostly white.
These are the kinds of behaviors people move to gated communities to avoid: trespassing in other people's yards. I cannot tell you how many times I have looked out my window and seen one or more young males (skin color doesn't matter) cutting through my yard as if they owned the place. When I ask them what they are doing in my yard they stare at me like what is your problem, *****? Urinating on people's cars, houses and lawns. Throwing trash on other people's lawns. Freely and abundantly using the F-word loud enough to be heard several blocks away. Loud, vulgar music booming from their cars. Drinking. Drugs. Fighting. At the height of the drug dealing (I had a meth lab on either side) I would come home from work every night to find 15-20 youths hanging around my house dressed like gangstas--a gauntlet I had to drive through and walk through EVERY night not knowing what they might have in mind. Now if any of you--especially any of you who are noise-sensitive--think this is a real nice place to live and you can't wait to have neighbors like mine then you can call me all the names you like. But if you don't, then--
So here we have a gated community and as I said people move to a gated community precisely because they do not want to deal with the kind of crap I have to deal with. So I can kind of understand someone like Mr. Zimmerman. I would not appreciate it either if once I managed to escape to a better neighborhood that the problems and issues I thought I'd left behind came calling. This is not to say that Mr. Martin behaved like that or that he deserved to be shot, but to point out that there might be a history to this little drama that we might not know about. Now fortunately or unfortunately as the case may be for all the little hoodlums in my neighborhood the decent people for the most part are too apathetic or scared to form a neighborhood watch--or we might wind up being the next nationwide controversy. I understand that very few of his neighbors are standing up for Mr. Zimmerman and I understand why. They are saying he was somewhat of a loose cannon. Ok--but where were they? When the neighborhood watch was being formed why did they let him take the lead? I'm just saying. I know how these dynamics work. We have a few people here that under the right circumstances and if jolted out of their apathy might well do the same thing. And it could very well be a case of a kid being in the wrong place at the wrong time wearing the wrong thing and maybe even being the wrong ethnicity who just happens to cross paths with one of them when they are having a bad day.
In contrast to my neighborhood and its apathy/unwillingness to deal with its very real issues the subdivision next to my church--let's call it MapleOak--took a very different view when it came to these things. MapleOak isn't a gated community, it's just a subdivision. Quite a few MapleOak residents go to my church. The pastor lives in MapleOak. Because so many people in my church live in MapleOak on any given night you can find one or more houses with several cars in the driveway and along the street. And nobody takes down license plate numbers. When neighbors see a lot of cars over at the Smiths' house they think, "Oh, the Smiths are having their Bible group again." They don't call the sheriff's hotline. A few years ago when a meth lab was discovered operating in MapleOak, concerned residents came together and formed a group to combat the problem. They did not want that kind of thing in their neighborhood and they wanted to know what they could do to prevent another. I think it is a safe bet that if anyone from my park went to visit anyone in MapleOak and behaved with the same disrespect for the neighborhood as they do at home they would soon find out that they were not welcome. Would any MapleOak residents behave like Mr. Zimmerman? I wouldn't want to put it to the test.
You see, it is because of where I live and what I have experienced there that I believe that there is far more to this story than a simple bigoted Neighborhood Watch vigilante overreacting to an unarmed black kid. Some of it may come out, some may not. I think that there are some very real pathologies and animosities between the two communities and it has to do with behavior. The two men were not strangers. They knew each other by sight at the very least. They knew each other by reputation. I don't know what the truth of what happened that night is. I only know the dynamics of my own community and sadly to say I can see the same story being played out there. And it will continue to happen until both sides take a good hard look at each other and start reaching out instead of reacting.
I want to start out by saying I don't know what the outcome of this case will be or ought to be. I'm glad that I am not on the jury because I don't think this is going to be a cut-and-dried situation. I probably wouldn't be "allowed" on the jury anyway. But I do know that no matter what decision is reached, someone is not going to be happy.
Whatever the truth of what happened that night--and I don't think we are ever going to know the truth in the full sense of the word, I do not think this is a racial matter. I think it is a cultural/behavioral issue that we are dealing with it and by focusing solely on the skin color of the participants we are missing the point.
I say this because this situation could have happened where I live and may yet happen. And when it does race will have very little to do with it. But it is time we take a good hard look at what creates these types of situations from both sides.
Now before people start flinging the "prejudice" label at me I want to make very clear that I do not live in a gated community. I live in the kind of neighborhood people move to gated communities to get away from. It happens my particular neighborhood is about 75% white. The people who I have had problems with are mostly white.
These are the kinds of behaviors people move to gated communities to avoid: trespassing in other people's yards. I cannot tell you how many times I have looked out my window and seen one or more young males (skin color doesn't matter) cutting through my yard as if they owned the place. When I ask them what they are doing in my yard they stare at me like what is your problem, *****? Urinating on people's cars, houses and lawns. Throwing trash on other people's lawns. Freely and abundantly using the F-word loud enough to be heard several blocks away. Loud, vulgar music booming from their cars. Drinking. Drugs. Fighting. At the height of the drug dealing (I had a meth lab on either side) I would come home from work every night to find 15-20 youths hanging around my house dressed like gangstas--a gauntlet I had to drive through and walk through EVERY night not knowing what they might have in mind. Now if any of you--especially any of you who are noise-sensitive--think this is a real nice place to live and you can't wait to have neighbors like mine then you can call me all the names you like. But if you don't, then--
So here we have a gated community and as I said people move to a gated community precisely because they do not want to deal with the kind of crap I have to deal with. So I can kind of understand someone like Mr. Zimmerman. I would not appreciate it either if once I managed to escape to a better neighborhood that the problems and issues I thought I'd left behind came calling. This is not to say that Mr. Martin behaved like that or that he deserved to be shot, but to point out that there might be a history to this little drama that we might not know about. Now fortunately or unfortunately as the case may be for all the little hoodlums in my neighborhood the decent people for the most part are too apathetic or scared to form a neighborhood watch--or we might wind up being the next nationwide controversy. I understand that very few of his neighbors are standing up for Mr. Zimmerman and I understand why. They are saying he was somewhat of a loose cannon. Ok--but where were they? When the neighborhood watch was being formed why did they let him take the lead? I'm just saying. I know how these dynamics work. We have a few people here that under the right circumstances and if jolted out of their apathy might well do the same thing. And it could very well be a case of a kid being in the wrong place at the wrong time wearing the wrong thing and maybe even being the wrong ethnicity who just happens to cross paths with one of them when they are having a bad day.
In contrast to my neighborhood and its apathy/unwillingness to deal with its very real issues the subdivision next to my church--let's call it MapleOak--took a very different view when it came to these things. MapleOak isn't a gated community, it's just a subdivision. Quite a few MapleOak residents go to my church. The pastor lives in MapleOak. Because so many people in my church live in MapleOak on any given night you can find one or more houses with several cars in the driveway and along the street. And nobody takes down license plate numbers. When neighbors see a lot of cars over at the Smiths' house they think, "Oh, the Smiths are having their Bible group again." They don't call the sheriff's hotline. A few years ago when a meth lab was discovered operating in MapleOak, concerned residents came together and formed a group to combat the problem. They did not want that kind of thing in their neighborhood and they wanted to know what they could do to prevent another. I think it is a safe bet that if anyone from my park went to visit anyone in MapleOak and behaved with the same disrespect for the neighborhood as they do at home they would soon find out that they were not welcome. Would any MapleOak residents behave like Mr. Zimmerman? I wouldn't want to put it to the test.
You see, it is because of where I live and what I have experienced there that I believe that there is far more to this story than a simple bigoted Neighborhood Watch vigilante overreacting to an unarmed black kid. Some of it may come out, some may not. I think that there are some very real pathologies and animosities between the two communities and it has to do with behavior. The two men were not strangers. They knew each other by sight at the very least. They knew each other by reputation. I don't know what the truth of what happened that night is. I only know the dynamics of my own community and sadly to say I can see the same story being played out there. And it will continue to happen until both sides take a good hard look at each other and start reaching out instead of reacting.
